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 LECTURES 
 
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 EUROPEAN HISTORY
 
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 T ECTURES ON EURO- 
 ^ PEAN HISTORY. By 
 
 William Stubbs, d.d., formerly 
 
 BISHOP OF OXFORD AND REGIUS PROFESSOR 
 OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF OXFORD 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 ARTHUR HASSALL, MA. 
 
 STUDENT, TUTOR, AND SOMETIME CENSOR OF CHRIST CHURCH 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
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 All rights reserved
 
 PEEFATOEY NOTE 
 
 These Lectures were first delivered between 1860 and 1870 by 
 Bishop Stubbs, when Regius Professor of Modern History in the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 The responsibility for publishing them rests entirely with 
 myself. 
 
 I have, however, no doubt whatever that the world would be very 
 considerably the loser if these Lectures were not published ; for, while 
 principally known as a Constitvitional Historian, Bishop Stubbs had 
 an immense knowledge of European History, and this is apparent in 
 every page of the present volume. 
 
 Though numerous publications bearing on the period of which 
 these Lectures treat have appeared in England and abroad, it may 
 well be doubted whether any so well-reasoned an account of the 
 years from 1519 to 1648 has yet been written. 
 
 These three Lectures form one historical drama, in which the 
 reign of Charles V. is the first, the period from his death to the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century the second, and the Thirty 
 Years' War is the third act. In the reign of Charles V. is witnessed 
 the growth of the Eeformation ; in the intervening period the growth 
 of the anti-Reformation ; in the Thirty Years' War the conflict 
 between the two. 
 
 While the period may in one sense be regarded as a struggle 
 between the dynastic policy of the Hapsburgs on the one hand, and 
 that of the Valois and Bourbons on the other, there were deeper 
 issues at stake. Throughout the years from 1519 to 1648 there 
 are two distinct ideas in progress, which, writes Bishop Stubbs, 
 ' may be regarded as giving a unity to the long period. The 
 Eeformation is one, the claims of the House of Austria is the other.' 
 From these claims were developed, as it were, the underplot of 
 the conflict between the dynastic policy of the Hapsburgs and that
 
 ! 
 
 vi LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 of the Valois and Bourbons, distinct from, and yet constantly com- 
 plicating, the conflict of the creeds. Within the Empire also the 
 two ideas are sufliciently distinct, and it would be false simplicity 
 to identify the claims of the Hapsburgs with those of the New 
 Catholicism. 
 
 Bishop Stubbs refused to regard the Thirty Years' War as a 
 struggle waged by the dynastic policy of Austria against the spirit 
 of the German people — a point of \iew dear to Prussian historians. 
 'We cannot say,' he writes, 'that the Saxon and Brandenburger 
 regarded the struggle as one of truth and enlightenment against 
 darliness and error.' 
 
 The historical student will find in these Lectures a judicial and 
 masterly exposition of the immense issues placed before Europe in 
 the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. Bishop 
 Stubbs's weighty reasoning and conclusions will commend them- 
 selves to all who have studied, or wish to study, one of the most 
 important periods of European History. 
 
 As editor I have confined myself mainly to the task of deleting 
 colloquialisms, of adding a few notes when absolutely necessary, and 
 of inserting some genealogical tables. Though I have no doubt 
 that, had he prepared these Lectures for publication himself, Bishop 
 Stubbs would have made certain other changes, I have thought it 
 best to publish these Lectures in almost the exact shape in which 
 they were delivered. 
 
 A. H.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 THE EMPEBOB CEABLES V. 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 I. Spain at the beginning of the Sixteeenth Century . 1 
 11. The Character of Charles V.'s Eule in Spain and the 
 
 Netherlands 19 
 
 III. The Constitution of the Empire in the Sixteenth 
 
 Century 37 
 
 IV. The Eivalry of the Houses of Hapsburg and Valois 
 
 DOWN TO THE Peace OF Cambrai, 1529 ... 49 
 
 V. The Reformation to the Diet of Augsburg, 1580 . . 61 
 VI. The Wars of Charles V. from 1529 to the Truce of 
 
 Nice, 1538 72 
 
 VII. From the Truce of Nice to the Peace of Crespy, 
 
 1544 84 
 
 VIII. The Reformation from the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, 
 
 to the Interim, 1548 96 
 
 IX. Charles V.'s Relations with Maurice of Saxony and 
 
 Henry II. of France 108 
 
 X. General Review of Charles V.'s Reign . . . 120 
 
 XI. The Character of Charles V 132 
 
 II 
 
 THE POLITICAL HI8T0BY OF EUBOPE FBOM 
 THE BESIGNATION OF CHABLE8 V. 
 
 I. Europe at the Resignation of Charles V. ... 145 
 II. General Survey of the Period 1558—1618 . . . 156 
 
 III. The Reigns of Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II., 1558— 
 
 1576 ' 168 
 
 IV. The French Civil Wars of Religion from the Death 
 
 OF Henry II. to the Accession of Henry III., 1559 — 
 
 1573 180 
 
 V. Philip II. and the Netherlands to the Outbreak of 
 
 War, 1572 192.
 
 Viii LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 LECTURE PAQK 
 
 VI. The War in the Netherlands to the Death of William 
 
 THE Silent, 1584 - . . 204 
 
 VII. The later Years of the Reign of Philip II., 1584 — 
 
 1598 217 
 
 VIII. From the Accession of Henry III. of France to the 
 
 Peace of Vervins, 1573—1598 229 
 
 IX. Henry IV.'s Place in the History of Europe . . . 241 
 X. Germany under Rudolf II. and Matthias, 1576—1619 . 253 
 XI. Spain and France in the early Years of the Seven- 
 teenth Century 265 
 
 III 
 
 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE DURING 
 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 
 
 I, Europe at the Opening of the Thirty Years' War . 277 
 
 II. The Bohemian Struggle 288 
 
 III. The Development of the War 298 
 
 IV. The Intervention of Denmark : Wallenstein's Successes 310 
 V. The Swedish Intervention 321 
 
 VI. The Victories and Death of Gustavus Adolphus . . 332 
 VII. The War from the Battle of Lutzen, 1632, to the 
 
 Death of Wallenstein, 1634 343 
 
 VIII. The Intervention of France in the War . . . . 353 
 
 IX. Nine Years of War, 1637—1645 365 
 
 X. The closing Scenes of the War, 1646 — 1648 . . . 375 
 
 TWO SUPPLEMENTARY LECTURES 
 
 I. Survey of the Reigns of Louis XIII. and Philip IV. . 387 
 
 II. The Peace of Westphalia 398 
 
 PEDIGREES 
 
 The House of Hapsburg 409 
 
 The Houses of Valois and Bourbon 409 
 
 INDEX 411
 
 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY 
 
 1519-1648 
 
 THE EMPEBOR CHABLES V 
 LECTURE I 
 
 SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTUBY 
 
 The student of the later period of Modern History — of Modern 
 History definitely so called, as opposed to Medieval History — has in 
 some respects a great advantage over the student of the first or 
 medieval portion. The period of time which he has to study is 
 very much shorter ; the geographical area over which, as we study 
 it here, the interest extends is much narrower ; there is much more 
 unity in the dramatic portions of it, because there is a far more 
 decided connexion of the several parts than is wont to reveal itself 
 to the ordinary student of the history of the Middle Ages : that is, 
 the history of modern Europe, through the introduction of the idea 
 or doctrine of the balance of power, has a single string or centre of 
 interest round which almost all the foreign history, and much of 
 the internal history of the nations, gathers or may be grouped. 
 Important as the internal history is, and the details of wars, they 
 are not the whole of the history, as in the earlier times. And this 
 grouping of interest has a further efiect : that it actually thins the 
 numbers and actually individualises for us the several persons and 
 characters of the great actors in the drama. In the earlier ages we 
 have a large number of local or national heroes whose greatness 
 is a matter of tradition by historians, rather than an inference from 
 recorded exploits; fewer of general and all-engrossing interest. 
 Now, however, the unity of the drama has helped to fix the eyes of 
 the nations upon one another, and to give to the leading men in one 
 a leading interest in the rest : not only is their influence more 
 
 n
 
 2 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 widely felt, but their greatness is more widely appreciated, often it is 
 even exaggerated in a way that is quite foreign to the tone of 
 medieval story. And thus, although modern history presents us 
 far fewer men for whom transcendent greatness is claimed than the 
 Middle Ages do — and this I say without any disrespect for the 
 modern period, because it would not be fair to expect of three 
 centuries the same harvest of great men that we find in the ten 
 preceding (and we scrutinise their claims to greatness more carefully 
 the fewer they are and the closer we see them) — it does furnish us 
 with a larger number about whom the world in general busies itself 
 and whose lives have, for their interest rather than for the greatness 
 of the characters, been thought worthy to be written and rewritten 
 times without number. 
 
 Another point : the principles which in modern history men have 
 fought and struggled for in war and politics are more akin to 
 principles and ideas of the present day than those of the earlier 
 times ; they themselves, independent of the dramatic unity that I 
 have spoken of, are more directly and closely interesting. Religion, 
 and the growth of political freedom in its modern acceptation, catch 
 the attention of superficial readers far more in the later than in the 
 earlier : and, more books being read, far more are written. 
 
 It is not true, as sometimes we see it stated, that modern history 
 is the history of principles and ideas, medieval the history of facts : 
 but it is true that in modern history ideas and principles assume 
 a garb in which they seem more akin to the controversies touching 
 ideas and principles which prevail at the present day. The sixteenth 
 century, as a century of ideas, real, grand, and numerous, is not to 
 be compared with the thirteenth : the ideas are not so pure, not so 
 living, nor so refined ; the men are not so earnest, so single-hearted, 
 so loveable by far. Much doubtless has been gained in strength of 
 purpose, and much in material progress ; but compare the one set of 
 men with the other as men, and the ideas as ideas, and the advantage 
 is wonderfully in favour of the semi-barbarous age, above that of 
 the Renaissance and the Reformation. 
 
 But, although the sixteenth century could not have been what it 
 was unless the thirteenth had been what it was, the form which the 
 modern ideas took in the sixteenth appeals directly to the sympathies 
 of the nineteenth, the interest is nearer, and is therefore more 
 appreciable than that of the more remote. The study of the former 
 period thus is more extensive both in fact and principle, that of the 
 latter more intense, if I may use the word, in fact, though not 
 necessarily so in principle : not necessarily so because we have quite 
 sufficient documentary remains of much earlier times to enable us 
 to form a very just judgment as to the principles, the men who
 
 SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 3 
 
 contested them, and their direct connexion with later developments. 
 Still, as a fact, we have far more books to read, about a far smaller 
 number of men and incidents. 
 
 The causes I have specified have this twofold effect ; although 
 the chief actors are fewer, much more has been written about them, 
 and that has been written from many sides, with more prejudice 
 and antipathy, as we might expect. The student comes to the 
 reading of a large number of books, the writers of which view 
 matters from diametrically opposite standing points and with the 
 uttermost bitterness of party feeling. The element of religion by 
 itself is enough to account for much of this, for the struggle 
 between Eomanism and Protestantism, which begins in the sixteenth 
 century in its modern form, rages now as bitterly as it ever did ; nor 
 is political rancour very much behind it, although the points 
 actually contested in the seventeenth century may be now regarded 
 as antiquated. Nay, the interest of extinct party burns as briskly 
 as ever ; the merits and demerits of Anne Boleyn or of Mary Queen of 
 Scots are contested by men who have no sympathy with the religion 
 of either, as furiously as the most vital questions of the present day. 
 And this I am inclined to regard as the great drawback of the study. 
 We all come to the examination of a period of history which above 
 all demands, for judgment between its varied and contradictory 
 versions, the coolest and most impartial treatment, with our minds 
 made up on some of the most important principles concerned in 
 it, and as to the characters of some of the principal actors. Every 
 man who comes up to matriculate at Oxford has made up his mind 
 on the great political questions of the day — I do not venture to guess 
 how long he ■will maintain that decisive attitude — and also on those 
 of the last three centuries. I find no fault with this ; I should not 
 myself have the slightest respect for a coldblooded boy who had 
 determined to reserve his opinion until he was perfectly informed : 
 such a creature would, I am convinced, be far too bad for earth, would 
 be perfectly intolerable, for he would be intolerant to both sides. 
 According as home politics, his father's house, his native town, 
 or his public school, have affected him — and somehow the three 
 influences will pull the same way, whichever way it be — he comes 
 or ought to come up a decided Radical or a decided Tory : and it is 
 very well that he does : if he does not he must be either a prig or 
 an idiot, a fool on either showing. It is a good thing that you should 
 come up with that interest, although it may need, what assuredly 
 it will get, some tempering and some informing ; you have to learn 
 here to be perspicacious, critical, and cool, instead of blind partisans. 
 But the real difficulty remains : you come to the study of these 
 things with a strong prejudice, in favour of or against Henry VIII. or 
 
 b2
 
 4 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Charles I. or Oliver Cromwell, or William III., and, in a less degree, 
 for or against Charles V., or Henry IV., Lewis XIV., or Napoleon 
 Buonaparte. 
 
 I allege these things, however, not as a discouragement or as 
 a hindrance to the study, but as a reason for a particular mode 
 of treatment. It is of all things most important for you to learn 
 to form a critical and historical judgment upon matters about 
 which you are or may be strongly interested : for your own sakes 
 you should learn how important it is to attack and defend in con- 
 troversy, only with tried weapons ; and how fatal to a good cause 
 (and we on each side believe our own cause to be a good one) it is to 
 undervalue the strength of the opposite side, or to use any plan, to 
 rely upon any basis, that is not well tested, thoroughly explored, 
 and a reality realised by the combatants themselves. Let me just 
 say further that it is possible to study medieval history without 
 much knowledge of modern controversy : I do not think it is well, 
 because it robs the principles and the men of a vitality of interest 
 which they certainly deserve ; but it is possible. On the other hand, 
 it is quite impossible to read modern history without some knowledge 
 of medieval ; the very ordinary terms of the language of history are 
 unintelligible, or, what is almost as bad, are interpreted as meaning 
 what, after all the changes and chances of the history that you are 
 travelling through, they have come to mean, something very different 
 indeed from what they meant at the beginning of the period. 
 
 Now the result of all this is, that to study any, even the most 
 limited portion, of modern as opposed to medieval history, in a per- 
 fect way — that is, to read it straightforward, accumulating all that 
 is in print about each particular as we proceed, or even all that is 
 at hand in our less recondite books of history — demands an amount 
 of application which cannot be exhibited in the form of lectures. 
 If I were to bring down here, and go over with you, the mass of 
 material heaped up on many of the single points that we must go 
 through — the divorce of Henry VIII. from Catherine of Aragon 
 for instance — we might spend, not to say a term but a year, upon 
 one of them. In a private lecture with one or two men who have 
 nothing else to do, this might be done ; and it is not a bad thing 
 sometimes, by way of pattern, to work out single points with minute- 
 ness : but in a mixed lecture it would be useless to attempt it, useless 
 to argue the possibility of so reading any considerable portion of 
 history. What is the alternative ? Either simply to prescribe a 
 choice of books which you should study by yourselves, or to attempt 
 such general views of the period as may help you to form an idea 
 of the bearing of one of the minutise upon another ; of the relations 
 of the different parts of the drama, of its actors, their strength and
 
 SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 5 
 
 weakness ; the events, their immediate and their prospective bearing. 
 Now to give you a mere list of books which you will not have time to 
 read, even if you were to desire to do it, does not seem to me to be 
 worth while devoting a term's lectures to. I shall therefore, if all is 
 well, in the course of the lectures before us, attempt, on an analytic 
 rather than a synthetic plan, to portion out the interest of the whole 
 reign of Charles V. — taking the subjects one by one, not adhering 
 to the chronological sequence, or running in and out, each summer 
 and winter, to the different scenes of his wars and intrigues, on the 
 plan of Thucydides : but, attempting in each head, and in each 
 separate scene of his great influence, to get some idea of the results 
 of his reign, and of the bearing of those results, in that particular 
 department, on the general history of Europe. It is no longer the 
 history of Germany that we devote ourselves to, for Europe has now 
 begun to have a general history : the great principles of religious 
 and political liberty have taken their modern dress. 
 
 To trace the political elements and their working, in each of the 
 many and dissimilar states that Charles governed, will be a task in 
 itself : to examine how far his wars and alliances were matters of 
 principle, policy, or experiment, will bring us into direct contact 
 with everything that is going on in Europe inside and outside of his 
 own dominions, that has historical importance : to endeavour to 
 arrange these topics so as to give a consecutive series to the years of 
 his active life, and to trace through them the developments, changes, 
 or ossification of his own political views, will be a further flight. 
 And, if we succeed in doing anything like this we shall not have 
 failed to get a general view of the place of his reign in history, and 
 of his own personal character and place in it. I shall try to do this, 
 under the firm conviction that a more consecutive study would be 
 impossible with means and opportunities limited as ours are by the 
 nature of the matter and the case. Some parts of this programme 
 will take us much more into detail than others, and some will take us 
 more into the precedent medieval history : but I shall try to avoid 
 repetition or irrelevant discussions ; and in particular I shall not 
 attempt the details of wars and battles. That must be understood 
 from the first ; it is impossible to get a clear notion of the general 
 bearings of history, if time be spent on these minutia;. Of course 
 I am speaking only of lecture purposes : pedigrees, and exact 
 chronology, and plans of battles have an interest of their own, and are 
 very worthy objects of special study : I advise you by no means 
 to neglect them : but in a general lecture it is the results rather than 
 the details that are of importance, and from what I have said 
 you must understand that you are not to expect them from me. 
 
 Now the greatest part of the interest of Charles V.'s reign is based
 
 6 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 on this : that his dominions, actual or virtual, cover the whole of that 
 part of Europe in which the problems of modern political life have 
 been in the process of working out, ^\ath the exception of England 
 and France. Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands have 
 been the arena of all sorts of modern struggles : in Germany, for 
 instance, the Reformation, the balance between Roman and Protes- 
 tant influences, and the most determinate actual struggle between 
 the material forces of the two. In Spain the unfettered working 
 of absolutism ^\^th every favourable condition of successful develop- 
 ment, resulting in what we now see — a series of revolutions of which 
 it is impossible to see the summation. In the Netherlands the 
 most energetic working out of freedom both in politics and religion 
 that the world perhaps has ever seen, under circumstances the 
 most apparently overwhelming, and with the greatest odds against suc- 
 cess : a struggle in which the political energy of the race itself seems, 
 although victorious, to have been exhausted. In Italy you have, 
 on the other hand, the entire failure of liberty under circumstances 
 that might have seemed the most favourable, the extinction of 
 a light that had burned for ages and kindled other lamps far and 
 wide in other countries, but which was powerless or reduced to 
 absolute impotence at home ; an impotence from which, after all the 
 revolutions, after the demolition of all the old tyrannies, after the 
 emancipation of all forces capable of struggling, it is even now 
 questionable whether anything but misgovernment or mismanage- 
 ment in our time is likely to follow.^ Our own times are seeing in 
 Spain and Italy the harvest of which the reign of Charles V. in 
 those countries was the seedtime. We can only hope that the worst 
 is over. 
 
 These are great questions, how far the remote responsibility 
 of a mistaken policy extends ; and whether one man's influence is 
 ever of so far range and so penetrating as to make him guilty of the 
 evils which centuries after his death have sprung from the schemes 
 he originated. As a rule, and it is one that applies to all human 
 responsibility as well as to history, a man is not regarded as 
 guilty of the consequences of his actions which he could not foresee, 
 but only of those which he might and ought to have seen. Other- 
 wise the apportionment of political responsibility would be not 
 merely impossible, but unattemptable, and we must content our- 
 selves with running back once for all to the fall of Adam. It is in 
 the last degree absurd for writers of the present day who hate the 
 house of Austria, to bestow their retrospective curse on Rudolf of 
 Hapsburg. It is scarcely less absurd to ascribe to Charles V., in 
 
 ' Bishop Stubbs would certainly have modifipd this sentence had he read 
 the Lecture during the last twenty-five years of his life. 
 
 \w
 
 SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 7 
 
 any of the countries that he governed, evils which he must have been 
 scarcely less than a god if he could have foreseen. And I mention 
 this here because both English and German history is very much 
 written from this standpoint ; and it strikes me as not merely 
 unjust but as showing an ignorance of the plainest aphorisms of 
 common sense, an ignorance that should disqualify a man from even 
 claiming the name of an historian, to make an historical character 
 responsible for evils and crimes which have resulted from his 
 actions by processes which he could not foresee ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, crimes and evils which not only were foreseen but actually 
 purposely perpetrated are accounted excusable for good results 
 which have followed them, although those good results were such as 
 it would have demanded the spirit of prophecy to anticipate in the 
 remotest degree. It is very unsafe to read any history backwards, 
 but most especially unsafe to attempt so to read a history in which 
 all our beliefs and prejudices are concerned. 
 
 You will, I hope, gather from this prefatory advice that I am 
 not going to attempt any original research in this course ; I do not 
 think that we shall be able to go into original matter at all. A 
 term's lectures cannot be made to contain a searching investigation 
 into a history the superficial survey of which 'fills twelve books of 
 Robertson's history of Charles V. I may as well, however, tell you 
 in what order I propose to treat the subject. In the first place we 
 shall take an outline of the history, during this reign, of the consti- 
 tutional and internal affairs of the states which are less immediately 
 connected with the great struggle between the Empire and France. 
 These are Spain and the Netherlands. They are removed from the 
 great struggle locally, for no part of them witnessed the great 
 campaigns of the reign, nor were the points at issue between the 
 combatants points related directly to those countries. Charles had 
 difficulties of title in Spain and difficulties of title in the Netherlands, 
 but Francis I. and Henry II. had no standing-ground in either : both 
 countries furnished Charles with supplies of men and money and both 
 did it unwillingly ; both had a struggle with him, and, in each, con- 
 stitutional law had the worst of that struggle. But there is not that 
 unity about their interest in the great drama that there would be 
 if they were contiguous and consolidated. Charles quarrels with 
 Francis, not so much as King of Spain or of the Netherlands, as in his 
 character of Emperor and King of Naples. If it can be shown that 
 Charles had any design of universal dominion, or even of a despotic 
 position, politically speaking, in Europe, any uniform plan of pro- 
 gress towards a general European dictatorship, then I think it would be 
 fair to believe that he acted on a political principle in the repressive 
 measures which he took in each of his states, and an element of
 
 R 
 
 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, ' 1610-1648 
 
 11 
 
 e 
 
 N<7' 
 
 / 
 
 1 
 
 unity, of political interest would be supplied, which does not show 
 itself at first. But I question whether that can be shown, and the 
 discussion of its possibility belongs rather to the last lecture of the 
 course than to the first. I shall then endeavour, in what may be 
 regarded as the second and third lectures, to take a continuous, a 
 brief, but I hope adequate view of Charles's administration in the 
 two countries in which he was first called to bear personal rule. A 
 fourth lecture will take us back to the empire and to the several 
 internal interests comprised in the geographical area of Germany. 
 We shall thus have, I hope, clear to our minds the -persona, of the 
 great drama in which the actors are states, kingdoms, bishoprics, 
 >\-ith their several influences, quite as much as kings, pontiffs, and 
 republics. We shall thus be able to approach the great action of 
 the period. This is, I need hardly tell you, twofold : Charles in 
 his rivalry with Francis, and Charles in his struggle with the Reforma- 
 tion. And in these we shall have to go a good deal into detail, 
 for our friend Robertson is weak in dates, as I shall have occasion 
 to mention again. 
 
 Charles's wars with Francis are a regular seesaw. The Pope is 
 generally the person who pulls the ups and downs. The whole reign 
 is a continuous struggle in this respect, although it may be divided 
 into several acts. Not to include the earliest events which fall 
 rather under Maximilian and Ferdinand than under Charles, the 
 first act lasts from Francis's first attack on Charles in Navarre, 
 Bouillon, and the Milanese, to the peace of Cambray in 1529, during 
 which the Medicean Popes Leo X. and Clement VII. take both sides 
 alternately, and the welfare of Europe, so far as their influence can 
 effect, depends on the rise and fall of a single Florentine family. 
 The second act reaches from the war of Savoy and death of Fran- 
 cesco Maria Sforza in 1535 to the truce of Nice in 1538 : the third 
 from the renewal of war in 1541 to the peace of Crespy in 1544 : the 
 fourth from the attack by Henry II. on the three bishoprics in 1552 
 to the end of the reign, when it was still proceeding, although 
 languishing. In the third the interest of the Farnese house, in 
 Parma and Piacenza, takes the place which the house of Medici in 
 Florence occupies in the earlier : the interest of the latter is closely 
 bound up with that of the Reformation. In all this long struggle, 
 and it was a diplomatic struggle during all the intervals of peace, 
 Charles was acting on the defensive : his invasions of France were in- 
 tended to cripple Francis, not to establish his own dominion, or even 
 in reality to dismember the kingdom of his rival. So much cannot 
 be said of the motives of Henry VIII., when he consented, as he did 
 once or twice, to make a diversion in favour of Charles by invading 
 France. The wars which Francis and his son Henry undertook
 
 SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 9 
 
 were wars of aggression. The only ones in which there was even an 
 appearance of defence were those which related to the Milanese, and 
 there the claim of Francis was an invasion of the empire as well as of 
 the rights of the family which reigned there under the empire. I do 
 not say this here in defence of Charles, but simply as a help to the 
 recollection of the string of events. 
 
 Well, the other struggle of Charles, that with the German re- 
 formers, may be divided also into four acts : the first from the be- 
 ginning of his reign to the Diet of Augsburg, in which the famous 
 Confession was promulgated : this is a period partly of doctrinal dis- 
 cussion and partly of legal decrees and counter decrees, and lasts 
 from 1519 to 1530, The second is a period of intrigue and political . 
 action not breaking into war, and lasts from the promulgation of 
 the Confession to the war of Smalkald, 1530-1546. The third is a 
 period of war, the Smalkaldic war, to the Interim 1546-1548 ; and 
 the fourth is the great struggle, in which Maurice of Saxony is the ") 
 principal figure, which ends with the pacification of Passau in 1552. ;/ 
 In this also the Popes attempt to keep the seesaw going ; to prevent 
 the reformers from beating the Emperor, lest they should take on 
 themselves the remodelling of the whole Church ; and to prevent the 
 Emperor from beating the reformers, lest, so strengthened, he should 
 undertake the entire subjugation of Italy and the uprooting of 
 Medici and Farnese alike. ' \ 
 
 The Council of Trent in its relations to these three powers is of \ 
 great importance now ; but into the religious history I do not propose 
 to go even so far as to discriminate the parties existing in the 
 council itself. In my view and as to the present subject its im- 
 portance lies in its being the lever by which the Emperor works on 
 the Protestants and the Pope works on the Emperor. When the | 
 Pope wishes to help the Emperor he calls the council, when he ■ 
 wishes to thwart him he dismisses it. He himself— indeed we may { 
 on this point speak of the occupants of St. Peter's chair as one 
 man — has been forced into holding the council ; the idea of its being 
 strong and effective is hateful to the Court of Eome, at all events 
 during the life of Charles. The Pope fears it because there is 
 always the chance that with the Emperor to pull the strings it may 
 revive the doctrines of the Council of Basel, and even the idea of 
 responsibility of the Vicar of St. Peter himself. He hates the Pro- 
 testants but will thwart the Emperor at the risk of benefiting them. 
 He hates the Emperor, but will countenance the council for a time if 
 it will cut the ground from under their feet. To do them justice, 
 the Protestants disclaim consistently the papal authority and the idea 
 that a council held at Trent under Charles's influence can be any- 
 thing but a one-sided assembly, can be anything like that free
 
 I 
 
 10 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 assembly which, if the divisions of Christendom prevent its being 
 cecumenic, may yet be Teutonic and national, afford free discussion, 
 and a compromise that will secure liberty. 
 
 The point in which the two great struggles of the period touch 
 is the possibility of Francis or Henry 11. affording substantial as- 
 sistance to the Protestants : and this point is, so long as Francis 
 lives, a mere question of intrigue. The early Protestants distrusted 
 him, and rather shunned than courted an alliance with him, although 
 the Smalkaldic league did announce its existence and its willingness 
 to receive new members both to him and to Henry VIII. But the 
 Protestant confederation under Maurice of Saxony, in 1552, was a 
 very different thing from the Smalkaldic league of 1546, and the 
 Protestants had not, in the case of Henry II., the same conviction of 
 incurable ill faith that they had in the case of his father. It is then 
 only in the campaign of 1552 that this point works overtly. But it 
 cannot be overlooked that Charles's fears were constantly aroused 
 by the suspicion of such a combination and that existing intrigues 
 gave strong grounds for such a suspicion. The pacification of 
 Passau put an end to Charles's personal work in Germany, and the 
 failure to recover Metz broke his spirit and determined him to give 
 up the personal struggle. The two events thus produce the climax 
 or denouement of the drama ; and are, in their turn, the climaxes of the 
 two long struggles which have been wearing away his energy for forty 
 years. The two struggles go on side by side, or in alternate acts, 
 until 1552 : then France and the Protestants join ; the pacification 
 of Passau ends one, the discomfiture at Metz the other : the hardy, 
 wiry athlete feels that fortune has exhausted her favours : he plays 
 the game bravely to the last : then he accepts the rod, and makes 
 way for younger combatants. Well, I sketch this thus briefly, 
 because I shall want you to keep it before you, as we go through a 
 quantity of details that are distracting in their sameness and 
 constant recurrence ; campaigns in the Milanese and Piedmont, 
 in the Netherlands and in Luxemburg ; diets at Augsburg and 
 Speyer and Worms ; edicts and interims and recesses ; promises of 
 councils and sessions and postponements ; now a Medici married 
 and done for, now a Farnese equally well disposed of ; now a 
 siege of Milan, now a seizure of a pass or province ; now an alliance 
 with Kome, now with Venice, now with Henry VIII. Again, 
 in all this there is a perennial warfare with the infidel in three 
 quarters ; on the Spanish coast, on the Neapolitan coast, and in 
 Hungary and Transylvania : a warfare which knows no peace 
 and seldom even a truce, but which is brisk when Francis and 
 Solyman are working together, brisker when peace with Francis 
 gives Charles the chance of attacking the robber nests at Tunis
 
 StAlN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY 11 
 
 and Algiers, and which only lulls, if even then, when Solyman 
 is far away in Persia, or when his domestic misunderstandings, like 
 Henry VIII.'s, demand all his attention at home. This, although 
 it has a great interest in many, ways, we shall be able to go into 
 only very cursorily. I J 
 
 I shall, before the term ends, give a lecture, if I can manage it, on the ^ I I 
 character of Charles and some estimate of his policy in its intention 
 and Itr 'its results. And now I must say a word about Eobertson. 
 There can be no doubt that Eobertson's work is a very interesting * 
 one, that in its view of the historic sequence of cause and effect it is ' 
 in the main a sound one, and that in the antiquarian or constitu- | 
 tional portion of it, although behind the requisitions of this age, a | 
 wonderful work for the time in which he lived. I do not pro- 
 poseln this course to deal directly with Robertson's book, because 
 that would involve us in a great deal of discussion of extraneous 
 questions, some of which are antiquated as well as extraneous, and \\ | 
 in a number of picturesquely drawn details which require abridgment |4^* " ^ 
 rather than explanation. Although much of Robertson's intro- \ '• / 
 
 ductory matter may be regarded as superseded by Hallam's work on \ 
 the Middle Ages, it will always retain the great charm of lucid order * 
 and conscientious research. Much of what is wrong in it may be | 
 corrected by a study of medieval history, and scarcely any of it can I 
 be taken with entire confidence in detail. But there it is, readable, • 
 orderly, and well thought out. The notes are very valuable whether 
 as illustrating Hallam or as a substitute for him. But in the body 
 of the book itself there are faults which I am sure you will find, if 
 you have not already found, serious. In the first place there is an \ 
 attempt at continuous detail which is puzzling, when the string of j 
 real unity is wanting. A life of Charles written on Robertson's plan j 
 would have been far more readable and rememberable than a history i 
 
 of the reign, in which we are constantly losing sight of the chief , 
 actor. It would be extremely difficult, on opening any chapter of y 
 
 Robertson, to see where Charles was at the moment of narration ; 
 and, in the case of a king who pulled the strings of government so \ 
 exclusively himself, this ought to be ascertainable. But, further, the 
 meagreness of chronological data in Robertson is an intolerable 
 deficiency. And this I say, not because I want'you to spend the best 
 energies of your minds in learning them, but because you ought to 
 be aware how altogether impossible it is to carry on two or three 
 contemporaneous strings of narration without definite dates : it is 
 absolutely impossible to estimate the importance of the Reformation 
 movement without knowing the exact attitude of the varying policy 
 of the Popes or Venetians, or Kings of France and England, as the 
 two struggles proceed : often mistaking a day or a week may alter
 
 12 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 the whole sequence of cause and consequence, and render our whole 
 conception of a crisis one great misapprehension. This evil you 
 cannot remedy in the study of Robertson, without re'course to out- 
 of-the-way books ; some help however in this, I trust, I may be able 
 to give you. 
 
 I wish that I could add that I hoped to give aid of a more 
 valuable kind in another department in which Robertson fails us. 
 Thus. When Robertson Avrote, the German scholars had not 
 bestowed so much labour as they ought to have done on their own 
 history ; and the writer had therefore to go for his information 
 either to the Latin historians of the seventeenth century who wrote 
 whilst popular prejudices were high and access to original docu- 
 ments difficult, or to French writers of his own time, whose views 
 are uniformly French as opposed to German and everything else. I 
 do not think that there were any good German histories written then, 
 or that Robertson could have read German if there had been. The 
 German literary and historical life dates from a later period ; and you 
 will find that Robertson is quoted as an authority by German writers 
 of his own day in a way which a modern German historian would 
 blush to own. This being so, Robertson is on one side very Frenchi 
 and on the other very Protestant ; and so, in both struggles, arguing 
 like a Scot Protestant in religion, French in political affinity, 
 he takes a view of Charles which is too one-sided, too consistently 
 one-sided to impose on any one as true. I believe him to have 
 been quite conscientious ; and I do not know any case in which 
 his details of facts have been at all warped by the bias which 
 he took from his authorities, but the truth is as I have stated : of 
 course I shall have to return again and again to this point. And once 
 more, I think that he treats Charles too much as a political machine, 
 and too little as a man with strong passions and a powerful will, with 
 great opportunities for gratifying the one and displaying the other. 
 
 Having said this, I have said the worst of Robertson. His 
 Protestant prejudices must of course, throughout the work, be 
 allowed for ; I do not know that they ever lead him into misstate- 
 ments. Many parts of his work have been very critically handled, 
 both by Dr. Dunham in his history of Spain, and by Prescott and 
 later writers on the Dutch and Spanish transactions ; but I think 
 that very little really can be said against his accuracy. The great 
 want of the book, the want of unity and distinctness, I shall try in 
 this course of lectures to help you to supply. If at times I seem to 
 be running too much into details of this kind, please to remember 
 that I do it with a deliberate intention of helping you to work out 
 the reality of his story : if at times you miss a general view that 
 might make contemporary lines of narration more easily tenable in
 
 SPAIN AT THE EEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 13 
 
 the memory, please also to remember that I have in this lecture 
 given you my idea of the plot of the period, the acts of the drama, and 
 the steps that lead up to the final catastrophe, if catastrophe is not 
 too harsh a word for the quiet conclusion of a reign, a retirement 
 from active life that has been vouchsafed to few men who have ever 
 made so great a name in the world. 
 
 Our work begins with the history of Spain, We take it first, not 
 because it was that one of his dominions which Charles was able to 
 administer for himself the earliest, but because the interest of it is 
 rather more remote from the general line of European history 
 during the early years of Charles's misgovernment and Spain's 
 misery, and the long expanse of peace and good, or comparatively 
 good government which followed. Although this is the case, to a 
 marked degree, if we compare this reign with the following one, we 
 must not forget that it was from Spain and the Spanish colonies 
 that Charles was furnished with much of the wealth which enabled 
 him to do what he did in Europe. Not that he was ever rich, but 
 that without Spain not even the liberal support of the Netherlands 
 provinces would have saved him from being very poor : as poor, 
 considering the extent of his territory, as his grandfather Maximilian, 
 who had very little, and his great-grandfather Frederick III., who 
 never had anything at all. But the interest of Spanish history is 
 out of all proportion to the place it occupies in the general history, 
 or that we can afford to give it in this course of lectures. It is full 
 of political interest and of the working of well-traced causes to their 
 effects. In some respects it reads like a leaf taken out of the history 
 of England three centuries earlier, so many of the ingredients are 
 the same. In some respects it reads like the closing scene of some 
 great drama, after which there is a lull, to be broken by quite 
 different sounds. 
 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, like most strong and politic princes, left 
 to their successor an almost immediate harvest of troubles. 
 Ferdinand did indeed live to reap some of his own. These 
 troubles are partly internal and partly external ; within the borders 
 of Spain itself the infringement of the ancient constitutions of the 
 different kingdoms, and on the border the annexation of Navarre. 
 The latter, however, as things went then, between strong kings 
 and weak, is of less importance and may be set aside for the 
 present. But the constitutions of Spain are very interesting and 
 demand strict attention. Nor can it be said that to study them at 
 this time is to study them in their decay : for although they were 
 near their end, there was no lack of vitality in them, nor a lack 
 of appreciation of principles such as educated Englishmen at least 
 regard as sound.
 
 14 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTOllY, lol9-1648 
 
 Each of the kingdoms of Spain had a constitution and a national 
 assembly of its own. In Castile and Leon the states had been long 
 consolidated, and under the same principles, but Castile was con- 
 trasted very much with Aragon, and Aragon with its two sub- 
 kingdoms of Catalonia and Valencia. Each of these states had 
 Cortes and all were jealous of one another. Kobertson, as you may 
 have noticed, describes both constitutions as feiadal, and as derived 
 by direct succession from the Goths, the Suevi, and the Vandals : 
 but this is not the case ; from the Vandals Spain inherits nothing 
 but the derivation of the name Andalusia, for the Vandals were 
 driven out of Spain into Africa as early as the fifth century ; and 
 the Suevi lost their own nationality in the general mass of the 
 Visigothic kingdom, helping perhaps in some small way to deepen 
 the tinge of Tcutonism in the Spanish institutions. For the 
 historic institutions of Spain are fundamentally Teutonic, and that 
 is perhaps all that Kobertson in his use of the word ' feudal ' meant to 
 convey. But it is not correct to call them feudal without drawing a 
 distinction. Castile had institutions which in some parts resembled 
 feudal ones : Aragon had been feudalised under the influence of 
 historical feudalism. But each has a history and a law of develop- 
 ment that distinguishes it from the ordinary feudal constitution. 
 The truth would seem to be this : the Visigothic royal race and 
 common law were Teutonic : they were fast degenerating and sinking 
 into the normal condition of Southern nations, when the invasion of 
 the Moors in the eighth century braced them up to action, and 
 proved a sort of regeneration to them ; it brought out all their noble 
 qualities and threw them back on their ancient original usages. 
 
 The formation of the kingdom of Castile was the result of a 
 series of encroachments on the Moorish kingdoms : the history of 
 Aragon is of the same sort but with other circumstances. Both 
 kingdoms lived for seven hundred years in a chronic crusade. In 
 Castile every new acquisition required consolidation : it was either 
 granted feudally to a nobleman with a castle, or it was colonised by 
 a privileged community, or occupied with a new city. The strength 
 of these advancing outposts was the stay of the kingdom, and the 
 strength had to be sustained by making those who had the work of 
 defence sharers in the work of administration. On Teutonic 
 principles the power of the king was to be limited by a national 
 assembly, and that national assembly consisted of the three estates, 
 the clergy, the nobles, and the commons. These formed the Cortes 
 of Castile, and to these by rights were referred the making of new 
 laws and the imposing of taxes and the working of the politics of 
 the state. But at an early date the clergy had gained for themselves 
 immunity from taxation ; the nobles had received their estates on
 
 SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 15 
 
 the feudal condition of ser\dce ; and consequently the voice on 
 taxation came to belong to the commons only ; and to them very 
 frequently, by their representatives, the name of Cortes belongs. 
 But the commons were not summoned as in England, two knights 
 from every shire, and two burgesses from every town : there was no 
 distinction between the ancient element of landownership in the 
 country and the modern one of privileged franchise in the towns : 
 the communities, whether rural or urban, had their privilege of 
 being represented bestowed on them by royal grant, and it was 
 within the power of the king to call up only the representatives of 
 the communities that he knew to be liberally disposed, and by their 
 voices to exact a supply from his whole people. The communities, 
 ha\dng neither a basis in the common law of the land, nor a support 
 in the sympathy of the lords and clergy (and in England we know 
 they had all three), were, although not wanting in independence, 
 very much at the mercy of their rulers, were apt to be jealous about 
 small things, knowing that they must yield in great ones : but were, 
 as regards their own constitutional privileges and ancient rights, 
 thoroughly conservative in spirit. Ferdinand and Isabella, it seems, 
 had, by a sort of tacit compromise, kept well with them for years : 
 they were not to ask much influence and they would not be troubled 
 with much taxation. 
 
 In Aragon matters were different. There in Aragon proper -'^ «.v *-^ 
 there were four estates, or four ingredients in the Cortes : (1) The 
 prelates ; (2) the ' ricos hombres,' or barons ; (3) the * infanzones,' or 
 lesser tenants in chief ; and (4) the representatives of the royal 
 boroughs. And all three on feudal principles, just as it was in 
 England in the reign of Henry II., with the addition of the represen- 
 tatives of the towns. Here as in Castile there was no representa- 
 tion of the land, or of the country as country. The ' infanzones,' 
 the landowners, who in England were represented by the knights of 
 the shire, in Aragon appear in person ; there are very few of them, 
 so largely is the land in the hands of great feudatories. There is no 
 representation except of the towns in demesne which owe their poli- 
 tical existence to privilege. An almost exact parallel existed in Scot- 
 land before 1428. The system in both Aragon and Castile is without 
 a backbone. The Cortes of Valencia and of Catalonia were more or 
 less feudal and of the same sort, but they were not divided into four 
 estates, simply into three. The three provinces were jealous of one 
 another and of Castile, and required management which should 
 carefully avoid the infraction of their prejudices, even more carefully, 
 perhaps, than their substantial rights. 
 
 On this heterogeneous mass of political jealousies, which the 
 strength and repressive policy of Ferdinand and Isabella had been 
 
 ■♦
 
 IG LECTURES ON EUIIOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 long smothering, the early 'prentice hand of Charles had to be tried : 
 he came to the work fettered with a foreign education and foreign, 
 greedy, and selfish advisers, and the first years of his reign were, as 
 might be expected, both unsuccessful and inglorious. When I speak 
 of the policy of Ferdinand and Isabella as repressive, I do not mean 
 that it was ever unconstitutionally so. But they had found Spain 
 in a state of anarchy, and they reduced it to a state of sound organi- 
 sation, and that by policy as much as by force. Their wealth and 
 economy enabled them to keep the purse strings out of the hand of 
 the Cortes : the Cortes accordingly enjoyed the utmost consideration ; 
 they were regularly summoned, the popular element was not 
 weakened : the laws were accepted and passed by them : but for 
 all that the sovereigns were the strong party : and there was no 
 room for uneasy spirits. 
 
 Charles V. was born in 1500, heir of the houses of Austria, 
 Burgundy, Castile, and Aragon : in 1504 Queen Isabella of Castile 
 died, leaving the regency of Castile to her husband Ferdinand, until 
 her grandson Charles should be twenty ; passing 'over her daughter 
 Johanna, who became queen regnant, as of weak mind, and her son-in- 
 law Philip as a foreigner. The immediate result illustrates what 
 I said as to the sensitive conservatism of the constitutionalists of 
 Spain. The will of Queen Isabella at once sets Aragon against 
 Castile, Philip and Johanna against Ferdinand, and the rights of the 
 Cortes against the will of the prince. In brief, Philip, at the insti- 
 gation of the minority of uneasy nobles, refused to recognise 
 Ferdinand's right to the regency : he ordered the old king to quit 
 Castile and retire into Aragon, and denounced all that had been done 
 by him since the queen's death as unlawful. Ferdinand insisted on 
 his right and refused to treat of resigning it until Philip and Johanna, 
 who were already reigning in the Netherlands, presented themselves 
 in person. The constant underhand politics of Philip, who seems to 
 have had very little merit besides his beauty, provoked Ferdinand to 
 dismember the inheritance : he would marry again and settle Naples 
 on the issue of his new wife. Robertson, you may remark, is wrong 
 in saying that he offered to marry ^Jofenna, the reputed but doubted 
 daughter of Henry IV. and half-sister of his queen. Although there 
 was such a report at the time, it seems to be without foundation, 
 but he did marry Germaine of Foix, and this brought Philip to a 
 dissembled agreement. By the treaty of Salamanca (Nov. 24, 1505), 
 Ferdinand, Johanna, and Philip were to reign jointly in Castile : but 
 on Philip's part this was only a trick ; for, as soon as he was able to 
 make his way to Spain, he annulled the treaty and proceeded to 
 measures against his father-in-law which could only end in war. 
 With this before his eyes Ferdinand consented to resign the regency.
 
 SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 17 
 
 Fortunately for the peace of Spain, and of Europe generally, for 
 both England and France were at this moment on the side of 
 Ferdinand, Philip died about five months (Sept. 25, 1506) after his 
 arrival in Spain ; as soon as he had time to receive the homages of 
 Castile. By his death the kingdom was left without a government, 
 and the nobles accordingly took measures for appointing a regency. 
 After some difficulty, and a good deal of opposition on the part of 
 the minority, Ferdinand was restored to his office in 1507, and 
 continued to govern all Spain with his former sagacity for nine years 
 more. By his second wife he had no children, and, on his death in 
 1516, Charles became entitled to the prospective crowns of Aragon 
 and Naples as well as Castile, subject to the life of his mother, who, 
 continuing unfit to govern, remained a rallying-point for disaffection, 
 and lived nearly to the end of the reign of her son. So firm seems 
 to have been the settlement of the family inheritance on Johanna, 
 that no attempt was made to disturb it, although, on the ordinary 
 rules of feudal heritage, her sisters Catherine of England and Maria 
 of Portugal might have had some claim. Singularly these two 
 princesses had complicated matters, Catherine by marrying her first 
 husband's brother ; and Maria by marrying her deceased sister's 
 husband. But against the succession of Charles not a word was 
 said ; Johanna was the eldest daughter and Charles was her eldest 
 soli* His brother Ferdinand had been brought up in Spain, and a 
 party might easily have been made vip for him ; but, until Charles 
 ofi:ended the Spaniards, no one thought of anything but submission, 
 and happily the time during which Spain had to complain of being 
 misgoverned by him was soon over. 
 
 Charles was now sixteen ; old enough, if he had been ordinarily 
 mature, for kings have a sort of political precociousness, to have 
 reigned, or to have begun at least to reign, wisely. But Charles was 
 far from precocious ; his mind was slow, and its growth steady ; and 
 as we cannot suppose the wisdom whiich he showed a very few years 
 later to have come upon him by accumulation, we are forced to allow 
 that his first series of false steps were owing to false and interested 
 advisers. Anyhow we see how much he needed experience. The 
 court that Philip had left at Brussels was not likely to be a very far- 
 sighted one ; the Flemings had a great eye to their own interests, 
 but had not yet bred a politician whose views were more than 
 patriotic ; and the French were in every respect worse. Yet by 
 selfish, hard-headed, sharp-practising Flemings, or avaricious and 
 unprincipled Frenchmen, Charles was surrounded ; by such he was 
 urged on to snatch at every apparent advantage, and from such only 
 at this time could he choose his ministers. Before his grandfather's 
 death he had sent Adrian, dean of Louvain, a worthy but ignorant 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTOEY, lol9-lG48 
 
 man, to take the regency as soon as the throne should be vacant ; 
 and his assumption of the title of King at once, without regard to 
 his mother's rights as ' reyna propietaria ' was a second false step. 
 Both of these were particularly grievous to the higher-principled 
 Spaniards, who saw the risk to Spain of being governed from a foreign 
 court by foreign ministers, for the use and behoof of foreigners, with 
 foreign purposes in politics and foreign principles. At the highest 
 or lowest estimate we take of Spanish patriotism such expectations 
 were reasonable enough : and these two steps made them seem 
 imminent. Not the English under Stephen or Henry III. hated and 
 dreaded foreigners more than the Spaniards. The French they 
 could not tolerate, the Flemings scarcely. Yet here, as soon as, nay 
 before the throne was vacant, when, moreover, the vacancy was a 
 mere demise from father to daughter, this Flemish boy of sixteen, who 
 has no right to the crown as long as his mother lives, calls himself 
 king ; and, although he has no right to interfere at all until at the 
 age of twenty he may take the regency under the will of his grand- 
 mother, he sends a Flemish clergyman, who does not even know 
 Spanish, only a dean, moreover, ip dignity (that is next to nothing), 
 and expects that he shall be received as the regent, to the exclusion 
 of the great and wealthy, pious and learned Ximenes, Whom Ferdi- 
 nand had appointed to the office. But something might be said on 
 the other side. Ximenes was appointed by Ferdinand, but Ferdinand 
 was, in Castile, only the representative of his daughter Johanna ; 
 how could a regent nominate another regent ? Ximenes, like a 
 patriot and an honest man, made the best of things. He was eighty 
 years old and had no earthly prizes to gain. He determined to do 
 the best he could for Spain, and this could be only by doing all he 
 could for Charles : so he proclaimed him king, and accepted Adrian 
 of Utrecht as his nominee in the regency. Charles thereupon con- 
 firmed him as regent, and for a year and a half he exercised the 
 authority. 
 
 But the elements of disquiet were already loosed. Aragon would 
 
 not acknowledge Charles as king : Castile would 
 
 not recognise 
 
 Ximenes as regent. He had to form and work out his own policy. 
 He began by revoking the lavish grants that had been made by 
 Ferdinand and Isabella in their emergencies out of the royal 
 demesne. These grants were unconstitutional ; they were contrary 
 to the common sense and common law of every nation of Europe : 
 in many the kings were sworn not to diminish the hereditary 
 demesne. In all, the diminution of the demesne meant, unmistak- 
 ably, repeated petitions for feudal aids, or debt, or irresponsible taxa- 
 tion. Again we have a parallel with the earlier history of England : 
 the first measure of Henry II., when he had secured the English
 
 SPAIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTUEY 19 
 
 throne and saw the necessity of beginning a period of retrenchment, 
 as well as reform in all departments of the state, was to recall into 
 the exchequer the endowments by which his mother and king 
 Stephen had provided for the new class of nobility which they had 
 created for a defence for themselves ; so to diminish taxation and 
 get rid of unpopular favouritism. Ximenes alienated the Castilian 
 nobles, but with the savings he created a force which kept them in 
 awe. His management of the wars in Navarre and Africa, which 
 Ferdinand had left on his hands, was not less effective, although the 
 results were dissimilar : his efforts were only partially successful 
 against Horuc Barbarossa, while against Francis I. he not only held 
 Navarre, but, by dismantling the fortresses, made it for ever untenable 
 by "Sh invader. 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 THE CHAEACTEK OF CHABLES V.'s KULE IN SPAIN AND 
 THE NETHEBLANDS 
 
 When, then, in 1517, Charles arrived in Spain (which he did as 
 soon as he could after concluding the war with France by the peace 
 of Noyon, August 1516), he found matters not indeed as favourable 
 as they might have been, but as favourable as could fairly be 
 expected. Ximenes had kept at bay the nobles who were eager for 
 an anarchy, in which their privileges might be increased ; he had 
 kept under the rivalry between the Flemish emissaries of Charles 
 and the native Castilians, and prevented it from breaking into open 
 animosity, and he had done his utmost to defend the borders. He 
 deserved better of Charles than to be treated with neglect and con- 
 tempt : but, although he lived long enough to taste the bitterness of 
 ingratitude, he died before he saw the misery of a civil war. Charles 
 landed at Villa Yiciosa, September 19, 1517 : before he met the 
 Cardinal, he wrote him a letter' of dismissal which may have had 
 some effect on his health : he died on November 8 of the same year, 
 leaving bis country to be a prey to the inexperience of the boy king, 
 the shameless avarice of the Flemings, the selfish and impolitic 
 jealousies of the nobles and commons, and the senseless rivalries 
 of the different provincial governments. 
 
 Spain, it would seem, was quite prepared to salute the rising sun. 
 Ximenes's rule had been too strong to be popular, and the Flemings 
 had not had time to show their true eolotirs. Charles immediately 
 began the business of his inauguration, and, in close connexion with 
 that, the negotiation for supplies. He was crowned at Valladolid on
 
 20 LECTURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTORY, 1619-1648 
 
 February 7, 1518, in the presence of the Cortes, who, before they 
 separated, bestowed on him the unparalleled gift of six hundred 
 thousand ducats. Thence he went to Saragossa to meet the Cortes of 
 Aragon. These were less accommodating : they were not to be 
 bound by the action of Castile, nor would they forsake the cause 
 of Johanna, Charles was not their king : the justiza was the lawful 
 regent, in his name the Cortes should be called or not at all. It 
 was not until a very great deal of patience had been shown by 
 Charles, and much persuasion exercised, that they allowed him to 
 be received as joint sovereign of Aragon with Johanna, and bestowed 
 two hundred thousand ducats, Avhich, however, they strictly appro- 
 priated to the payments of the debts of the crown. From Aragon 
 Charles went to Catalonia, where he had the same difficulties to 
 contend with, and was detained many months at Barcelona before he 
 overcame them. He ought next to have proceeded to Valencia, 
 but, by this time, his patience was exhausted ; he had received the 
 news of his election as Emperor, in succession to his grandfather 
 Maximilian, and was anxious to leave for Germany. He sent there- 
 fore Cardinal Adrian to treat with the Valencians ; he thus offended 
 that nation. A religious tumult and plague complicated matters 
 more : the nobility refused to do homage unless Charles ap- 
 peared in person to receive it, and he foolishly allowed the trades of 
 Valencia to form a hernvandad or league against the nobles. This 
 league broke out into revolution. Charles was compelled to with- 
 draw his sanction, and thus incurred the deadly enmity of every 
 class of society in the jealous little kingdom. So much then for the 
 jealousies between kingdom and kingdom and class and class. 
 
 The Flemings had not waited long before they tried the patience 
 of the Spaniards. They began by getting the money, so liberally 
 voted by Castile, into their own pockets and transmitting it to 
 Flanders. So Charles was soon as poor as ever. They followed 
 up this by engrossing the great offices that Ximenes had vacated. 
 Chievres, a Fleming, was prime minister ; Adrian of Louvain 
 was the Cardinal in the King's confidence : Sauvage, a French- 
 man, became Chancellor ; and William de Croy, nephew of 
 Chievres, Archbishop of Toledo. These measures had so far pro- 
 voked the Castilians that within six months of the coronation they 
 had instructed their deputies to insist that no more foreigners 
 .should be appointed to civil or ecclesiastical dignities in Castile. 
 All this helped to increase Charles's difficulties in the other king- 
 doms also. Each nation wished him to reside among themselves ; 
 all were jealous of strangers and afraid 'of Charles's departure to 
 Germany. Thither, however, he was determined to go ; money he 
 must have before he could go : money he was not likely to obtain
 
 CHARLES V.'S RULE IN SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 21 
 
 withovTt management, and, by a piece of mismanagement, which 
 exhibits the policy of his advisers, as at once insincere and con- 
 temptible, he summoned the Cortes of Castile to meet at Compostella, 
 where he would have them at his mercy, instead of at Valladolid. 
 In spite of all remonstrances, and shutting his ears to all compMnts 
 against the Flemings, he brought the Cortes to Compostella, where 
 the pertinacious opposition of the deputies of Toledo led him to order 
 them to quit the assembly and to return home. This so unconsti- 
 tutional proceeding was followed by the arrest of two of the Toledan 
 magistrates ; and this led the other great cities to refuse any ac- 
 commodation. The Cortes, unmanageable at Compostella, were re- 
 moved to Coruiia, where the few deputies left made Charles a fresh 
 grant, and aTter appointing regents he was able in 1520 (May 22) to 
 sail to England on his way to the Netherlands and Germany. 
 
 Such is the short outline of Charles's first attempt at government 
 in Spain. He left Spain a prey to the calamities that his wretched 
 tactics had brought upon it — a condition in which it continued 
 until his return in July 1522. The events of this year of Charles's 
 absence are detailed by Robertson at a length which is due perhaps 
 as much to their romantic interest as to their real importance, 
 although that importance is great ; for they are worthy of being 
 carefully compared, not so much with the English events of 
 the seventeenth century, as with the earlier struggles of the com- 
 mons and barons in this country in the thirteenth. You get the 
 same demands for economy and that the King shall live within 
 his income ; the same curious expedients to avoid taxation ; 
 the same detestation of foreign favouritism ; the same combina- 
 tions and oppositions. Unfortunately you do not get the same 
 result : in England the event was the limitation of royal action by 
 constitutional restraints ; in Spain it is the gradual extinction, by 
 mutual counteraction, of the elements of constitutional life. No 
 doubt, somewhat of this was owing to statecraft, which Charles 
 soon began to learn, but more of it was due to the irreconcilable 
 differences of the different classes of society, which rendered them 
 available against one another, and to that incurable wrongheaded- 
 ness which was and seems to be still the great characteristic of 
 Spanish politicians. 
 
 The events of 1521-1522 arrange themselves imder the three 
 heads of Castile, where Adrian had been left as regent ; Aragon, 
 which was jTut imder Don John de Lanuza ; and Valencia, which 
 was entrusted to the Conde de Melito. In Castile the string of 
 the story seems to be this : the offence given by Charles — (1) in 
 calling the Castilian Cortes so far from Castile, (2) in overcoming 
 the opposition of the great towns by means scarcely short of violence. 
 
 } 
 
 //
 
 / 
 
 22 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1 -.19-1648 
 
 (8) by coercing the other deputies into a grant, and (4) by leav- 
 ing the country without one grievance remedied and under the sway 
 of the Flemish Cardinal — caused immediately an outbreak. The 
 leader of this outbreak was, at Toledo, Don John de Padilla, and his 
 better half, Dona Maria de Pacheco, both nobles. But it was not con- 
 fined to Toledo : Segovia was the scene of another revolt : the people 
 there rose and murdered their deputy Tordesillas, who had voted 
 for the grant to Charles : and both Toledo and Segovia levied forces 
 to resist the regent. On Adrian's taking measures to repress the 
 revolt, other cities rose in support of these two. Medina del Campo 
 in particular, refusing to give up the magazine of artillery to 
 Antonio de Fonseca, Adrian's general, was burned, partly by 
 accident, during the time of the great fair. The cruelty imputed to 
 Fonseca, and the loss of goods and merchandise, roused the people 
 of Valladolid, where Adrian held his court ; he lost his courage, if 
 ever he had any, and emboldened the revolters by making an apology 
 to them, thus losing all hold on the authority committed to him and 
 opening the way to general anarchy. Don John de Padilla had now 
 assumed the general leadership : he called together, at Avila, a sort of 
 convention of the deputies of the fifteen cities of Castile which — on 
 the pattern of the hermandad or brotherhood which, under the form 
 of a voluntary association, had, during the early years of the reign 
 of Ferdinand and Isabella, superseded the Cortes in the management 
 of the internal affairs of the country — assumed the name of ' Junta,* 
 and drew up a programme of political reform. They declared Adrian, 
 I as a foreigner, deposed from the regency ; they seized poor Queen 
 Johanna, declared that she was competent to govern, and that they 
 should conduct the government in her name : they, by their forces, 
 relieved Segovia from the siege which Adrian's general had en- 
 l gaged in, and arrested the council of government at Valladolid, 
 though sparing the person of the Cardinal. Up to this point their 
 conduct, although revolutionary, had been moderate and, to a certain 
 degree, capable of justification. Henceforth they seem to put 
 themselves more and more in the wrong. 
 
 Charles, on hearing of the revolt, conscious of his own folly, and 
 a little wiser perhaps than he had been, issued letters to the cities 
 of Castile, offering to renounce the subsidy, and promising redress of 
 complaints against foreigners, associating the Admiral and Constable 
 with the Cardinal in the government, and calling on the leaders of the 
 ' Junta ' to restore law and respect to authority. But the letters were 
 scorned by the rebels : they were, according to the usual programme 
 of revolution, persuaded that these promises were intended to gain 
 time, or to entrap the unwary : they were not to be so caught. 
 
 The next thing to do was to prepare for a political reformation,
 
 CHAELES V.'S EULE IN SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 23 
 
 to draw up a series of articles, which if Charles should accept, they 
 would accept him. These articles briefly may be arranged under 
 seven heads :— (1) The King shall live in Spain. (2) All the favours, 
 offices, privileges, and opportunities bestowed on foreigners shall be 
 reversed and abolished for ever. (3) All new taxes shall be abolished, 
 the subsidy renounced, alienated demesnes resumed : the nobles shall 
 be taxed, and a committee appointed to examine the administration 
 of the royal estates. (4) The constitution of the Cortes shall be 
 altered so that every city shall return three members, one for the 
 clergy, one for the lower nobles, and one for the commons : these 
 shall be assembled every three years. (5) The administration is to 
 be improved in several obvious ways. (6) All privileges of the nobles 
 prejudicial to the commons shall be revoked. (7) A general amnesty 
 to the Junta and its servants. With these demands they sent to 
 Charles envoys, who, afraid of the threats which were whispered to 
 them, did not venture to present their credentials. The Junta, 
 hearing this, prepared for war. But they had got to the length of 
 their tether. The nobles, seeing themselves now the object of attack, 
 declared themselves on the King's side, joined the regents and de- 
 feated the Junta, recovered the possession of Queen Johanna, and, 
 after some military operations, took Padilla prisoner at Villalar and 
 put him to death as a traitor. Doila Maria, like a heroine, conducted 
 the defence of Toledo against the regents ; but the clergy, finding that 
 the intrusive archbishop was dead, rose against her ; she fled and the 
 Castilian revolt collapsed. The revolutionists had thrown themselves 
 against the rock of nobility and perished. The revolt in Valencia, 
 the continuation of the one which had begun before Charles's depar- 
 ture, ended in the same way. The trades Junta or Germanada (Her- 
 mandad) compelled the nobles to take arms in self-defence ; the Cas- 
 tilian nobles, after the victory of Villalar, were able to help their 
 brethren, and so the authority of the regent was restored. Aragon 
 did not break into open insurrection, so, before Charles (July 16, 
 1522) landed in Asturias, matters were advanced far enough to make 
 clemency politic. 
 
 Charles had grown much in experience in the years of his absence. 
 He came to live among his people, won all hearts by refusing to shed 
 blood, and in reality secured Spain from anything like a breach of the 
 peace or political tumult during the remainder of his reign. From 
 1522 to 1529, Charles made Spain his headquarters, and during that 
 time Spain by herself has no history. The eyes of all the world 
 were oil France and Italy, and, save that Charles's wars involved the 
 heavy taxation of his Spanish subjects, it would seem from the 
 silence of the historians that there is nothing to record. In 152G 
 he married the daughter of Manuel of Portugal, Isabella, who, on
 
 .1 
 
 24 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 several occasion!?, acted as his representative durins; his absence from 
 Spain. In particular she ruled from 1529 to 1533, and, after the 
 Tunis expedition, 1535 and 1536. She died in 1539. Charles's 
 visits to Spain after the Tunis expeditioBT in -11535, were (1) from 
 October 1536 to June 1538, (2) again after the Algerine expedition 
 in 1541 and 1542. In 1543 he left the country imder Philip, his 
 acknowledged successor, and did not return until after his abdication, 
 in 1556. 
 
 During all these years there are but two interruptions to the 
 monotonous details of peace within the borders of Spain. One is 
 the revolt of the Moriscoes, the children of the Moors, who had been 
 Christianised by force, and were now by the violence of the Inquisi- 
 tion driven to rebellion. Charles would not or dared not allow them 
 to return to their own religion : he tried to compel them to conformity, 
 drove some thousands into Barbary, and by force or persuasion 
 brought the great body of them to submit. But the peace was as 
 hollow as their professions of Christianity ; and the harsh policy laid 
 up great store of troubles for Philip. The other event is in our view 
 more important, for it is the end of the struggle which we have 
 
 * been trying to piece into a connected outline. In 1538 Charles 
 was bitterly in want of supplies from the Castilians, and he 
 assembled the Cortes at Toledo to ask for them. The proposition 
 he made was for a tax on provisions — an excise, as Eobertson calls it. 
 The nobles took umbrage at this attempt to bi-eak down their im- 
 munity from taxation and found occasion to speak their mind to 
 Charles, requesting him to live in Spain like a Spaniard and not 
 
 f involve himself in foreign wars. Charles, ^vhose w'ars were not of 
 his own seeking, and who had just lost, in the Empress Isabella, his 
 wisest counsellor, was both hurt and indignant, he dismissed the 
 Cortes in great confusion, and never again summoned the nobles to 
 take a share in the public business. From this time the Cortes con- 
 sisted of thirty-six members, two deputies from eighteen communities : 
 unaided by the landed interest, they lost all independence and sank 
 
 I into complete insignificance for several centuries. 
 
 With this event the political life of Spain ends, until the days 
 of revolution, and it seems to have ended likewise Charles's earlier 
 devotion to his Spanish kingdom. The few other incidents which 
 afifect Spain during the period must be considered in their connexion 
 with the general current of European affairs : and the result of 
 Charles's administration I shall attempt to estimate broadly in the 
 final lectures. 
 
 Although Spain claims the earliest place in a review of the 
 dominions as well as of the reign of Charles V., the Netherlands 
 come hardly second to Spain in any respect, and in ^?Tme they
 
 S V 
 
 CHARLES V.'S RULE IN SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 25 > 
 
 come decidedly before it. Charles was their ruler before he ruled 
 Spain, he was born in the Netherlands, and doubtless was happier 
 and more at home there than anywhere else : from the Netherlands 
 also he drew largely the sinews of war. But further it was in the 
 Netherlands that his great ability for government was chiefly 
 shown, and, unhappily we must add, the great fault of his character 
 had its freest working and produced its speediest consequences. 
 Yet the history of the Netherlands occupies but a small part in 
 the ordinary histories of the reign. It is, however, most important 
 to obtain a clear notion of the relations of Charles to his territory, 
 how he got it, what were its divisions and political affinities, and 
 what were its constitutional rights and machinery. 
 
 Under the title of the Netherlands we will comprise the whole of 
 the modern kingdoms of Holland and Belgium with a rectified frontier 
 towards France ; the province of Artois, the southernmost proNdnee 
 of Charles's dominions, having been at the treaty of the Pyrenees 
 in 1659 surrendered to Lewis XIV. ; and the province of Liege, 
 which is now part of Belgium, being a semi-independent state 
 immediately subject to the empire. The names of the states 
 comprised in this geographical extent are Flanders and Artois, 
 which belonged to the kingdom of France, and for which their 
 rulers were feudally vassals except for a small portion of Flanders 
 which was imperial ; the duchy of Brabant, the county of Hai- 
 nault, the county of Namur, all imperial : these form the modern 
 kingdom of Belgium with the addition of Liege : what is now 
 Holland consisted of the county of Holland ; the duchy of Guel- 
 ders, which was in dispute with Cleves until 1543 ; the bishopric 
 of Utrecht, acquired by Charles in 1527 ; and the provinces of West 
 Friesland, Groningen, and other smaller territories dependent on the 
 county of Holland or on the duchy of Guelders. In these lands four 
 languages are spoken — French, Dutch, or Low German, Walloon, 
 and ordinary High German. The whole of them except Flanders 
 and Artois were part cf the ancient Lotharingian kingdom, and 
 afterwards of the imperial duchy of Lower Lorraine which finally 
 settled down into the duchy of Brabant, the other provinces being 
 separated from it, either by the institution of new marches for the 
 defence of the frontier, or by division among different branches of 
 the same house, or by the many other causes which affect for 
 disruption a population of different languages and in debatable 
 situation. The Low Countries, Lower Lorraine, i.e. what is now 
 modern Holland and Belgium, come but little into the history of 
 the body of the Empire from the eleventh century downwards : the 
 interests of Flanders and Hainault are early bound up with France ; 
 and those of Holland are remote from that of Germany. The whole
 
 7' 
 ) 
 
 26 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 of Lotharingia was, always has been, a land debated if not properly 
 debatable ; the cause of countless quarrels and the field of thousands 
 of battles. Each of these little territories has through the Middle 
 Ages a government and a dynasty of its own ; a reigning house 
 alternately gathering and dividing territory in different combinations, 
 and when it becomes extinct supplied, like the rest of the empire, by 
 a new nomination from the Emperor. 
 
 Little attached to the Empire or to France and of comparatively 
 little influence in Europe, these provinces contained an industrious 
 and thriving population who were perhaps much more at one than 
 their rulers. Little basis of union as there was amongst them, there 
 was no very strong attraction towards any neighbouring centres. 
 Hence when in the fifteenth century, in one way or another, by 
 different titles, deaths, marriages, and usurpations, the larger portion 
 had fallen to the house of Burgundy, which was itself a junior branch 
 of the royal house of France, the people seem to have combined well 
 enough under the Burgundian dominion : I do not mean that they 
 became peaceful subjects, for they were quite the reverse, but quite 
 able and ready to act as a nation. And the result of the sway of 
 Burgundy which was inherited by Philip the Handsome, father of 
 Charles V., was up to a certain point to increase that sense of unity 
 and nationality ; until the religious questions and the struggles 
 supervening on them broke up the territory into two parts, which 
 have only been united once for fifteen uneasy years since, to sepa- 
 rate more definitely than ever. The secret of this combining was 
 partly in the policy of the Burgundian rulers, partly in the cir- 
 cumstances of the ruled. Charles the Bold instituted a supreme 
 tribunal of judicature for the whole of his Netherlands provinces 
 in the great council of ]\Iechlin : Maximilian associated them 
 again for imperial purposes in the circle of Burgundy ; and in the 
 assembly of the States General they had an organisation which, 
 although not much in itself, was a symbol and practicable basis for 
 common action. But the influence of the cities of the Netherlands 
 was a more powerful one towards cohesion : so entirely was political 
 influence coming to be engrossed by the cities, and so warily were the 
 politics of the shrewd and money-making burghers administered. 
 
 The growth of the Netherlands towns is not characterised by any 
 features peculiar to them : they were centres of population gathered 
 as in England round some castle callable of defending them, or some 
 /' shrine of special sanctity, or some natural situation affording oppor- 
 
 / tunities for trade. They grew in population and independence under 
 
 the patronage of their feudal lords and bought new privileges from 
 their necessities. The lords were more than ordinarily necessitous, 
 and the privileges they parted with were more than commonly great.
 
 CHARLES V.'S RULE IN SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 27 
 
 So the cities of Flanders especially grew to a condition of wealth 
 and "hidependencG little inferior to the Italian cities whose govern- 
 ment was more ostentatiously republican. Into any analysis of 
 these privileges we cannot go : as in Spain, they varied in every case, 
 being the result of distinct grants of privileges, not of any national 
 act or compact between the king and his people. The period of 
 growth was, moreover, far from peaceful ; the privileges of the 
 citizens were incompatible with the views of the counts and dukes ; 
 and the claims of the latter, although they might in form be legal, 
 were irksome to the spirit of independence among the burghers. 
 Hence there was a fellow feeling between the cities which, with all * 
 their jealousies, prevented them from imitating the fatal feuds of 
 North Italy. Neither was the Pope near at hand to create a chronic 
 division of Guelf and Ghibelline. ^ .,^-...^.«»— ---^ 
 
 Each of the pro\-inces had its own provincial assembly, its 
 estates, of clergy, nobility, and commons, but the power of the clergy 
 was weakened by the smallness of the number of the bishops ; and 
 the nobility was also a small and decreasing body exposed for cen- 
 turies to the aggression of the commons, by whom they were expelled 
 from all real shara in the government of the towns and even from the 
 right of citizenship. In the estates, the cities which appeared there 
 by their representatives were all-powerful, and they were for the 
 most part liberal towards their ruler. As the extent of his territory 
 increased, their liability to heavy demands decreased without any 
 decrease in their power of money-making. It was in their provincial 
 assemblies, the estates of Flanders, of Holland, and of Brabant, that 
 the chief political power besides that of the prince resided, not in the 
 States General, which were only a small council of ambassadors 
 rather than representatives from the several provincial estates. It 
 will be seen thus that the bond of unity in the territory, slight as it 
 really was, was threefold : dynastic union, organisation under the 
 council of Mechlin and in the States General, but chiefly in the pre- 
 ponderant influence of one element in the national life diftused pretty 
 equally through the whole and as yet not broken up by jealousy or 
 religious antagonism. 
 
 The influence of the cities and the tendency of the territory to 
 consolidate had been going on in an increasing ratio since the death 
 of Charles jthe Bold in 1477. That great prince, whatever werelis 
 real views and purposes,' "was not of a nature likely to allow any 
 development of liberty : his policy was repressive, and his death 
 caused a reaction such as might be expected : for his successors were 
 first a weak girl, then a poor king with only half a title and no 
 principle, then a vain fool, then a regency. From Mary of Burgundy 
 the provinces, in their assembly at Ghent, extorted a Great Privilege 
 
 I
 
 1 
 
 23 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 or Magna Carta for each of her states : in this she allows that 
 the provincial estates alone have the right of taxation and that 
 war shall not be underttiken without their consent. With these ad- 
 ditions to their own peculiav privileges the cities enjoyed an amount 
 of freedom unsurpassed by any state except England, and perhaps 
 with more means of realising and vindicating it than even England 
 herself at the time can be said to have possessed. 
 
 Under Maximilian, who married Mary, the history of the country 
 is a series of squabbles out of which that erratic hero comes with 
 very little credit ; and we have no occasion to go into them. They 
 end with the recognition of his son Phihp in 1494, who, as his 
 father had done, repudiated the great privileges and other charters 
 extorted from Mary. The policy of Maximilian, using the burghers 
 against the nobles and then addressing himself to the elimination 
 oi an independent spirit by a ruthless exercise of power, had reduced 
 for the time the people to servility. But with the accession of 
 Charles in 1506 a better feeling sprang up.""" He was born and 
 brought up a Fleming, and the cities were personally attached to 
 him. The extent of his present and possible influence was to them 
 the* extension of their own commerce and political power; his 
 Spanish and American possessions were an inviting field for their 
 personal selfish purposes ; and Charles, particularly in his early days, 
 and generally throughout his life, played in this respect into their 
 hands. His favourite friends and ministers were Flemings or 
 Netherlanders, and his sagacity saw many ends served in promoting 
 the commercial views of the most industrious and attached of his 
 subjects. That these were not always wisely promoted, considering 
 the extent and various constitutions of his other states, we cannot 
 much wonder at. Charles was naturally inclined to support his 
 early friends : as I have remarked already, his capacity was by no 
 means precocious, and his early acts must be charged on his 
 advisers rather than himself. From his sixth year to his sixteenth 
 he was brought up in Flanders as the nominal ruler, his grand- 
 father Maximilian being the nominal regent. William of Chifevres, 
 Lord of Croy, was his governor, and Adrian Florenz, Canon of 
 Louvain, his tutor. 
 
 The government of the country was committed by Maximilian 
 to his daughter Margaret, duchess of Savoy, who held it from the 
 year 1507 to the year 1630. It was by her that the interests of the 
 ■ Empire and the Netherlands were represented at the Congress which 
 ended in the league of Cambrai in 1508; she continued, after 
 Charles had left Flanders for Spain, to exercise authority in his 
 name, and in all the political transactions of the remaining years of 
 her life her name is constantly appearing. It is she who negotiates
 
 CHAKLES V.'S RULE IN SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 29 
 
 for the release of Francis I. after the battle of Pavia : and it is she 
 who breaks the alliance between England and France in 1528 and 
 the next year settles the peace of Cambrai by which the feudal rights 
 of France over Flanders are extinguished. Her politic manage- 
 ment of the states, the way in which she moved them to grants of 
 money and rewarded them by encouragement of trade, is the theme 
 of great praises among the historians, yet she was unable to defend 
 the coast against the French cruisers or to remedy the evils 
 produced by the famine and destruction of the fisheries in 1524. It 
 was under her government, moreover, that Charles was enabled to 
 round oft" his dominions in the north by the acquisition of the 
 territory which had been for many centuries ruled by the bishops of 
 Utrecht as the temporal prince. 
 
 Philip of Burgundy, a bastard brother of Charles the Bold, was 
 appointed Bishop of Utrecht inlolG : he showed himself more 
 desirous of assisting the aggrandisement of the family heritage than 
 of maintaining his own ofiticial position. He let his people become 
 Protestant, and his temporal authority be made subservient to the ? 
 family schemes. On his death in 1524 his successor found the 
 people half Protestant, and himself politically powerless against the 
 attacks of Charles of Egmont, the claimant of the duchy of Guelders. 
 In fact, the proTihce ' was split into two parties, the Protestants 
 supporting the duke, and the Catholics with their bishop appealing 
 for help to the Empire. The price of this help was the surrender 
 of the temporal sovereignty. The old bishopric is thrown into the 
 county of Holland, and henceforth the prelate is a spiritual lord 
 only. 
 
 This must have been almost the last negotiation in which 
 Margaret was employed. Her successor in the government was 
 Mary of Austria, sister of Charles and widow of King Lewis of 
 Hungary. She reigned from 1531 to 1555, when, on the resignation f| 
 of the Netherlands by Charles to Philip, she vacated her office and 
 retired to Spain. The two great events of her government are the 
 quarrel of Charles V. with his native city, Ghent, and the termina- 
 tion of the struggle with the Duke of Guelders for supremacy in 
 North Holland and Friesland. And these events, with the religious 
 phenomena which manifested themselves throughout the territory, 
 and the repression which met every attempt at reform or change, 
 comprise nearly all that will call for remark now, as touching the 
 Netherlands especially, without falling into the general stream of 
 European history. 
 
 The ten years that preceded the death of Margaret had been 
 years of war ; admirably as she held the reins of government, she 
 had not been able to avert the usual evils. The Netherlands them-
 
 30 LECTURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1G48 
 
 selves had not been the battlefield of the principal campaigns 
 between Charles and Francis ; but the coasts were exposed to 
 depredation ; the states had to be asked continually for supplies, and, 
 in the chronic war with Guelders, the provinces had an open and 
 festering wound. The origin of this war reaches some way back 
 into the preceding century. Duke Arnold of Guelders, in 1472, had 
 surrendered all his rights to Charles the Bold, to the disinheritance 
 of his undutiful son Adolf. Adolf, on the death of Charles, had 
 taken advantage of the weakness of Mary to reclaim his rights 
 and attempted also to force himself on the infant heiress as her 
 husband. Happily lor her, for he was a monster of wickedness, he 
 i got himself killed in 1477 ; but he left a son, Charles of^ Egmont, 
 who, a child at the time, was destined to be a terrible thorn in the 
 side of the house of Burgundy. During his minority Maximilian, 
 by the help of family jealousies, got Guelders into his own hands 
 and was recognised by the people as their duke. At his court the 
 young Charles was educated, and in several of Maximilian's campaigns 
 he fought by his side. But, partly by a desire of recovering his 
 inheritance and partly by the persuasions of France, he was induced 
 in 1492 to throw himself into the arms of the discontented states of 
 Guelders. He received oaths of allegiance from them, and Maximilian 
 was too busy to interfere. The Emperor Frederick claimed Guelders 
 as a lapsed fief; Maximilian claimed it as the representative of 
 Charles the Bold : still Charles of Egmont held it and fought for 
 it until his death. In 1523 he lost his hold on Friesland : in 1528, 
 after a brave struggle, he had to yield the ground he had won in the 
 bishopric of Utrecht. For ten years longer he struggled by intrigue 
 against the rising fortunes of Austria ; but his intrigues disgusted 
 his people. An attempt to induce the states to throw themselves 
 into the arms of France brought on his ruin. They compelled him 
 to resign his duchy to the son of the Duke of Cleves and retire on a 
 pension. William of Cleves, who succeeded his father in that 
 duchy the following year, endeavoured in vain to prevail on the 
 Emperor to recognise him as Duke of Guelders and sought a French 
 alliance ; but the result was unfortunate for him ; after four years 
 of war, the details of which will come into our general survey, he 
 was obliged to throw himself on the mercy of Charles. The 
 Emperor contented himself with exacting the surrender of Guelders 
 and Zutphen, and soon after, thinking it politic to separate William 
 permanently from the French alliance, gave him, as wife, his niece, 
 the daughter of Ferdinand of Austria. From 1543 Guelders was 
 united with the dominions of Charles. 
 
 It was in the war in which Charles of Egmont ruined himself 
 that the other great event of the reign had its origin. In 1535 on
 
 CHARLE8 V.'S RULE IN SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 31 
 
 the outbreak of war between Charles and Francis after the break-up 
 of the peace of Cambrai, great sums of money had been asked of the 
 states by Mary, in her brother's name, towards an invasion of France. 
 Twelve hundred thousand florins was the amount required ; and a 
 third part of this was to be procured from the county of Flanders. 
 The States General agreed to the grant, the representatives of 
 Flanders amongst them ; but the war itself, and still more the cost 
 of it, was very unpopular ; nowhere more so than in Ghent, both 
 from old traditionary causes and because of the injury wiiich war 
 was likely to inflict on the commerce of the city. And the power 
 and privileges of Ghent were very great. One of the claims put 
 forward on her behaTf was that she should be liable to no taxation 
 which had not received her special assent through her own deputies. 
 When the proposal had come before the states of Flanders, Ghent 
 refused to accede, but was outvoted, and called on, of course, 
 to pay her share. The burghers protested against this. Their 
 privilege should not be infringed ; if the Emperor demanded their 
 services they would march against the French in person, but the 
 money was unfairly levied and should not be paid. If the 
 character of Ghent stood higher in point of honesty and loyalty, we 
 might be tempted to admire the spirit of the burghers ; but, remem- 
 bering how extraordinary was the privilege that was claimed and 
 how frequent had been the struggles between the city and its 
 sovereign, we are obliged to withhold any fervent admiration. The 
 maintenance of such a privilege, were it authentic, could mean no- 
 thing more or less than that the policy of Charles must be directed 
 by the men of Ghent or the supplies stopped. 
 
 The Queen tried in vain the usual means of persuasion, and at 
 last, provoked beyond endurance, ordered the arrest of all the citizens 
 of Ghent who could be found within the limits of the jurisdiction 
 she was able to exercise. This only made the grievance more 
 intolerable. The burghers of Ghent did not throw oft' their allegiance 
 openly, but began to intrigue on all sides with the enemies of the 
 Emperor. They tried to get up a league of the Netherland cities, to 
 join first of all in a remonstrance to Charles, and obtained from 
 Queen Mary a respite from the payment until they were able to lay 
 the circumstances before him. He was in Spain, and with some 
 reluctance granted the envoys an interview ; but their remonstrance 
 he declined to listen to, and sent them back to the court of Mechlin, 
 the supreme judicial council of his Netherland estates. There, their 
 cause was heard, and, as was to be expected, they were condemned to 
 pay. All scruple about obedience ended here ; the men of Ghent 
 openly rebelled, arrested the imperial officers, and placed their city in 
 a condition of defence. 
 
 I I 

 
 32 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, lol9-1648 
 
 And they now looked for some fruit of their intrigues. They 
 felt that they could look for help to no more likely quarter than 
 France, and although the truce of Nice had been made but a year 
 before (for the legal proceedings had now occupied two years and 
 drifted on to the summer of 1539), although the truce of Nice had 
 so recently put a stop to a war in which both parties were exhausted, 
 they did not scruple to invite Francis I. to attempt the annexation 
 of Picardy, Flanders, and Artois to France. They offered him their 
 services to secure the conquest and form it into a provision for the 
 Duke of Orleans, whom, as well as his father, Charles had long 
 tantalised, by neither bestowing nor refusing the coveted duchy of 
 Milan. But Francis either saw through the blind selfishness of the 
 Ghenters and realised that their design was simply a mad attempt at 
 revenge ; or had hopes of a more sanguine character from the friend- 
 ship of Charles. He not only refused the treasonable proposal, but 
 informed Charles of it. His principal adviser in this policy was the 
 Constable, Duke of Montmorency. Charles snatched at the oppor- 
 tunity which Francis's good offices opened. He asked for a passage 
 across France, and received permission to take that short cut from 
 Spain to the Netherlands. Received with great honour by the young 
 princes, on his crossing the frontier, and by Francis himself at 
 Bourges, he advanced to Paris, where he spent New Year's day 1540, 
 and thence to the Netherlands. 
 
 Once arrived there he took speedy measures for punishing the 
 rebels and asserting his authority. He brought up from three 
 different quarters all the force he could collect, in Spain, Germany, 
 and the Netherlands. The burghers saw that they had no chance. 
 On February 24 his birthday, coronation day, and anniversary of 
 Pavia, as he approached the city they opened the gates to him and 
 entreated forgiveness. He entered as if in triumph ; declared that 
 the city of Ghent had forfeited for ever all privileges and possessions 
 and every sign of independent administration. Twenty-six of the 
 chief citizens were put to death, others banished ; and, by abolishing 
 the ancient constitution, he reduced the place to the condition of a 
 town in demesne of which he appointed the magistrates, for which 
 he made laws, and which he could tax and talliage at his pleasure. He 
 began, moreover, the building of a citadel which would prevent future 
 outbreaks ; imposed a fine of 150,000 florins to pay for it, and an 
 annual tax of 6,000 to pay the garrison. He continued in the 
 Netherlands until the autumn ; now settling the affairs of govern- 
 ment ; now conducting the delusive negotiations with Francis I. ; 
 and now looking towards Germany to watch for an opportunity of 
 putting a stop to the religious movement that threatened the unity 
 of the Empire.
 
 CHAELES V.'S RULE IN SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 33 
 
 He left in October for Germany. In 1543 the war with France 
 brought him again into the Netherlands, but his proceedings then 
 were merely a part of the general war which I shall sketch in a 
 further lecture. Nor need I attempt now to fix the dates of the ten 
 visits which he mentions as paid by him to this part of his posses- 
 sions, in the speech which he made at his abdication. Most of these 
 were in the latter years of his reign, when the pressure of business 
 kept him rushing about Germany, and not unfrequently crossing 
 the border. 
 
 The next point of interest is the ecclesiastical condition of the 
 Netherlands under Charles VI. You are probably aware of the great 
 importance of this question in its bearing on the revolt of Holland 
 and the subsequent establishment of the repubHc of the Seven United 
 Provinces. Of course the causes which led to open war under Philip II. 
 in his earliest years must have been working during the reign of his 
 father ; and the knowledge of their working, slight as it may be 
 (for the working was a good deal below the surface, and violently 
 repressed as soon as it rose above it), is a necessary part of the 
 knowledge requisite for the understanding of the reign of Charles. I 
 hope you will not ascribe it to mere professional zeal, if I say that one 
 of the great openings for the Reformation was made by the absence 
 in some countries of Europe of adequate episcopal superintendence. 
 It may have been quite one of the subordinate causes, but you will 
 find it the rule : where the dioceses are large and the bishops few 
 and powerful, there their temptation to secular business is the greater, 
 the machinery of the Church is found to be loose and ill-adjusted, 
 religion lifeless ; and consequently, whether you regard the Reforma- 
 tion as a good or as an evil, the way for renunciation of the dominant 
 religion is opened. 
 
 In Ireland, in Italy, in Spain, and in France, where the dioceses 
 were small and well organised, the Reformation made comparatively 
 small way. In Germany, Switzerland, Scotland, England, and 
 Scandinavia, where the bishops were few and secular in their ideas 
 or comparatively so, the Reformation made great way. But in no 
 case was the inadequacy of episcopal superintendence more con- 
 spicuous than in the Netherlands ; nowhere was there so strong 
 political dislike to the influence of the clergy : and the result appears 
 in the spread of Protestantism on the one hand, and in the united 
 resistance to the new organisation which PhiUp II. thrust on the 
 Church, against the will of both clergy and laity, on the other. In 
 the Netherlands, take them altogether, four bishops had spiritual 
 jurisdiction : the Bishop of Utrecht in the north in what is now 
 Holland ; and in what is now Belgium and French Flanders, the 
 Bishops of Cambrai, Tournay, and Arras. The Bishop of Utrecht was
 
 34 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 canonically subject to the Archbishop of Cologne ; the other three to 
 the Archbishop of Rheims. That is, the fountain-heads of the two 
 jurisdictions were external to the states, were subjects of another power, 
 and every derivation from a power external to the states had to be 
 guarded against, and was guarded against jealously. It was one of 
 the privileges of the province of Brabant, that the sovereign should 
 swear to take no measures for the exaltation of the clerical estate. 
 The management of Church interests lay in the hands of the chapters 
 of the collegiate churches, which abounded in the provinces ; an insti- 
 tution which had originated in ancient Lorraine and had its largest 
 development in these lands. Further, the Bishop of Utrecht, under 
 whom the northern Netherlands were, was, like his superior at Cologne, 
 a prince of the Empire, and added in that double character, the 
 working of which in this direction I have often had occasion to remark, 
 the other inducements to religious insubordination and reaction 
 which are peculiar to that arrangement of Church and State. 
 ^ Under such circumstances we are not surprised to find first an 
 
 early influx of Protestantism or heresy, arising doubtless from 
 inadequate ecclesiastical superintendence ; and secondly, a failure of 
 the ordinary methods of repression by the Church courts and by 
 increased religious action on the part of the Catholic clergy ; nor is 
 it to be regarded as monstrous that, for the supply of the latter, 
 the organisation which in Spain had been found so efficacious for 
 X ^' repression of concealed Mahometanism and Judaism should be 
 
 introduced to put down Protestantism. Charles V., I grieve to say, 
 as early as the year 1522 introduced the Inquisition into the 
 Netherlands ; and notwithstanding the mildness of his own character 
 '' and the popularity of the ' governantes ' who ruled under him, an 
 
 enormous number of persons were put to death during the forty 
 years that followed. Charles was only twenty-two when the deed 
 ■i was done, of which we cannot in the least degree suppose that he 
 
 could anticipate the consequences : this measure must therefore to 
 some degree be laid to the account of his ecclesiastical advisers : 
 but the subsequent acts of the institution, introduced by him half 
 unconsciously, were well known to him in the years of his maturest 
 judgment, and he must be regarded as responsible for all the perse- 
 cutions that took place during his reign. Even these, cruel as they 
 were, did not satisfy Philip II., his successor. He determined to 
 strengthen the Inquisition by founding a strong and new church 
 machinery, of three new archbishoprics with a proper number of 
 suffragans to each, and by uniting, in a way in which they were 
 nowhere else united, the ordinary machinery of the dioceses with 
 the extraordinary machinery of the Inquisition. That measure 
 lost him half the Netherlands ; the Catholic population objected to
 
 CHAKLES V.'S RULE IN SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 35 
 
 the innovation, and to the strengthening of the clerical element ; the 
 Protestant or struggling heretical population, against the additional | 
 weight and authority given to then* persecutors. Phihp, then, brought ' 
 about a result which Charles's personal popularity would perhaps have 
 been insufficient much longer to avert, if he had lived. | i 
 
 It is not an uncommon statement that the Eeformation in the 
 Netherlands was more akin to the corresponding movement in 
 France than in Germany. If this merely means that the Dutch * 
 republics, which successfully vindicated their freedom, both religious I 
 and political, against Philip II., adopted Calvinism and not Luther- '^ 
 anism as their established religion, it' is true : no doubt the great 
 leaders in the revolt were Calvinist ; the movement itself was in 
 hearty sympathy with that in France against the Roman policy of 
 the kings sprung from Francis I. ; and it may be maintained perhaps 
 with as much show of reason that Calvinism, which generally is 
 found in union with republicanism, except in Scotland, where 
 during the religious struggle the government was in a very abnormal 
 state, led to republicanism, as that republicanism led to Cal- 
 vinism. But if it be meant that the Beformation in Holland and the 
 Netherlands was owing to Calvinistic propagandism, I think it is a 
 mistake ; for it ignores the earlier condition of the religion of the 
 country and the persecutions of the early years of Charles V., 
 persecutions in full force when Calvin was scarcely more than a 
 child. 
 
 A reading of the Church history of Flanders and Hainault, from 
 the thirteenth century downwards, would show that in these 
 countries there had been, for the three centuries before the 
 Reformation, a great deal of religious energy or fanatical energy 
 existing, either opposed to the teaching of the Church, or in some 
 cases supplementing it, originating in other causes, but finding 
 room to work in the absence or laxity of episcopal jurisdiction, and 
 in the jealousy between the Church and State, in the several 
 provinces to which I have just referred. Nowhere do we read more 
 of the Beghards and Beguins than in the Netherlands ; and 
 whether we regard the Beghards and Beguins as being, as they 
 often were, dangerous fanatical associations, or as being, what they 
 are still where they exist, pious fraternities voluntarily originated and 
 maintained without vows, we see in them the result of the laxity I 
 refer to. Nowhere were the Flagellants guilty of greater excesses ; 
 or the Dancing Heretics, or the Brethren of the Free Spirit ; all 
 societies of a partly mystic, partly political, partly fanatic character, 
 such as in the age of the Reformation was chiefly manifested by the 
 Anabaptists. Of the good side of this sort of phenomenon, I may 
 say that it was in Holland that the Brethren of the Common Life 
 
 d2
 
 36 
 
 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 originated, founded by Gerhard Groote at Deventer in the fourteenth 
 century ; amongst -u-hom were Thomas a Kempis %nd a whole 
 school of pious mystics of the most Catholic tenets ; 'and in which 
 society there was a great zeal not merely for spiritual religion but 
 for learniiig and for popular education, in which phase their 
 representative man is the great Erasmus. All these, bad or good, 
 show that long before the sixteenth century religious matters were 
 being stirred pretty deeply, and that in Holland and Flanders, as in 
 every other country in Europe, there must have been peculiar and 
 local causes of revolt against Eome, which combined with and flowed 
 on in augmentation of the great general causes of Reformation. 
 
 It is probable that the sort of tenets secretly held from Lollard 
 times among the neglected people were akin to the Huguenot 
 opinions of France, and that this led later to the adoption of 
 Calvinism. But it must have been the movements of the German 
 reformers that led Charles V. to introduce the Inquisition. Once 
 introduced it did not rest. The first inquisitor was Francis 
 Van der Hulst, to whom in 1523 Pope Adrian gave the commission 
 of Inquisitor- General of the Netherlands ; a long string of names of 
 men known only as persecutors follows down to the end of the 
 reign. Unhappily the stringency of the instructions given them by 
 the Emperor shows that he had too much sympathy with their work : 
 heretics and protectors of heresy are to be inquired for, proceeded 
 against, and chastised ; everybody infected or vehemently suspected 
 was liable to have secret information collected to overwhelm him. 
 The inquisitors could compel evidence, even punishing the contuma- 
 cious with death. They could direct the local civil officers to 
 arrest and detain their victims ; and in 1550 their authority was 
 extended so far that it was to have its full powers notwithstanding 
 all privileges or charters to the contrary. This is what I called the 
 fatal stain on the reputation of Charles : not that he was a perse- 
 cutor, for the age was a persecuting age and each side persecuted as 
 it got the chance ; not that he introduced the Spanish Inquisition 
 into the Netherlands : he was accustomed to its working in Spain, 
 he was not the inventor or first promoter of it, and he might fairly 
 think that what was justifiable there was justifiable here ; but the 
 energy which he threw into the work, that led him not merely to 
 tolerate, but to sympathise with, to encourage and urge the 
 monstrous exertion of power in its most inquisitorial, its most 
 secret, its most indefensible form, and in the destruction of 
 thousands and tens of thousands of people, against the due operation 
 of the laws ; people and laws which alike he was sworn to defend.
 
 LECTUEE III 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE IN THE SIXTEENTH 
 
 CENTUEY 
 
 In order to understand the circumstances which led to the elec- 
 tion by the Germans of Charles, Duke of Burgundy and King of 
 Spain, as Emperor of the Eomans, it is necessary to give a glance 
 at least at the constitution and political character of the Empire at 
 this time. The imperial dignity was now a very different thing 
 from what it had been in the hands of Frederick Barbarossa, much 
 more from what it was under Charles the Great. The Karling 
 Empire had comprised the entire Frank heritage, to which the title 
 of Empire was an honourable but little more than honorary appurte- 
 nance : it included then, France, Germany, the intervening territory 
 afterwards Lorraine, Burgundy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and 
 much besides, with Italy down as far as Campania, and Spain as 
 far as the Ebro. That Empire came utterly to an end at the peace 
 of Verdun, a.d. 843 : thenceforward France was emancipated : and 
 the imperial title carried with it only certain power in Italy, with 
 such rights in Germany and Lotharingia as its holder by right or 
 by conquest was able to make for himself and enforce. From the 
 decay of the Lotharingian kingdom and its gradual absorption in the 
 German one, the German king began to claim a right to the title 
 of Emperor, which, however, it required the journey to Rome and the 
 acquiescence of the Pope and people to realise. From the reign of 
 Otto I. (crowned 962) to that of Frederick II. every German king had 
 been either crowned emperor, or had only been prevented by un- 
 toward circumstances from claiming to be so. And after the inter- 
 regnum the same rule may be laid down ; every king of the 
 Germans was prospective emperor, though only a minority of the 
 number actually wore the imperial crown. Every reign from 
 Frederick II. to Maximilian's saw some material diminution in the 
 powers and prerogatives of the emperor : Frederick III. retained 
 very little indeed besides the insignia of the rank, the power of 
 accepting or rejecting the elections of the spiritual prelates, the right 
 of escheat and forfeiture where it could be vindicated, and a few 
 others of legal rather than constitutional importance. 
 
 During the early period the crown had fallen to the head of one 
 of the great nations, the Saxons, Bavarians, Swabians, Frauconians, 
 or Lotharingians, who made up the German people : and whilst 
 this was the rule, the succession was as a matter of fact hereditary,
 
 38 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 although the ceremony of election was always gone through ; generally 
 the father obtained the election of his son in his own lifetime. The 
 rival houses showed a constant jealousy of this hereditary succession 
 and once or twice interrupted it ; the Saxons in particular, after the 
 extinction of their own line, made constant attempts to interrupt 
 the Franconian and Swabian succession, but until the extinction of 
 the Hohenstaufen this was the practice : the great prince who was 
 also emperor was generally strong enough to settle who should 
 succeed him. Thus gradually, instead of the full Diet of the five 
 nations, the elective ceremony was brought into the hands of seven 
 electors, the Archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Treves, the Duke of 
 Saxony, the only representative of the national systems ; the Count 
 Palatine, representing the imperial household or feudal system : the 
 Margrave of Brandenburg, and the King of Bohemia, the former of 
 whom ruled a mixed, and the latter a non-German population. 
 This, with some disj)uted votes and two additions, was the body which 
 from the thirteenth century to the end of the imperial system in 
 the present elected the Emperor. 
 
 With the extinction of the house of Hohenstaufen coincides 
 in point of time the entire break-up of the great feudal dukedoms 
 of the early Empire. Saxony had been broken in pieces under 
 Frederick Barbarossa, Swabia was under Frederick II. : Austria 
 had been cut out of the body of Bavaria : there were no longer any 
 great princes who could afford to accept and maintain the dignity so 
 impoverished as it had become : and there were a vast number that 
 were jealous of the election of a member of any other house than 
 their own. There was a difficulty in getting an emperor ; but there 
 was a greater difificulty in doing without one; so utterly paralysed 
 was German influence in Europe without a recognised head, and 
 so many titles depended upon the recognition which by law could be 
 bestowed only by the emperor. It was under the pressure of all 
 sorts of evils of anarchy, and after a succession of phantom emperors, 
 that Rudolf of Hapsburg, the founder of the Austrian house, was 
 elected King of the Germans : and from the time of his election the 
 imperial authority, instead of being made to support itself by the 
 power and dignity of its wearer, was made a means of enriching and 
 aggrandising the particular house that got hold of it. Kudolf him- 
 self founded the Austrian heritage out of the marriages and escheats 
 Avhich his position as king enabled him to make use of ; and tread- 
 ing in his steps the houses of Luxemburg and Bavaria accumu- 
 lated electorates and duchies among their own members. From 
 these three houses during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth 
 centuries the emperors were chosen : the Luxemburgs had the 
 longest tenure ; and they united with the Hapsburgs in the mar-
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE 39 
 
 riage of Albert II. with Elizabeth of Luxemburg. Since that 
 marriage, with one unhappy exception, Austria has furnished the 
 emperor : the succession has not been strictly hereditary, because 
 the ceremony of election has been gone through regularly : but 
 wherever the hereditary principle has been departed from it has 
 been by the arrangement of the reigning family itself. 
 
 The impoverishment of the imperial dignity reached its climax 
 in Frederick III. : he had a very small share of a younger brother's 
 portion of Austria proper ; but as he was not the head of his house 
 all the accumulations of the earlier dukes and of the Luxemburgers 
 were held by others whom he was too weak, as well as too honest and 
 too idle perhaps, to despoil. From his time accordingly the only 
 change must be for the better, and with Maximilian the tide turned. 
 He not only, by marriages and escheats, built up a family heritage in 
 Germany, but by similar means made for his descendants a position 
 in Europe which they have never entirely lost, and founded more- 
 over a policy which they have never yet entirely forsaken : nay 
 more, by his internal reforms he placed the imperial dignity in a 
 really dignified position, and put an end to the anarchy of the 
 Middle Ages of Germany. His great reforms — the establishment of 
 the public peace, which had never been realised since the reign of 
 Frederick II. ; his institution of the administration of the Empire in 
 circles for the prevention and abolition of private wars, and the 
 Imperial Chamber and Aulic Council as supreme tribunals of appeal, 
 although they were not original, but part of the inherited policy of 
 Albert II., who in his short reign had attempted to carry them out — 
 were reforms of importance enough to entitle the prince who 
 enforced them to the name of a benefactor. Maximilian was far 
 too erratic for a statesman, but many a reputation has been won by 
 a steadier man with one tenth of the statesmanship that he showed 
 in these matters. 
 
 It is the fashion to ridicule the Empire under the house of 
 Austria, as a phantom of a great power, the mere shadow of a 
 great name : but this is very unfair. There can be no doubt as to 
 the strength of the princes that bore the imperial title from 
 Charles V. to Francis II. They were of the first rank of European 
 sovereigns, although they did not wield that supremacy which since 
 the days of Charles the Great no emperor had wielded. It was not 
 that the imperial dignity greatly strengthened the house of Austria, 
 but most certainly the house of Austria maintained the imperial 
 dignity and made it a force in Europe which throughout the Middle 
 Ages it was not. It may be said that the imperial dignity was made 
 to subserve Austrian interests, instead of Austrian interests being 
 made to subserve it ; but, so long as human nature lasts, is it likely
 
 40 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 that it should be othGrwise ? To suppose that it could be is to close 
 the eyes to the fact of the existence of a variety of other powers in 
 Germany, which would acquiesce in Austrian aggrandisement, but 
 not in the increase of the power of a supreme institution which would 
 depress them. Austria might increase in power, but to increase the 
 pressure of imperial supremacy that would diminish their independence 
 was not to be suffered. Austria therefore wisely used all her power in 
 strengthening her position on the border lands, and exercised little 
 imperial authority in those North German regions where her de- 
 stined rival was advancing by every conceivable art into power and 
 strength, but power and strength far too small, even to the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, to arouse the jealousy of the imperial 
 family. 
 
 It is no small credit then to Maximilian to have drawn the lines 
 of such a power as this, and to have created for his descendants a 
 position which he had never enjoyed himself. It was for his son 
 that he secured the succession of the Netherlands, for his grandsons 
 that he secured Spain, Naples, and the Indies, Hungary and 
 Bohemia. Frederick III., who had spent his time in studying 
 astronomy and devising heraldic titles and mottos, unwittingly 
 came near to being a prophet : his device for the family flag, 
 A.E.I.O.U. — Alles crdrcich ist Oesterreich unterthan, Austrice est 
 imperare orbi imiverso — meaningless in his own case, for he had 
 scarcely a house over his head — was not so far from a true 
 symbol under Charles V., his great-grandson. Even under Maxi- 
 milian coming events only cast their shadows before. In spite of 
 his great marriage, he secured for himself only the proper Austrian 
 heritage, without Bohemia or Hungary as Sigismund and Albert II. 
 had possessed them. He was therefore a poor man throughout his 
 life ; he was somewhat unscrupulous as a politician, but, as a man, 
 wonderfully amusing and taking, one whom it is far better to smile at 
 than to condemn : a man in whom there was much that was morally 
 bad, but in whom also there was far more good than there is in the 
 general run of kings. 
 
 Maximilian died, while Charles was getting into his first 
 difficulties in Spain, on January 12, 1519 ; he had never been 
 crowned Emperor, but had borne the title of Emperor-elect ; nor had 
 he obtained the election of a King of the Romans as his presumptive 
 successor. He had left many difficulties for the successor ; amongst 
 them the Italian question ; the French claims, that is, on Milan ; the 
 religious question, tlie excitement of Luther being now in its first 
 phase ; and, if the successor were an Austrian, the maintenance of 
 the rights of the house to the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia : 
 altogether not an easy or comfortable legacy, nor one which Maxi-
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 41 
 
 milian, had he lived, would have had much chance of arranging 
 successfully notwithstanding the qualifications which he beheved 
 himself to possess for the office of pope or even of canonisation as a 
 saint. The interregnum after Maximilian's death lasted for five 
 months, and the omission of the electors to provide him with a 
 successor before his death had the result of making the election 
 more a matter of debate than it had been for some generations. 
 Frederick III. had taken months to consider whether he would ac- 
 cept a crown for which there was no competition ; now the three 
 greatest princes in the world competed with one another : surely 
 Maximilian had not lived in vain. 
 
 Of course the natural successor to Maximilian was his grandson 
 Charles ; but Charles was so well provided for elsewhere, and had 
 already so much on his hands, that it might be questioned whether, 
 at the age of nineteen, he was qualified to undertake more. But 
 notwithstanding this, it is not hkely that the electors would have 
 looked or thought of looking elsewhere, if it had not been that 
 their attention was arrested by the claims of the French king. 
 Where could they get a worthier prince than they would find across 
 the Ehine, in Francis I., King of France and Duke of Milan ? — a 
 man, in his own belief and that of his countrymen, whose brilliancy 
 and splendid achievements were so extraordinary that they absolutely 
 cancelled all his baseness, his vile life of sin, his utter want of 
 honour and faith, his engrossing selfishness and unscrupulous con- 
 tempt for anything like moral principle ! Among the worst kings 
 of France, Francis, with Philip the Fair, occupies the unen\-iable 
 primacy; and Philip' the Fair and Francis I. are the two kings 
 of France who most distinctly entertained "designs on Germany. 
 There is no need to go into the argument of Eobertson as to the 
 pleas of the candidates. The proceedings of the electors are scarcely 
 likely to have been affected by them. Francis, however, and Charles 
 did offer themselves as candidates, and Henry VIII. of England, not 
 to be behind in the race, sounded the electors by an embassy, but 
 found no encouragement. 
 
 On Mid-Lent Sunday the Ehine electors, that is to say the 
 Count Palatine and the three archbishops, met at Ober-Wesel and 
 bound themselves over to mutual defence : Charles and Francis sent 
 a series of embassies, and procured recommendations among then' 
 friends, and forces to back up their claims. Amongst these Leo X. 
 supported Francis, and forbade the electors to disregard the consti- 
 tution of Clement IV. according to which it was unlawful for the 
 same person to be King of Naples and Emperor of the Eomans. As 
 it was on this very point that the- enmity between the Popes and 
 Frederick II. sprang up, it will be interesting to remark the 
 
 in.i 

 
 42 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 permanence of the Eoman policy in the matter, and the contrast or 
 parallel, as you may please to take it, between the state* of things in 
 the thirteenth and that in the sixteenth century. Frahcis also asked 
 for a testimonial from the Swiss, who, however, contented themselves 
 with reporting his request to the electors and praying them to choose 
 none but a German. 
 
 But it is time for us to ask who were the electors. At the head 
 of them in reputation if not in rank was Frederick, Duke of Saxony, 
 surnamed the Wise ; the friend and counsellor of Maximilian, and 
 the founder of the University of Wittenberg. He is a grave and pru- 
 dent man, the most influential man in Germany, and perhaps, except 
 in wealth, the fittest to become Emperor. But his dominions are not 
 great, the duchy of Saxony is a very small part of the whole nation, 
 and Frederick has business enough of his own : moreover, he is getting 
 on towards sixty and not likely to live long. The three archbishop 
 electors are (1) Albert of Brandenburg, brother of the reigning Mar- 
 grave Joachim, Archbishop of Mentz ; he is also Archbishop of 
 Magdeburg and Bishop of Halberstadt, thus occupying a leading 
 position in North Germany, and is a thorough German as against 
 Pope and Frenchman ; (2) the Archbishop of Cologne, Hermann of 
 Wied, who owed his position to the support of Maximilian ; and (3) 
 the Archbishop of Treves, Kichard von Greiffenklau, a supporter, as 
 the Archbishops of Treves have before been, of the French against 
 the national interests of Germany. The other electors are Joachim 
 of Brandenburg, who was said to be bribed by Francis ; the Count 
 Palatine, Lewis V., who was acting as Vicar of the Empire during the 
 vacancy ; and the King of Bohemia, who appeared by deputy. 
 
 The assembly was called at Frankfort on June 17, 1519. The 
 determination was come to, apparently, either by way of declaring 
 the independence of the electors, or possibly in the hope of its being 
 accepted, to offer the crown to the Duke of Saxony. He, however, 
 refused it. The Archbishop of Mentz then proposed Charles, the 
 Archbishop of Treves suggested Francis. The Duke of Saxony spoke 
 next, urgently pressing the election of Charles. The others ac- 
 quiesced, the Elector of Treves alone ungraciously. Joachim of 
 Brandenburg weighed Francis's money against Charles's artillery, 
 and determined that discretion was the better part of valour. The 
 Count Palatine, whatever he may have thought, voted for Charles. 
 According to different German authorities, scarcely any of the 
 electors come away with quite clean hands, but these aspersions are 
 probably to be taken for very little : Francis was great at promising 
 money and may have hoped to secure Albert of Mentz by bribing 
 his brother Joachim ; and if the Elector Palatine were open, as was 
 said, to the same influence, these three votes with that of Treves
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE 43 
 
 would have given him a numerical majority. But I cannot believe 
 that the electors were either so dishonest as to listen to Francis, 
 or so foolish as to believe him. That he actually gave money no one 
 can believe ; he was likely enough to promise it, but the Germans 
 were very unlikely indeed to accept his promises. On the whole 
 the candidateship of Francis I. is one of the most impudent pieces 
 of effrontery that come into history. It is satisfactory to know how 
 determinedly it was scouted, and that the Pope's prohibition of 
 Charles's election, far from weighing in favour of Francis, called 
 forth an indignant and impassioned repudiation from the Archbishop 
 of Mentz. The Papal representatives thereupon, agreeably to the 
 instructions of Leo X., turned round, adopted Charles as their candi- 
 date, and offered a dispensation for holding the kingdom of Naples 
 with the Empire notwithstanding the constitution of Clement IV. 
 
 The election of Charles was thus outwardly unanimous, and the 
 adhesion of the Papal envoys gave completeness to the title so 
 created. The result of the election was reported to him in Spain, 
 and had no small share in producing the difficulties with the several 
 Cortes of the kingdoms which we have seen prevented him from 
 leaving that country before May 1520, nearly a year after the election. 
 On his way to the Netherlands he took the opportunity of securing 
 the friendship of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey, and he stayed 
 in the neighbourhood, until he had seen that the interview of Henry 
 and Francis at the Field of the Cloth of Gold was likely to have 
 no permanent effect. That done he proceeded to Aix-la-ChapeUe, 
 where he was crowned King of Germany on October 23, 1520, and 
 thence to Cologne. 
 
 The history of Germany from the death of Maximilian to the 
 arrival of Charles, and indeed during the whole of Charles's reign, is 
 simply the history of the Reformation, and in connection with the 
 Reformation I shall try to sketch it. But there are a few minor 
 points necessary to the understanding of the personnel of the Refor- 
 mation history which it will be advisable to examine now, and, as 
 nearly as we can, we may do it in the order in which they arise. 
 
 The organisation of the Empire was at this time arranged 
 variously for various purposes. For the election of an Emperor and 
 some other high business there was the organisation of the seven 
 electors : for national deliberation and legislation and for the voting 
 of general taxation throughout the German kingdom — I should say 
 the German portion of the Empire— there was the Imperial Diet ; 
 for the preservation of peace between the several states there was 
 the organisation of the circles, and for the arbitration between the 
 princes or states in the way of appeal there were the Imperial 
 Chamber and the Aulic Council.
 
 \/ 
 
 •1-1 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTOKY, 1519-1618 
 
 Of the electoral system I have said as much, perhaps, as is 
 necessary. Theconstitution of the Diet is probably more important ; 
 it is also far more intricate, and marked historically by more modifi- 
 cations, many of which it is diiiicult to fix to certain dates. The 
 word ' diet ' means simply a day's journey in medieval Latin ; 
 thence ifhas the meaning of a day's work : and thence the work of 
 that particular day which is set for the assembling of the estates and 
 the despatch of important business. From the use of it to mark the 
 occasion, it has come, like our word 'parliament,' to be transferred 
 to the assembly itself. The Diet, then, is simply the Assembly of 
 the States of Imperial Germany, and its constituents might be 
 arranged under the three heads of clergy, nobles, and commons : 
 but practically and from time immemorial this common plan had 
 been superseded for a more complex one. There were three primary 
 divisions : (1) the electors, (2) the princes, and (3) the towns. 
 Of the princes there were two divisions or benches, one ecclesias- 
 tical and one secular. These benches were again divided into (1) 
 those princes who voted sigiUatim, that is with an independent 
 vote each ; and (2) those who voted curiatim, or in distinct colleges, 
 as they were called, each cluster having a vote. The colleges of 
 counts, of which there were only two at this time, those of Swabia 
 and Wetterau, to which in the seventeenth century two more, 
 Franconia (1640) and Westphalia (1655), were added, voted with the 
 secular princes ; the colleges of prelates voted in the same way with 
 the ecclesiastical princes. The theory was that these inferior states 
 had lost their full privileges by neglect ; but it was an ancient neglect, 
 for the counts had ceased to possess votes in the Diet as early as 
 the end of the thirteenth century. The third division, that of the 
 imperial cities, was divided into two benches, each voting curiatim, 
 with a collective vote ; this was the case since 1474, one bench 
 contained the Swabian cities under Katisbon ; the other the Ehenish 
 under Cologne. The barons, 'Freiherren,' were not entitled to 
 representation in the Diet, but for some purposes were counted as 
 an estate and as such arranged in three circles for their own 
 business, the Swabian, the Franconian, and the Ehenish. This, 
 however, is by the way. 
 
 In theory this Diet had a right to examine and deliberate on 
 every department of the imperial business ; certainly no imperial 
 taxation could be voted without the co-operation of the assembled 
 states ; but practically the machinery was unwieldy, a great 
 deal of the business that might have been arranged in it was 
 despatched by the provincial assemblies in the several states, and 
 although we shall during the reign of Charles see it in very active 
 working for many purposes, after the Reformation it sank into a sort
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE 45 
 
 of congress of ambassadors, very few of the constituents of it taking 
 the trouble to appear. 
 
 The organisation of the circles was based on local convenience, 
 not either on rank or on political association ; it had originated in 
 the voluntary leagues of the cities and princes formed during the 
 latter half of the fourteenth century, when, under Charles IV, and 
 his successor Wenzel, the central power was unable to secure any 
 respect for authority. These leagues had been recognised by 
 Albert II. as public organisms and arranged in circles ; and Maxi- 
 milian, following the policy of Albert in this as in other points, had 
 divided the whole of Germany and the Netherlands in the same way, 
 into ten circles, those of Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, Westphalia, 
 Upper Ehine, Lower Rhine, Upper Saxony and Lower Saxony, 
 Austria and Burgundy, the last containing the imperial, afterwards 
 the Spanish, dominions in the Netherlands. Each of these circles 
 had civil and military directors ; the offices being filled by the 
 principal potentates, lay and spiritual, within the circle. To these 
 directors belonged the right of convoking the estates of the circle. 
 Each circle contributed a distinct quota of taxation, and a contingent 
 in men and horses for military purposes. The force for which the 
 whole system was liable was 4,000 horse and 20,000 foot ; the money 
 varied according to exigency. A good deal of this, however, was 
 mere theory and not likely to be called for in practice. The idea 
 was to provide men and money to take the emperor to Eome ; as a 
 matter of fact, after the institution of circles, no emperor ever was 
 crowned at Eome. The maintenance of peace was, however, the 
 original purpose of the device, and for the enforcement of peace 
 amongst powers too weak to resist the pressure it would seem to 
 have been effective. 
 
 Of the courts of appeal, the Aulic Council and Imperial Chamber, 
 I need not give the details : it is sufficient for our purpose to mention 
 that as supreme tribunals of appeal they were both outward and 
 visible signs of an imperial jurisdiction and corporate unity, and by 
 the settling of questions which might have led to war they were 
 useful — the Aulic Council at Vienna for the Empire and Italy, the 
 Imperial Chamber at Speyer for Germany. It was the business of 
 the circles to carry out the decisions of the Imperial Chamber. 
 Neither, however, was strong enough to put down the practice of 
 private war between princes who were rich and strong enough to 
 wage it as states, not as mere robbers or pirates. 
 
 Such was the machinery at the head of which Charles V. found 
 himself : complicated enough to begin with and now doubly compli- 
 cated by the religious question. Although the machinery was in- 
 fluential in certain directions, still each state, each prince, prelate, and
 
 46 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 imperial town possessed the right of managing, without any real check 
 from either Emperor or Diet, all its internal affairs, its courts of 
 justice, its commercial regulations, its internal taxation and legisla- 
 tion, and its foreign alliances. The actual independent exercise of 
 such rights was, of course, qualified by the power of the possessor ; 
 but I believe that by the time of Charles V. either by grant from the 
 emperors, or by usurpation or prescriptive exercise, every community 
 under prince, prelate, or burgomaster had got hold of them, and 
 exercised them whenever its neighbours would suffer it. 
 
 It is almost to be wondered that during the long period of weai< 
 emperors who reigned from Frederick II. to Charles V. Germany 
 had not separated into a few really strong states, which would have 
 overcome and consolidated all the weaker communities and rid them- 
 selves altogether of the slight incumbrance of the Empire. One ob- 
 stacle, however, to this was the elective character of the Empire, 
 which each state strong enough to be ambitious coveted for itself. 
 Another was the importance and weight given to the ecclesiastical 
 states and to the imperial cities by emperors who had everything to 
 gain by their friendship and nothing to fear from the increase of 
 their power. A third was the custom of dividing the heritages, and, 
 instead of consolidating, splitting up the family territories into new 
 principalities. This rule prevailed over all Germany, although it was 
 not uniformly carried out. It was not until 1545 that the Bavarian 
 inheritance was made indivisible, nor till 1621 the Austrian. 
 Wiirteniberg had established the rule in 1482, but all the rest of 
 the princely houses had thrown away their personal unity, if not 
 also their political strength, by this practice of division. So long as 
 merely political interests were concerned, the families, however 
 divided, might pull together ; but the religious question was now 
 about to set brother against brother and to make the house organisa- 
 tion untenable. Accordingly, from the Eeformation the practice 
 was on the decrease, but the houses of Saxony, Brandenburg, and 
 the Palatinate, the three most Protestant of the electorates, retained 
 it and much weakened their religious interest thereby. 
 
 If we were now going merely into the history of Germany, I should 
 be very glad to follow into detail the broad statements that I 
 have made : but it is the reign of Charles in its European aspects 
 rather than its particular ones that is our chief theme, and to detail 
 a quantity of genealogical particulars would be to throw the greater 
 features of the period into the shade. As, however, this lecture is in 
 its nature something of an introductory one, I may sketch, geographi- 
 cally, an outline of the states. Of the ecclesiastical ones at first 
 little need be said ; they had not up to this time fallen into a 
 dynastic groove, although the succession was the bone of contention
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE EMPIRE 47 
 
 to the greater houses at each vacancy : a little later, 1583-1761, 
 Cologne was held by an unbroken series of Bavarian princes. 
 Magdeburg was held from 1513 to 1631 by princes of Brandenburg, 
 but long before the latter date the character of archbishop had 
 become secularised. The ecclesiastical electors very frequently held 
 other bishoprics in commendam. Worms and Speyer, for instance, 
 very seldom had bishops of their own ; and in this way the more 
 powerful prelates accumulated to themselves a plurality of votes in 
 the Diet. Of the lay electorates, Brandenburg had branches both in 
 North and South Germany ; beginning as counts of Hohenzollern, 
 made burggraves of Nuremberg by Frederick Barbarossa ; princes of 
 the Empire by Charles IV., electors of Brandenburg by Sigisniund, 
 they had both carefully conserved their successive acquisitions and 
 tried on all hands to increase them. They had the electoral branch 
 in Brandenburg itself ; the margraves of Anspach, Culmbach, and 
 Baireuth, in Franconia, and the neighbouring lands ; and the high 
 mastership of the Teutonic Order fell in 1511 to Albert of Branden- 
 burg, who recovered the independence of the Prussian possessions of 
 the Order from Poland in 1521, and in 1524 took his seat among the 
 ecclesiastical princes in the Diet, adding thus a new territory to the 
 Empire ; which by careful plying of his interests in Poland as well 
 as Germany he succeeded in 1525 in obtaining as an hereditary 
 duchy for himself. 
 
 Of these different branches, the Prussian and Franconian very 
 early accepted the Reformation ; the electoral house continued 
 Catholic until 1539. Saxony had followed the plan of division, but 
 without the acquisitive instincts of Brandenburg, and was in 1464 
 broken up into the two houses, the Ernestine and Albertine, which 
 still exist. The electorate was taken from the Ernestine house and 
 given to the Albertine in the person of Maurice in 1548 : both went 
 on dividing and subdividing ; both lines being generally Protestant 
 until Frederick Augustus the Strong, Duke of Saxony and King of 
 Poland, joined the Roman Church at the end of the seventeenth 
 century. The same was the case with Brunswick : Liinebnrg 
 became Protestant early ; Wolfenbiittel comparatively late. The 
 Palatinate also ; the electorate was Protestant from 1545 to 1685, 
 when it fell to the line of Neuburg, which had clung, with some 
 intervals of Protestantism, to the Roman Church. Hesse continued 
 one until the death of the famous landgrave Philip, 1561 ; and 
 remained Protestant after its division between Cassel, Philippsthal, 
 Darmstadt, and others in the next generation. Wiirtemberg and 
 Bavaria made themselves indivisible ; the former being Protestant 
 from the beginning of the Reformation ; Bavaria continuously 
 Catholic. The Austrian house, I need hardly say, was never afifected
 
 48 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 by the tenets of the reformers : of the minor states I shall say, 
 perhaps, more than enough in discussing the Reformation. 
 \ Well, Charles V. soon discovered that if he was' to retain any 
 I power in Germany, he must do it by deputy ; the Spaniards would 
 - not endure his permanent settlement in a foreign country ; nor 
 ' would the wars which he was always engaged in suffer him to sit 
 down quietly in his most peaceful state, be it Spain or Germany, 
 whilst his people were being taxed at home and fighting for him 
 abroad. Accordingly, as soon as he had perfected his own imperial 
 title by receiving the crown at the hands of Pope Clement VII. at 
 Bologna in 1530, he made preparations for devolving the manage- 
 ment of Germany on Ferdinand his brother, to whom he had made 
 over his hereditary dominions in Austria proper. In January 1531 
 J in spite of the opposition of the Elector of Saxony, who declared the 
 I election unconstitutional, Ferdinand was elected at Cologne (Jan. 5) 
 * and on the thirteenth of the same month crowned at Aix-la- 
 
 iChapelle. 
 But Charles did not, I think, find the arrangement a very useful 
 one ; for Ferdinand was not only a less prudent tactician and a more 
 zealous Catholic than himself, both circumstances calculated to render 
 his relations with the princes difficult ; but, by his rights over Bohemia 
 and Hungary, he had involved himself in quarrels, not merely with 
 the Turk, against whom Charles was always ready to fight, but with 
 the native population, of whom the Emperor as Emperor had no 
 cognisance. Ferdinand thus had business of his own and more than 
 enough to manage. Charles, instead of being able to leave Germany 
 to itself, was continually obliged to visit it or to conduct the business 
 of it in person : and towards the end of his life he no doubt thought 
 that his brother had shown incapacity enough to warrant him 
 in proposing to set him aside in favour of his son Philip. But the 
 electoral body by that time had learned Ferdinand's character, and 
 also knew enough of Philip to dislike him ; nor on any theory could 
 they consent to be subject again to the dominion of a prince so 
 strong or with so great foreign attractions as Charles. The more 
 continuous and dated history of these transactions we shaU take in the 
 sequel of the Reformation history. We ought by this time to have a 
 fair notion of the balance of interests in Germany itself as well as 
 in Spain and the Netherlands.
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 THE KIVALBY OF THE HOUSES OF HAPSBUEG AND VALOIS 
 DOWN TO THE PEACE OF CABIBBAI, 1529 
 
 The review which we have taken in the previous lectures of the 
 
 dominions of Charles, his titles to them, and the different elements 
 
 of political life which were actively stirring in each, has been | 
 
 sufficient to prove to us that the condition of European affairs most 
 
 favourable to a prince at the head of such an accumulation of 
 
 opposing influences must be peace. Peace was necessary for 
 
 carrying on the commerce of the Netherlands and for the furtherance 
 
 of the great designs of the Spanish discoverers in the Western world ; 
 
 peace was necessary to the very existence of German unity, and 
 
 most necessary for Italy, distracted at all times with disturbances 
 
 within her own area, and most liable to be made the battlefield of ^ 
 
 her rival plunderers. The great cloud of Ottoman conquest still 
 
 impended over Eastern Europe. Peace as a guarantee of united 
 
 action against the Turks, such a crusade as /Eneas Sylvius had spent 
 
 his art and energy and very earnest labours to achieve, seemed 
 
 needful if Europe was to continue to be Christian. Yet the whole 
 
 of the reign was occupied with war, scarcely a year in which it %• 
 
 was not being waged actually, or being prepared for and intrigued 
 
 for by warrior and poHtician alike. Charles was probably himself j* 
 
 inclined to peace for the reasons I have stated, but he was kept at f 
 
 war all his life and worn to death with it : in fact, the very extent of 
 
 his dominions laid him open to attack on every side, and the variety 
 
 of the titles by which he held them exposed him to the claims, just | 
 
 or unjust, of every pretender who could get the French to take up 
 
 his cause. For it was of course the rivalry between Francis I. and 
 
 Charles V. that created the occasion 6f w^iVand that gives the 
 
 dramatic or romantic as contrasted with the political interest to the 
 
 history of the period. 
 
 Low as Francis I. stands as a man and a politician, a cooler 
 and wiser and better-principled ruler might have felt fears for 
 France from the rapid increase of' |^*'power"'bT the Burgundian or 
 Austrian house. For on all sides now Fraince was bounded by the 
 territories of Charles ; along the northern frontier ran the Nether- 
 lands, until they joined the ecclesiastical electorates and Lorraine on 
 the east. Lorraine was German. Switzerland was German indeed, 
 but very anti-Burgundian and anti-Austrian, and so did afford a 
 loophole for Francis, the net being everywhere else around him, and 
 
 E 

 
 50 
 
 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 J 
 
 V 
 
 ^ 
 
 further on Savoy was open to him for a road into Italy ; then came 
 the Mediterranean and then the Pyrenees. Whichever way he 
 turned, immediately or over a little low hedge like ^Switzerland or 
 Savoy, he saw his rival keeping the look-out upon him. Yet 
 Francis's true interest was peace also : if his rival had a great 
 territory he had a compact one, one that had moreover, since the 
 extinction of political life by Lewis XI., been not a hard one 
 to rule ; a country whose vast resources a statesman, if France 
 ever had a statesman, would have done his best to develop : a country, 
 moreover, on which his rival had no ostensible claim. But Francis 
 also had claims on foreign possessions which he was earnest to 
 vindicate ; and he stood at the head of a nation that saw in him the 
 very impersonation of its own qualities, gay, unscrupulous, ambitious, 
 ruthless, false, and above all things believing in and devoted to the 
 acquisition of glory in war. 
 
 Francis succeeded to the crown of France in 1515. At this date 
 the state of afl"i>jrs was this. The descent of Charles VIII. of 
 France into Italy in 1494, to wrest the Milanese from Gian Galeazzo 
 Sforza and to assert his own right to Naples, may be regarded as 
 the beginning of modern as distinct from medieval history. It was 
 the challenge which produced the first general war in Europe 
 \, within historical times. Not that the war became general on the 
 
 instant, it did not so until the whole power of Europe was divided 
 between Charles and Francis, but it set the work going and gave 
 utterance to the claims which perpetuated it, France had a quarrel 
 with Naples, and a quarrel with Spain, and a quarrel with Burgundy, 
 and a quarrel with Maximilian ; but so long as Naples was under 
 Alfonso, Spain under Ferdinand, Burgundy under Philip, and 
 Germany under Maximilian, France could take her enemies in 
 detail : it did not produce a general war until Charles V. united the 
 possessions and the quarrels of Naples, Spain, Burgundy, and the 
 Empire. With Germany France had never had a serious war since 
 the earliest times, since the rivalry of the perishing Karlings and 
 the rising Ottos : under the Hohenstaufen there had been close 
 peace, and since the Hohenstaufen no German emperor had been a 
 prince strong enough to fight with France single-handed, or to 
 engage the princes of the Empire on his side. Nor until the 
 consolidation of the Burgundian heritage had France been bounded 
 by a distinct German limit on the east : for the Duke of Burgundy 
 was a French prince. When Albert I. was offered the kingdom of 
 France by Boniface VIII. on Philip's deposition, he replied that 
 there was an agreement between the Karlings and the Capetians not 
 to interfere with one another, and if he possessed much outside 
 of Fr-ance he possessed also a large stake in France to keep him
 
 RIVALRY OF THE HOUSES OF HAPSBURG AND VALOIS 51 
 
 true to his allegiance : he was a close relation and a powerful 
 bulwark to the King of France in Flanders and Belgium and 
 Burgundy and Franche-Comte ; that is, if he chose to be. 
 
 We know that under Charles the Bold Burgundy began to assert 
 for herself a*"?iuasi-independence, and tEat'liflvasTiT sertoTlS contem- 
 plation atl)iie time that the ancient title should be revived and he 
 should be acknowledged by Frederick III. as King of Burgundy. 
 But, however this might have affected matters, the effect of having 
 this great band of territory between them kept France and Germany 
 at peace. If France was in danger from Burgundy, Germany was 
 no less so and was so drawn to France : if Burgundy was friendly 
 to France, so much the less fear of an alarm on the side of Germany. 
 So with different names it had been since the time of the Crusades, 
 the two countries were divided by states which were independent of 
 either and which by war or peace kept the two asunder. Now all 
 this was altered. Burgundy, in the shape of Charles V., had become a 
 rival, and all round, the territory that had been kept off by the 
 debateable lands before came nearer ; and beyond his own borders the 
 King of France saw nothing but Hapsburgs, Burgundians, Spaniards : 
 they covered all the land, and a quarrel on one side was a quarrel on 
 all. Thus it was that the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII. 
 lighted the flame of a general war. 
 
 The war of Charles VIII. had come to an end, and in the twenty 
 years that separate it from the accession of Francis I. many other wars 
 had been fought, and many combinations of the European powers had 
 been formed and broken ; of these the most famous is the one which 
 followed the league of Cambrai in 1508, formed by the Pope, 
 Maximilian, Ferdinand, and Lewis XII. against Venice; the allies, 
 having plundered the Kepublic, had quarrelled, and, in 1513, Venice 
 and France united against the rest. The arms of the Spaniards and 
 Germans were generally successful, and in 1516 the vvar was lingering 
 on against the wishes probably of all concerned. Francis I. was 
 anxious at the moment for peace to secure his acquisitions in Lom- 
 bardy, won by the victory of Marignano (September 1515) and the 
 cession of MaximiUan Sforza^^'Charles was anxious for peace to 
 enable him to visit Spain, which he had just inherited, though by no 
 means with a fair prospect of acquiescence on the part of his sub- 
 jects ; and Maximilian also was quite willing. So this part of the 
 drama, which is, indeed, but introductory to our proper business, 
 comes to an end in August 1516, when the treaty of Noyon settled 
 the quarrels between Spain and France, and that of Brussels the 
 struggle between the Emperor and the French and Venetians. 
 
 By the treaty of Noyon, Francis, on the understanding that 
 Charles shottld marry his daughter, gave up his claims on Naples. 
 
 e2
 
 52 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1510-16i8 
 
 By that of Brussels, Verona was given up by the Emperor to the 
 allies, Venice and the French, and Francis thus retained Milan and 
 Genoa, being, with his allies the Venetians, and the friendship of the 
 Pope, supreme in Lombardy. From 1516 to 1521 we get five years of 
 peace, but they were pregnant with new wars : they were occupied by 
 Charles in Spain from 1517 to 1620 ; and during 1519 and 1520 he 
 was busy securing his election to the Empire, and arranging his affairs 
 after the election, as we have seen. Thus he had no time for open 
 war. The gap is filled up with intrigue. All the rival claims and 
 quarrels founded on them still subsisted : Naples, Milan, Burgundy, 
 and Navarre. The French still coveted Naples, to which Francis 
 had claims under the will of the last of the Angevin line, the heir of 
 King Eene ; the Emperor coveted Milan as an escheat, and hated the 
 sight of the French in Italy ; Charles had a right to the Duchy of 
 Burgundy, which Lewis XI. had seized as an escheated male fief, and 
 had never let go ; Navarre was still held by Spain, in spite of the 
 undertaking made at Noyon that Henri d'Albret should be restored. 
 Accordingly we are not prepared to find that the peace of Noyon was 
 kept very long. Within three months a new treaty was arranged 
 between Maximilian, Charles, and Henry VIII. of England (October 
 1516), by w'hich each was bound to defend the other in case of inva- 
 sion. The Pope and the Swiss were to be taken into the league, but 
 the latter disappointed the confederates by making a perpetual peace 
 with France about the same time. 
 
 It is here that England comes on the stage : another power as 
 compact as the kingdom of Francis, and as ubiquitous by her naval 
 power as the kingdom of Charles, but, unlike the two, almost impreg- 
 nable against attack ; like the two, ambitious and aggressive. The 
 intrigues of England at this point are attributed generally to the 
 ambition of "Wolsey, who was alternately bribed by both parties, either 
 with hard cash or with promises of aid in his views on the Papacy. 
 Into a refutation of this idea, this is not the occasion to go ; but I may 
 say that the result of modern investigations has been to alter the 
 balance of opinion against Wolssy, to show that he was an able 
 minister, but minister to an able king, and that his character for 
 honesty of purpose and patriotism is on a par with that of far more 
 renowned statesmen.^ It was a period of intrigue, but the intrigues 
 were not woven by Wolsey for his own selfish ambition, but used by 
 him for the advancement of England, and for the averting of the two 
 great evils, a too powerful France, which would be fatal to English 
 independence, and a too powerful Emperor, which would be fatal to 
 all independence in Europe. The internal causes of the English 
 
 ' For the latest results of the latest investigations, see Mr. Pollard's 
 Henry VIII.
 
 RIVALRY OF THE HOUSES OF HAPSBURG A^'D YALOIS 53 
 
 intrigues at this time are beyond our present subject : both the 
 great rivals courted Henry, and he endeavoured, doubtless with 
 statesmanlike selfishness, to hold the balance between them. 
 
 From the treaty of Noyon onwards an outward tendency towards 
 the consolidation of peace continued to show itself. In October 
 1518 a general treaty was agreed on between Charles, Francis, 
 Henry, and Maximilian, for the defence of Christendom against the 
 Turks, and for the maintenance of peace against all invasion. By 
 this treaty Henry was bound to help the party which was first 
 invaded ; and henceforth all depended en who should be first to 
 proclaim war. The death of Maximilian and the election to the 
 Empire changed the state of affairs only so far as to delay any 
 approaching break-up for a short time. In 1520 we find Charles 
 and Francis both eager to dravr Henry VIII. into a close alliance. 
 Wolsey plans the meeting of Henry and Francis at the Field of the 
 Cloth of Gold : Charles hears of this before it comes cff, and, to get the 
 first word, visits England in person. In May 1620 Charles visited 
 his uncle at London ; in June Henry visited Francis at Ardres ; and 
 in July he met Charles again at Gravelines. The result of these 
 intervievv's was to throvv' Henry's sympathies entirely on the Imperial 
 side. Leo X. now began to look the same way : he had the views of 
 the Papacy and the views of the Medici to carry out, he had also 
 the natural Italian desire to drive the French out of Lombardy. 
 Since the election of Charles V. he had changed his views more than 
 once : then he acquiesced in the retention of the kingdom of Naples, 
 although a German sovereign in South Italy was at least as 
 dangerous as a French one in North ; then he had made a league 
 with Francis for the conquest and partition of Naples ; now he pro- 
 posed to Charles a league for the conquest of the Milanese and the 
 expulsion of the French. lie also saw that war was coming on, and 
 was glad to take his chance with the strongest. 
 
 But before the intrigues came to a head — and I can acquit neither 
 party, for they did not drift into war as we do, but made preparations 
 for it and then waited until an occasion of quarrel came — before the 
 intrigues came to a head, Francis by his dishonesty and underhand 
 dealing brought the whole of Europe down upon him : the death 
 of William of Chievres, lord of Croy, Charles's most mature and 
 pacific adviser, in May 1521, almost exactly coincides with his first 
 attacks upon Charles, and certainly removed Charles's last objection 
 to accept the challenge. The war begins, but at first not overtly : 
 Francis sends L'Esparre and Bonnivet into Navarre at the head 
 of the forces of Henri d'Albret, which he has himself supplied, 
 and with instructions to carry the war into Castile. At the same 
 time, encouraged by his support, Piobert de la Marck, lord of Sedan
 
 54 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1618 
 
 and Bouillon,' proclaims war against the Emperor. Charles very 
 naturally complains. Henry is told that he shoukl, according to 
 the treaty of 1518, attack the first aggressor, or at all events act as 
 mediator. He gets together a congress at Calais, at which Wolsey 
 represents him (August 1521).- There each side puts forth all the 
 old claims ; but the news from Spain scatters negotiation to the 
 vrinds. Eonnivet has taken Fontarabia. Francis refuses to restore 
 it : there is now no hindrance to the war ; and the combination is 
 now Charles, Henry, and the Pope against Francis. In October 
 hostilities begin on the Netherland border : in November Milan is 
 taken ; the French under Lautrec are driven out of Lombardy by 
 Colonna and the Marquis of Pescara : in December Leo X. dies and 
 Charles sees his old tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, on the papal throne. 
 
 But Europe was only beginning to learn what a general war means : 
 neither party had his preparations yet available ; and the year 1522 saw 
 a languishing war both in Picardy and in Lombardy ; the advantage 
 was on the side of Charles ; Genoa recovered her independence by 
 the expulsion of the French ; Lautrec was compelled by the mutiny 
 of the Swiss mercenaries to retire into France ; and Cremona re- 
 mained the only Italian city in the hands of Francis. In the mean- 
 time (May 1522) Charles again visited England and drew the cords 
 of the alliance closer by a new treaty, this time engaging himself to 
 Henry's daughter Mary, as he had done at Noyon to Francis's 
 daughter Louise ; but both Charles and Francis were short of 
 money, Henry had to apply to his parliament to raise it ; and the 
 influence of Adrian VI. was felt to be pacific instead of the reverse, 
 as that of Leo X. had been. The business of Spain called Charles 
 from the scene of action as soon as he had assured himself of 
 the active co-operation of England. It was even possible that the 
 struggle might languish on : the troiibles in Spain gave Charles 
 more work than he could manage. At all events men held their 
 hands somewhat ; the crash had yet to come. 
 
 Again Francis cut the ground from under his own feet by his 
 quarrel with the Duke of Bourbon, Constable of France : he drove 
 from his side the most able of his friends and furnished his enemy 
 with a general in the first rank of the soldiers of that day, beloved 
 by the French people, and henceforth by the natural result of hatred 
 and desperation, an unwearied enemy and stirrer-up of enmities 
 and deviser of evils for the perfidious king. I need not repeat 
 the story how Louise of Savoy, the mother, and a worthy one, of 
 
 ' Bouillon, tlie duchy of Godfrey, was mortgaged by him to the church of 
 Liege, which retained it until 14s4, when Robert de la Marck forced them to 
 mortgage it to him and tried to make himself dake. The title of duke was 
 accorded to Robert lY. in 1552. 
 
 * Treaty of Bruges between Henry and Charles, August 1521.
 
 EIVALRY OF THE HOUSES OF HAPSBURG AND YALOIS 55 
 
 Francis I., loved Charles of Bourbon : hov/ he refused her, and she 
 thereupon raised an unrighteous claim to the lands of the duchy 
 of Bourbon which Charles had received v/ith his wife ; how Francis, 
 knowing his mother to be what she was, and Charles to be what 
 he was, allowed the wicked woman to have her way, sequestrated 
 through the perverted machinery of the law courts the estates 
 in dispute, and goaded the Constable into treason and flight. This 
 was early in 1523, just as Francis was making up his mind to 
 descend in person into Italy and attempt to renew his early 
 triumphs. 
 
 The effect of Bourbon's flight was to postpone this design. 
 Bonnivet was sent instead of his master : Bonnivet, the more com- 
 plaisant lover of Louise, and the deadly enemy of Bourbon. Yet 
 the air of the year was not good for action : Bonnivet found Pescara 
 unprepared and overran the Milanese. He might have taken Milan, 
 but he too was languid and failed to do so. His successes were 
 very small ; but it was a great thing that Francis was able to show 
 fight at all. Robertson sums up the year as on the whole glorious to 
 Francis, but it is only by shutting his eyes to the intensity of the 
 shame of the French king. Francis counts the alienation of Bourbon 
 as a triumph, and attributes the confusion of the designs of his 
 enemies to his own intrigues : but apparently he forgets that he has 
 provoked a general war, m which all men are against him, and has 
 given a just ground of quarrel ; that the storm is as yet only browing. 
 The one great success is the defeat or failure of the English invasion 
 of Picardy : the greatest piece of good fortune to Francis is the death 
 of the Pope Adrian VI. in September 1523, and the election of an 
 Italian as his successor. This at once gave him an improved position 
 in Italy ; an Italian Pope might turn against the Germans ; a 
 German Pope would always be hostile to France : and on the side of 
 England also Wolsey, disappointed of the Papacy, would be less 
 ardently imperial. 
 
 But the march of events from this point becomes more rapid ; the 
 year 1524 is very eventful, nor, although the influences on which he 
 calculated did not altogether fail him, was the result more favourable 
 to Francis. There were three campaigns, if we may call them 
 campaigns, succeeding one another rapidly : the attempt of Bon- 
 nivet to recover the Milanese, the invasion of Provence by Bourbon 
 and Pescara, and the second invasion of Lombardy by Francis 
 himself which ends in the siege of Pavia. Clement VII. refused 
 indeed to be accessory to the attack on Francis ; he was afraid that 
 the imperial power, which whilst at a distance appeared less danger- 
 ous than the French, was growing too great for the safety of Italy, 
 but the change in his position had not yet affected that of the other
 
 56 LECTURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Italian states. Bonuivet found himself without oUies and v.-ith a 
 very insufficient army, in a territory now altogether hostile. He was 
 compelled to retreat, his own mismanagement being almost as con- 
 clusive against him as the tactics of his opponents. It was in a 
 battle fought with Pescara during this retreat that the French 
 experienced the loss of their best and bravest champion. Bayard, the 
 knight without fear and without reproach. He fell on April 30, 
 1524, a date which enables us to remember the close of Bonnivet's 
 second series of Italian disasters. 
 
 It would have been well if Charles had been satisfied and willing 
 to make peace, but the acquisition of a general of such power and 
 local influence as Bourbon, and probably also the counsels of the Con- 
 stable himself anxious to make a bold stroke for his promised king- 
 dom of Provence, led him to adopt a policy of aggression, the un- 
 fortunate result of which turned for the moment the tide that seemed 
 flowing in his favour. In July 1524 he despatched Bourbon and 
 Pescara into Provence with orders to take Marseilles. But the 
 design was more easily drawn up than carried out. The Marseillais 
 conducted their defence with admirable spirit of endurance and 
 self-sacrifice : for forty days they held out unsuccoured ; then Francis 
 was enabled to bring up a large force in time to save the town. The 
 siege began on August 7. The forces of Bourbon and Pescara, 
 insufficient in themselves and disabled further by the divided counsel 
 of their leaders, neither of whom had willingly undertaken the ex- 
 pedition, were obliged to draw off in disgrace : in September they 
 had to retire into Italy after the sole exploit of the capture of Aix, 
 which of course they had to leave defenceless when they retired. 
 
 Francis lost no time in making reprisals : notwithstanding the 
 lateness of the season, he crossed the Alps. It was a race between 
 him and Pescara which should first reach Milan. Pescara, who had 
 retiirned by the coast whilst Francis crossed Mont Cenis, beat him 
 by incredible exertions, biit only by a day. That day showed him 
 that he could not defend Milan in its present state and with his 
 present force. He left the city by one gate whilst Francis entered at 
 the other (October 1524). The tables were completely turned, and 
 Francis found that the powers were ready enough to salute the rising 
 sun. Henry VIII. had already cooled towards Charles ; Clement VII. 
 was ready for open hostility. 
 
 It is curious, in the midst of all these complications, to learn 
 with how small a force Charles was prepared to hold the ground 
 against his energetic rival. His whole army, Eobertson tells us, was 
 not more than 16,000 men : most of them, it is true, faithful and 
 trained Spaniards ; but yet very disproportionate to both the extent 
 of his dominions and the great and compact force that Francis was
 
 EIVALRY OF THE HOUSES OF HAPSBURG AND VALOIS 57 
 
 able to marshal against him. With 16,000 men, Bourbon, Pescara, 
 and Lannoy, the viceroy of Naples, who was Charles's representative 
 in Italy, had to hold the world, we may say, against Francis. For- 
 tunately Francis's want of generalship was in their favour. Whilst 
 Bourbon hastened into Germany to levy men on his own account, 
 and Lannoy mortgaged the revenue of Naples to obtain mercenaries 
 for the defence of that kingdom, Francis had nothing to do but over- 
 Avhelm Pescara with his scanty force. But Francis did nothing of the 
 kind : he insisted on besieging Pa via ; he invested it on October 28, a 
 fortnight after he had taken Milan ; and for nearly four months Antonio 
 de Ley va defended it against him. Not content with thus wasting time 
 he detached 6,000 men under the Duke of Albany to Naples, and so 
 left himself with a diminished force, whilst the imperialists wore 
 straining every nerve to increase their own. On February 24, 1525, 
 Charles's birthday, he attacked the army of Pescara, which was ap- 
 proaching Pavia in a faint hope of raising the siege or throwing pro- 
 visions into the city. There he was beaten and taken prisoner ; the 
 strength of his position failed him in a moment ; in a fortnight after 
 there was not a French soldier in Lombardy ; Milan surrendered 
 without a stroke, and the fortune of Charles rose higher than ever, 
 rose indeed high enough to excuse in a young man of twenty-five 
 any amount of exultation and presumption. 
 
 I may as well remark here that Eobertson's strictures on 
 Charles's conduct at this juncture, and on his character generally, 
 seem to me to be not only eminently unfair, but extraordinarily 
 superficial. The imputation of an unbounded ambition and unscru- 
 pulous insincerity is one of the most regretttible features of history- 
 writing. If Charles was unboundedly ambitious, why on earth did 
 he throughout his life content himself with simply labouring all he 
 could to secure the territory that he possessed '? He was by right 
 and title master of half of Europe ; was it a sign of unbounded am- 
 bition that ho did not choose to resign the rights and dominions 
 that he had inherited from his father ? or that he did his best to 
 establish the dominion which he held, and held for the most part 
 Vv'ithout any competitor who had even the shadow of a claim? 
 That he should regard Francis as a bitter enemy, and that he should 
 be anxious to disable him from disturbing his authority in every 
 country that bordered on his dominions, was a policy of caution, not 
 of ambition. The whole of Charles's wars were really defensive wars ; 
 his political sins and errors in the treatment of his own subjects, 
 both as touching religion and as touching constitutional liberty, 
 were sins and errors of defence, not of aggression ; the securing, as he 
 thought it, not the increasing of his power. We may ask, in what 
 war did Charles ever engage without either being provoked into it
 
 58 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1648 
 
 by intrigue or acting simply on the defensive? What territory 
 did he ever seize that was not either his own by right, or absokitely 
 necessary to the securing of his right ? An ambitious policy must 
 be aggressive : Charles's policy was never aggressive ; he made no 
 attempt on little Portugal ; Bohemia and Hungary were safe from 
 his afftrression ; the Milanese be recovered not for himself but 
 for the Sforza as against the French. In all his wars he acts like a 
 man who knows that he has as wide dominions as he can manage, 
 and who, whilst he will not listen to the proposal to diminish them, 
 certainly makes no attempt to enlarge them. Nor does his insin- 
 cerity rest on any better basis than wanton imputation, although I 
 cannot say that his character in this respect was a whit better than 
 the average political morality of his day. Anyhow, I think, having 
 got the hold on Francis that he now had, he was in the right to 
 take advantage of it and to show that such an adversary merited no 
 generosity at his hand. Francis had no claim for anything but 
 hostility from Charles. Charles at his worst is an angel of light 
 beside Francis. 
 
 The captivity of Francis lasted for eleven months, until Jan. 14, 
 1526 (treaty of Madrid). He was liberated Feb. 21, and returned 
 March 17, 1526. During this period, mark first the alteration of 
 the balance of opinion. England and Italy both saw that it would 
 be a mistake to suffer France to be overwhelmed. Henry VIII., 
 therefore, drew oft" from the Emperor, and, on the pretence that he 
 had failed to fulfil the treaty of Bruges, by which each was bound to 
 deliver up usurpers to those Avhose rights they had usurped, re- 
 nounced his alliance, and concluded one with the mother of Francis, 
 who was acting as regent during his captivity (Aug. 25, 1525). 
 Clement VII., on the other hand, miscalculated Italian opinion and 
 bought peace from Lannoy, paying for it in hard cash ; a payment 
 which enabled Lannoy to quiet his mercenaries, although Charles 
 refused to ratify the treaty. Morone, the Chancellor of Milan, the 
 chief minister of Sforza, in whose favour Charles had been lighting, 
 was afraid now of the imperial preponderance ; he proposed to 
 Pescara, who was offended by the transfer of the royal prisoners to 
 Spain, a treason which should give Italy its independence and 
 give Naples to Pescara as an independent kingdom. Pescara, how- 
 ever, showed himself to be above the bribe, and Morone drew down 
 absolute forfeiture on his unlucky master. But Morone did not 
 lose his power of intrigue, and the Pope, the Venetians, and the 
 disinherited Sforza, with the aid of Henry VIII. as patron of the 
 Holy League, formed no inconsiderable basis for a confederation 
 against Charles : this was formally arranged immediately after 
 Francis's liberation, in the treaty of Cognac, March 22, 1526.
 
 KIVALRY OF THE HOUSES OF HAPSBUEG AND VALOIS 59 
 
 Whilst these intrigues were working Charles was endeavouring 
 to get what he could out of the French king. Francis, though loth 
 to yield, was able to comfort himself with the reflexion that promises 
 and treaties made under compulsion were not binding. We need not, 
 I think, trouble ourselves about the tedious negotiations. The end was 
 the treaty of Madrid, by which Francis was released on condition of 
 sm-rendering the Burgundian duchy with its dependencies to Charles 
 in full sovereignty, and renouncing all pretensions to any part of 
 Italy, Milan, Genoa, or Naples. He was to marry the Emperor's 
 sister, to give up all claims of suzerainty over the Flemish provinces ; 
 to restore the Constable of Bourbon to his possessions ; to obtain 
 the resignation of Henri d'Albret of his rights in Navarre, and to 
 leave two of his sons as hostages with Charles for the fulfilment of 
 the treaty. Francis, before signing, executed a secret document, 
 formally disavowing any intention to keep the conditions : an act 
 vv'hich simply puts him out of the pale of historical toleration : no more 
 entire and accomplished scoundrel ever left himself without excuse. 
 Scarcely less wicked, however, was the policy of Clement VII., who, 
 as soon as the Holy League was agreed on, absolved him of his oath 
 and set him free to co-operate with the designs of the confederation 
 for the restoration of Sforza and the conquest of Naples. 
 
 Francis's intention to avoid the surrender of Burgundy was 
 early discovered by Charles. Embassies went to and fro, Charles 
 insisting and Francis offering money, but no agreement was come 
 to : the war in Italy, however, continued without Francis's aid, and 
 the Emperor had enough to do to break the strength of the 
 league alone. Bourbon had succeeded Pescara in the command of 
 the imperial forces in Italy, and he was able to compel Sforza to 
 surrender Milan, and took possession of the duchy which Charles 
 was to bestow on him as duke. Thus the Sforza branch of the 
 conspiracy was broken. Clement VII. was next detached ; and this 
 by intrigue ; Hugh de Moncada, the imperial envoy, persuaded the 
 Colonnas to take up arms and besiege the Pope ; then offered his 
 services as mediator, and, as one condition of restoration, persuaded 
 the Pope to recall his forces : this for the moment reduced the league 
 to inactivity. The second great crisis of the war was brought on 
 by the conduct of Bourbon, who indeed was in this matter hardly 
 a free agent ; for he was a desperate outlawed man, knowing that 
 he had been deceived and victimised on all hands, and that a 
 desperate death was his only release. He had brought down, at the 
 end of 1526, a large force of Germans whom he was put to his wits' 
 end to pay : men whom Lutheranism had so far touched as to make 
 them careless of all religion, and unbridled in their appetite for 
 plunder. Nor were they all Germans ; they were, like the medieval
 
 f 
 
 00 LEr'TUnES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, lol9-lGt8 
 
 mercenaries, the offscouring of the earth. To satisfy these men 
 with phmder, he Avas compelled to march southwards ; and as 
 Clement had, as soon as he got his forces hack to Rome, expelled 
 the Colonnas and joined in the French attack on Naples, he directed 
 the march on Rome, where I need hardly tell you he perished in the 
 assault, seeking death, and leaving the capital of Christendom to 
 sack and outrage (May 7, 1;'j27). The news of the capture of 
 Rome and the imprisonment of the Pope roused the whole of Europe. 
 Henry and Francis became now close friends : the Florentines 
 expelled the Medici ; the Venetians shamelessly seized Ravenna 
 from their friend and ally the Pope ; Francis prepared for war in 
 Lombardy and an invasion of Naples. When the measures of 
 Henry and Francis were taken, and the mask of negotiation thrown 
 off, their heralds formally denounced war against Charles and 
 presented their defiance. Charles accepted that of Henry ; Francis 
 he declared a renegade and faithless. This produced a challenge 
 from Francis, which Charles accepted for single combat ; but the 
 duel never took place. 
 
 ]\Ieanwhile the imperial forces remained unmanageable and 
 losing time at Rome : both the Pope and their own generals equally 
 anxious to get rid of them. After six months of imprisonment and 
 negotiation, Clement, in December 1527, escaped in disguise from 
 Rome ; and, the bird being flown, the armies were at last free to 
 depart, war being now openly proclaimed. The year 1528 is full of 
 the brilliant exploits of Lautrec, who in this last year of his life 
 amply redeemed all his former failures. Under him the French 
 forces reconquered Lombardy, and almost conquered Naples. With 
 the assistance of Filippino Doria he blockaded the capital, and 
 defeated the Spanish fleet. But the success of the French in 
 Naples, like that of the Germans in Rome, was short-lived. It 
 expired at the death of Lautrec by plague, Aug. 15, 1528. Nor were 
 his exploits in Lombardy more permanent in effect. The Count of 
 St. Pol sacked Pavia in the same month of August, but the troops 
 were entirely demoralised. Filippino Doria rapidly changed sides 
 at the persuasion of his uncle Andrea, and joined the Emperor, 
 relieved Naples and then seized Genoa, where he restored the re- 
 public, so long in abeyance under French protection or domination. 
 
 These reverses convinced Francis that it was time to submit to 
 the exigencies of his bad luck. His sons must even be ransomed : 
 his manoeuvres, intrigues, and forces had all been wasted ; only he 
 had gained time and the chance that he might in freedom make 
 better terms than he had been able to do in captivity. His mother 
 Louise, and her sister-in-law Margaret of Savoy, were the mediators ; 
 and by their efforts the peace of Cambrai was negotiated, to which —
 
 KIVALEY OF THE HOUSES OF HAPSBURG AND VALOIS 61 
 
 after a short campaign in Lombardy in 1529, in which A. de Leyva 
 took the Count of St. Pol, the French general, and destroyed his 
 army — Francis agreed. This treaty was settled on August 3. 
 Two million crowns were paid for the release of the hostages ; 
 Francis gave up his rights over Flanders and Artois and renounced 
 all claims on Italy ; he undertook also to complete the negotiation 
 for marriage with Queen Eleanor of Portugal. The Emperor, on 
 his part, gave up his designs on Burgundy. So peace was made for 
 the time ; and the treaty of Barcelona, between Charles and the 
 Pope (June 29, 1529), made shortly before that of Cambrai, 
 restored the Medici to Florence, and abolished the papal rights over 
 Naples, completed the general pacification. 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 THE REFOEMATION TO THE DIET OF AUGSBUEG, 1530 
 
 Among all the events which give the sixteenth century its peculiar 
 character in history none is more important than that movement, or 
 series of movements, which goes under the name of Eeformation. 
 It is, indeed, this, with the accumulation of power in the Hapsburg 
 family, which makes the distinctive mark between the medieval and 
 the modern ; but the influence of the Hapsburgs broke up gradually 
 and was wasted after the death of Charles V. by division between the 
 Spanish and German branches ; that of the Reformation has gone 
 on, for good or for evil, gradually gathering into itself a variety of 
 other elements, dynastic, local, national, and political, until it has 
 underlain, more or less near to the surface, almost every struggle since 
 the century in which it originated. If there had been no Reformation 
 there would have been perhaps no [French] Revolution — at all events 
 not a revolution in which the defiance of God was as clearly and loudly 
 proclaimed as was the overthrow of all the laws of human society ; 
 and without the Reformation the schism between North and South 
 Germany, exhibited in the wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and 
 nineteenth centuries, would have taken some other way of developing. 
 I say this without any reflection on the tenets of the reformers. I 
 do not say that their doctrines led the way to either of these sets of 
 consequences : there were other causes at work, but the religious one 
 was a good colourable cause, and it mixed with, and gave its colour 
 to, many others which had little in common with, in particular, the 
 cause of liberty, as it is called. 
 
 The yoke of the Church of Rome was in many respects a heavy
 
 62 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 yoke at the beginning of the century : an escape from it was freedom, 
 even if it were an escape ending in the still bitterer thraldom of 
 Puritanism. Puritanism of your own choice was regawled as greater 
 freedom than Roman laxity if such were your father's choice for you. 
 And so traditionally Puritanism in religion has been connected with 
 freedom in politics ; not that they have anything in common save 
 chance resistance to one authority, an authority which the politician 
 would destroy to substitute a more voluntary keeping of law and 
 a greater share of individual responsibility in the subject, but which 
 the Puritan would destroy to set up a more grinding religious 
 tyranny of his own. I intend in this course to steer clear of the 
 religious part of the Beformation history : as clear as I can. But it 
 will be necessary, before we can estimate its political importance, to 
 mention some of its causes and some of the reasons which made it 
 an expression of the religious as well as of the political tendencies 
 of the age. And in Germany itself, I think, it was a more religious 
 movement than it was in England, or in any part of Europe where 
 it was finally successful ; for there it began in religious questions, 
 and was taken up only later by politicians. It cannot be said that, 
 independent of political support, the Reformation has triumphed in 
 any nation. In England its success was certainly political rather 
 than religious. In France it was political as well as religious, and 
 in France it was beaten. In Germany it was political after having 
 been first religious, and in North Germany at least it succeeded. In 
 Spain and Italy, where it was mainly a matter of religion, learning, 
 and cultivation, it was thoroughly stamped out. 
 
 The religious movement of the Reformation was occasioned by a 
 revolt against the doctrinal teaching of the Roman Church ; the 
 political movement by a desire amongst princes and nobles to appro- 
 priate to themselves the extensive wealth and territorial property and 
 jurisdictions which had accumulated in the hands of churchmen. 
 In England this took the form of the plunder of the monasteries and 
 the greater churches ; but as the bishops and clergy had no great 
 territorial jurisdictions, they did not afford the same inducements to 
 secularisation that the great German churches did ; and there can 
 be little doubt that, humanly speaking, it was to this, the absence of 
 this temptation to greedy princes, that we owe the maintenance of 
 Church discipline and organisation here ; if we had had archbishops 
 like Mentz, Cologne, Treves, and Magdeburg in the sixteenth century, 
 we should have had none at all in the nineteenth. Now, curiously 
 enough, the great endowments, immunities, and jurisdictions of the 
 German churches had been heaped on them for the very purpose the 
 fulfilment of which was the real ground of offence against them in 
 the eyes of sixteenth-centm-y politicians. Some of them, no doubt,
 
 THE KEFORMATION TO THE DIET OF AUGSBUEG, loSO 63 
 
 had been purchased by ambitious prelates, or were the vohintary 
 offerings of too superstitious sovereigns ; but the larger portion 
 were the deliberate gift of kings and emperors who were anxious (1) 
 to prevent private wars among the vassals of the Empire, (2) to 
 retain in their own hands the nomination to the temporal govern- 
 ment of some extensive portion of their dominions ; and (3) to pre- 
 vent the accumulation of too wide stretches of territory in the hands 
 of one man or of one family. The jurisdiction of the never-dying 
 Church corporation could never be gathered in by marriage or 
 escheat into the neighbouring lay principality ; and so long as the 
 ecclesiastical principalities were widely scattered between the terri- 
 tories of the jealous princes, a very great difficulty was interposed 
 against the prevalence of private wars. Thus the secular character of 
 the bishoprics had its good side as well as its bad ; and even the bad, 
 bad as it is, may be exaggerated ; although the prelates were them- 
 selves ministers, judges, sovereign princes, politicians, and, in some 
 few instances, warriors, yet the spiritual Avelfare of the people was not 
 toholly neglected, as might be expected. Every prince bishop had 
 his staff of suffragans, or curate bishops, who did the spiritual work 
 for him, and the spiritual work of the lower clergy must be freely 
 allowed for when we are estimating by a modern standard the over- 
 engrossing secularity of the higher clergy, the canons of the chapters, 
 and the heads of the great monastic communities. 
 
 In reading any history of the Reformation written by a German, 
 or drawn, as most of our own are, from German sources, it seems to 
 us curious that the German mind contrives to confound so thoroughly 
 these two elements : it almost looks as if the writers thought the 
 Reformation was called for as much by the faults of the episcopal 
 system as by the Roman depravations of doctrine : it certainly looks like 
 a consciousness that without the more vulgar, the more popular, the 
 more easily understood cry, the religious movement would have failed 
 to become popular amongst the classes who were then the arbiters 
 of change. I believe that this is a mistake on their part : I believe that 
 the ecclesiastical territories were better and not worse governed than 
 the secular principalities, that there was less taxation and less war, 
 more education, commerce, and care taken in the development of re- 
 sources. It is impossible to blame the present holders of unpopular 
 jurisdictions for their administration of a system which has coitie 
 down to them from many generations, unless they can be shown to 
 have refused improvement. On a broad political view the true 
 objection is not to the existence of ecclesiastical jurisdictions or prin- 
 cipalities, but to the subdivision of a national unity into irresponsible 
 jurisdictions and principalities at all. Religiously regarded, the 
 system has scarcely a redeeming feature.
 
 64 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Well, the desire of increasing territory and exercising the rights 
 of independent princes to prey upon one another was, I am convinced, 
 the political cause of the German Keformation. -And, curiously 
 enough, in Germany as in England, the example was set in that 
 direction by the party which afterwards was to lose so largely by it. 
 It Avas Wolsey's dissolution of the minor monasteries to support his 
 new foundation w^hich is now Christ Church that set the inviting 
 bait before the hungry courtiers and the greedy King ; and so in 
 Germany it was the purchase and secularisation of the bishopric of 
 Utrecht by Charles V. which opened the eyes of the electors and other 
 princes to the prospect of being able to round off and increase their 
 own possessions by similar dealings. The full fruit of this does not 
 appear until the following century, and the entire secularisation of 
 these territories was deferred until the Revolution in which the ancient 
 Empire itself collapsed. 
 
 Into the history of the religious movement I shall not go 
 minutely, but I must state one or two things which it seems to me 
 are generally overlooked or misstated. And in the first place about 
 the invention of printing. It is often argued that the invention of 
 printing Avas an important contribution to the cause of reformation, 
 because it multiplied books and placed the means of reading and 
 forming a judgment within the reach of all of those who had been 
 neglected and mistaught and were now able to detect the errors and 
 ignorances of their misleaders. This is an exaggeration — great as 
 the powder of the press became in its earliest days, it could not edu- 
 cate as fast as it could print, nor could the invention of printing, 
 scarcely fifty years before Luther began to preach, have produced any 
 such change in the minds and powers of the people amongst whom 
 his first successes lay. But in one way it certainly did affect the 
 question, and that so as to put the two parties on an equality. It 
 multiplied books and facilitated the acquisition of knowledge, but it 
 also made the means of knowledge too common to be precious. 
 Whilst books were scarce, books were very precious ; and a man of 
 learning was, not the man who knew how to find what he wanted in 
 a great library, but the man who had read every book he could lay 
 hold on and studied it and had its stores at his command. The very 
 scarceness of books made them more greedily, more carefully studied. 
 The learned man of the fifteenth century was a very prodigy of learn- 
 ing ; the learned man of the sixteenth was not the man who had his 
 knowledge in his head, but who could refer to books. If the Roman 
 Church had had in the early part of the sixteenth century a few such 
 theologians as she had at the Council of Basel, she might, for the 
 learned half of the world, have turned back the tide of the Reformation. 
 As it was, her clergy, and even her students, were ignorant under the
 
 THE REFORMATION TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, 1530 65 
 
 overwhelming pressure of the regenerated literature ; and the adver- 
 saries were more learned, for they were the aggressors and had taken 
 care to polish their controversial armour and look well to the weapons 
 of defence as well as of attack. The great weak point of the Koman 
 theologians was the neglect of the study of the Holy Scriptures, 
 
 But again the Renaissance, the restoration of learning, is some- 
 times alleged as a contributing cause of the Keformation, because it 
 restored the studies of the Greek language and the New Testament 
 in the original tongue, and m general awoke the minds of mankind 
 to new truths. Now this is only true within a limit. It certainly 
 opened the Greek Testament and other Greek treasures to the 
 learned ; but it was not by the learned that the Reformation was 
 popularised nor was it popular among them, the people who 
 did work out the Reformation were not learned in these ways. 
 Erasmus, the typical man of the Renaissance, never left the Church 
 of Rome. Rather I should say that the Renaissance was in its 
 essence a pagan revival, and had little else to do with the Reforma- 
 tion than that it opened men's minds — that is, the minds of men 
 who were liable to its influences — to the existence of strange forms 
 of thought ; it helped by shaking, by being one of the subordinate 
 causes of the shaking of the fabric of society. Nowhere was the 
 influence of the Renaissance more deeply felt than at Rome : yet was 
 Rome enlightened by it '? Nay, truly she was heathenised, and it 
 was her heathenising that gave umbrage to the reformers and that 
 gave them, moreover, much of their vantage-ground against her. No : 
 although there is much in German Protestantism which is painful to 
 an historically inclined mind, I do not think that its source was either 
 in the printing press of Mentz or in the opened sluices of Greek and 
 Latin paganism. During the whole of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, there had been an acknowledgment of the need of reforma- 
 tion in the Church, in her practices, and very especially in her dis- 
 cipline. There were unquestionably men ardently bent on reforma- 
 tion in these respects who were as firmly as ever attached to her 
 dogmatic teaching ; there were others whom the urgent necessity of 
 reformation in one point led to believe in an equal necessity for 
 reformation in another, men who in some cases, like that of Wiclif, 
 remained in the Church criticising and rejecting the authoritative 
 dogmas as well as the delinquent discipline ; and others, hke the 
 Lollards, who went out of the Church rather than be partakers of 
 what they thought her abominations. But in both sorts of men we 
 should, I think, give credit to the best and most learned for a true 
 zeal for righteousness. 
 
 The great cry in the fifteenth century was for reformation by a 
 general council : the great schism of the West, the spectacle of two, 
 
 F
 
 G6 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 three, or four rival Popes, had broken up the perfectness of the idea 
 of unity in the Western Church : the Court of Eome had lost its 
 supremacy, and that supremacy must be regained. - It \Yas not that 
 reformation was objectionable, but reformation without a general 
 council was impossible, and a general council carried to its legitimate 
 results could not but end- in the depression of the See of Rome. 
 That could not be thought of for an instant. And, besides this 
 desire of reformation, there were already in different countries of 
 Europe, although unconnected, so far as we can see, with one 
 another, societies of men who were persuaded that they had 
 purer and clearer views of divine truth than the Roman Church 
 taught or suffered to be propounded to the faithful. And all these, 
 if it were simply in the way of negation, had something in common. 
 Such were the Waldenses of the Swiss mountains, the mystics of 
 Germany, the Lollards in England, the Hussites in Bohemia : all 
 of different race, of different tenets, different history, and different 
 motives for reformation, but all at one in the rejection of the 
 dogmatic pressure of Rome. These men had little to do with the 
 actual machinery of the Reformation. The Lollard movement in 
 England was a criminal one in the eyes of those who set the stone 
 of reformation rolling : the Hussite movement in Bohemia was 
 anti-German as well as anti-Roman ; there is the utmost difficulty 
 in establishing any actual string of connexion between the Vaudois 
 and any reformed party ; but they were more remotely helping-causes 
 to change. They were monuments of the existence of schools of 
 thought and dogma which survived notwithstanding the hostility of 
 Rome ; nay, such was the Greek Church itself. All these, the 
 negative characteristics of the Reformation gradually absorbed ; and 
 whilst they unite on the ground of common antipathy to Rome, 
 each of them loses its individuality gradually, and is lost in the 
 general stream of the Reformed or Protestant Churches. 
 
 Yet, when all things are considered — and I maintain that the 
 sincerest Protestant is quite at liberty to form his own idea of the 
 wisdom or necessity of a reformation, and of the acts of each 
 influential reformer — nay, that he should do so as a duty, on the 
 best information within his reach — when all these things are 
 considered and even the lowest estimate of the motive causes is 
 adopted, still the change is a very wonderful and historically a most 
 important one. The accumulation at one point of time of so many 
 various influences in one direction ; the contemporaneous fruit- 
 bearing of a quantity of growths that had been advancing with no 
 mutual acquaintance for ages ; the co-operation in the same work of 
 the mistakes and vices of Popes ; the lusts, avarices, and ambitions 
 of princes ; the learning of the one side, and the ignorance of the
 
 THE REFORMATION TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, 1630 67 
 
 other : the almost accidental appearance of some of the most 
 powerful causes, occasions, or influences ; the divorce, for instance, 
 of Catharine of Aragon, or the pecuniary distresses of Leo X., and 
 the common tendency of these to the break-up of Eoman power — 
 the coincidence of all these things makes a problem which 
 philosophy cannot account for. We can but say with humihty, ' It 
 was so, for the time was come.' 
 
 But we must now try to form an idea of the chronological 
 sequence of the events of the German Reformation. The opening 
 scenes of the German Reformation are familiar to us all, I suppose : 
 the pecuniary exigencies of Leo X., and his issue of indulgences as 
 a means of raising money towards the rebuilding of St. Peter's ; the 
 judicial bhndness which seems to have fallen upon both the Eoman 
 Court and its servants in Germany ; the barefaced imposture of 
 Tetzel and the Dominicans, to whom the sale of the indulgences 
 was entrusted ; the grief of the reHgious of all sentiments in 
 Germany ; the intense indignation of men like Martin Luther. As 
 to the early history of Luther I shall say nothing, but simply 
 warn you against receiving as historical much of the mythical detail 
 which three centuries of German Protestantism have evolved out of 
 its own consciousness touching their great national hero. For 
 Luther is no less, and, with all his faults, is lowered rather than 
 raised by posthumous adulation. There is no occasion even to 
 regard him as a deep student until his indignation was roused by 
 the impudence and impiety of the Dominicans : their outcry awoke 
 him, friar as he was himself, and made him search to the very root 
 of the matter. As for the dates of his life, he was born in 1483 ; 
 entered the University of Erfurt in 1501 ; became an Austin friar 
 and was ordained ; in 1508 became professor of philosophy in the 
 newly founded University of Wittenberg on the nomination of 
 Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, who stood his friend as long 
 as he himself lived ; in 1510 visited Rome and saw it in the heyday 
 of its wickedness under Julius II. ; there also he perhaps picked 
 up some of the cultivation of the Renaissance, as we are told that 
 on his return he devoted himself to the demolition of the scLtlastic 
 method. 
 
 Both as a teacher and as a priest he had acquired considerable 
 influence when the sale of indulgences was proclaimed : as a 
 scholar he knew the history of these inventions and how altogether 
 baseless was the idea which the vendors of them attempted to spread 
 amongst the people ; as a confessor also he knew the deadly mis- 
 chief they were doing to men's souls. His nailing to the door of the 
 great church at Wittenberg his ninety-five theses was the first 
 overt act of the German Reformation ; this was done on August 31,
 
 68 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 1517. Maximilian, you must remember, was yet King of Germany, 
 Frederick the Wise, Luther's patron, was Maximilian's confidential 
 friend. Albert of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mentz, and, as 
 being also Archbishop of Magdeburg, Luther's ecclesiastical superior, 
 was a man of fair and grave mind, and far from severe, always 
 intent on the mean, and accused by both parties in after years of 
 a leaning to compromise ; a man who, so far as Luther had yet 
 gone, must have had more sympathy with him than with Tetzel, 
 although it was owing to his debt to the Pope, for his pall, that the 
 sale of indulgences was introduced into Germany. Leo and he had 
 agreed to go shares. Nor could there fail to be much feeling in 
 Germany, so heavily taxed already for ecclesiastical and papal pur- 
 poses, on a question of money. 
 
 Tetzel was not wanting in courage : within a month after the 
 promulgation of Luther's theses he attacked Luther at Frankfort. 
 In .January the next year (1518) the two friars had a disputation 
 on indulgences at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. The Dominican Order 
 took up the question. Prierias, Hochstraten, and Eck wrote against 
 Luther, who, finding that the controversy was extending to matters 
 of doctrinal importance, wrote to the Pope his willingness to submit, 
 if on due examination of his opinions he should be convicted of 
 error. The Dominican interest was strong at Kome, and the Pope 
 was urged to summon Luther thither for trial. Leo, who cared far 
 more about the money than the doctrine of the indulgences, after 
 some hesitation complied, and after issuing the summons was con- 
 firmed in his determination by a letter which Maximilian had been 
 persuaded to write in which he described the threatened division or 
 schism in Germany. Luther was summoned to appear within sixty 
 days at Kome ; but the Elector, fearful of losing his professor and 
 of bringing discredit on his university in case he should be convicted, 
 forbade him to leave Germany, insisting that the offence, if it were 
 an offence, should be tried by the competent authorities on the spot. 
 With this demand Leo complied, and ordered Luther to appear at 
 Augsburg before Cardinal Cajetan. In October 1518 Luther 
 attended the Cardinal, who was himself a Dominican and a very 
 learned scholastic : it was unfortunate that he should be made judge 
 in a cause in which the interests of his order and even those of 
 scholasticism itself were involved. Luther was treated by him as 
 guilty, and ordered to recant. He replied by an appeal to the Pope 
 when better informed. Leo, without taking the trouble to inform 
 himself, published an edict (November 9, 1518) requiring all 
 Christians to believe that he could remit the penalty of all sins : 
 Luther replied (November 28) by appealing to a general council. 
 Cajelan having failed, the divine and scholar, Leo chose a new
 
 THE EEFORMATION TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, 1530 69 
 
 sort of legate, Charles von Miltitz, a Saxon instead of a Roman, a 
 knight instead of a friar, and a canonist instead of a scholastic ; and 
 with him sent to the Elector the golden rose. Miltitz, in 1519 and 
 1620, had several arguments with Luther, and on one occasion even 
 prevailed on him to submit so far as to promise to be silent if his 
 adversaries would let him alone. But his adversaries were not so 
 accommodating. Eck on the Papal side, and Carlstadt on the side 
 of Luther, would have a disputation on free-will at Leipzig, July 
 1519 ; and when they had done Luther and Eck had a discussion on 
 the power of the Pope. Neither convinced the other, but Luther so 
 offended Eck that he posted off to Rome and there persuaded Leo, 
 without regarding the mediation of Charles von Miltitz, to publish a 
 bull of condemnation of the tenets of Luther. This was done 
 June 15, 1520. Maximilian had died a year ago, and although 
 Frederick the Wise was staunch to Luther he had not much to hope 
 from the new Emperor-elect. Yet Luther was bold enough to 
 challenge both Church and State. He burned the bull and a copy 
 of the canon law with it (December 10, 1520), and three weeks 
 after, January 4, 1521, was excommunicated by a second bull. 
 
 Leo did not confine himself to spiritual sentences ; he urged the 
 Emperor Charles, who was still in Germany, to punish the refractory 
 friar, who, having gained notoriety and gathered friends, the chief of 
 whom was the learned Philip Melanchthon, was teaching heresy with 
 more popularity than ever. Charles was very much attached to 
 Frederick, and determined that Luther should have fair play : but he 
 could not refuse the Papal request. He summoned Luther therefore 
 to Worms ; and before the Diet, which also was a national or provincial 
 council of the German nation, Luther argued his own cause on 
 April 17 and 18, 1521. Charles had promised him a safe-conduct, 
 and this promise he was determined not to break ; Luther was suffered 
 to depart before the sentence was pronounced ; but when it was pro- 
 nounced it was conclusive against him. The Emperor and the 
 princes declared him and his proselytes to be enemies of the Empire 
 and to be treated as such. And Frederick, fearful of something 
 worse happening to him, carried him off to his castle on the 
 Wartburg and kept him quietly there for ten months ; he returned to 
 Wittenberg in March 1522. Leo X. by that time was dead, and, we 
 may charitably suppose, had learned the true value of an indulgence. 
 
 Adrian VI. was a better and wiser man ; but he could not afford 
 to spare Luther : he sent to the princes praying that the sentence of 
 outlawry against the reformer might be duly executed ; and he 
 would promise a remedy of the evils which had caused him to be 
 tolerated. The princes replied by demanding a freer council, and 
 presenting a hundred gravamina, waiting for the redress of these
 
 70 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 before they would trouble tliemselves about Luther. So he had 
 rest durinf,' the life of Adrian. Clement VII., who succeeded in 
 November 1523, was a different man. He was a Medici, an Italian, 
 and a kinsman of Leo X. ; he was ready to insist on the punishment 
 of Luther. Cardinal Campeggio, in a Diet at Worms in 1524, and 
 the Emperor also, by his minister, urged that it should be done. 
 The princes were willing to use Luther as a tool : they were ready 
 to sacrifice him if he must be sacrificed, but until they were obliged 
 to do so they would keep him as a pledge for the future reforms. 
 When the reforms were settled Luther might go. He had really 
 but a small number of powerful friends ; the Duke of Saxony was 
 as yet only a protector, not a proselyte : his chief followers were 
 among the learned in the universities and the burghers in the free 
 towns. Still he profited by the determination of the Diet for 
 reform : all questions besides that of a council were postponed to 
 the next Diet at Speyer : the legate, with a number of prelates, 
 adjourned to Ratisbon and there prevailed on them to undertake to 
 carry out the sentence in their own dominions. 
 
 But now a storm had arisen on which neither Luther nor his ad- 
 versaries had calculated, and which served at least to gain time — 
 the Peasants' War of 1525. Luther's enemies laid the blame of this 
 insurrection on the new religious teaching, unfairly, for Luther both 
 preached and wrote laboriously against the madness of the people. 
 Whilst this continued nothing was done with regard to religion. 
 The Peasants' War ended at the battle of Miilhausen in 1525. It 
 was not until 1526 that the Diet of Speyer assembled. By this time 
 two great events had changed the prospects of the reformers. 
 Frederick of Saxony died in 1525, and Luther, instead of a mild pro- 
 tector such as he had had in him, gained in his successor, John the 
 Constant, an enthusiastic supporter. By John's endeavours, Philip 
 the Magnanimous, landgrave of Hesse, was brought over ; George of 
 Brandenburg-Anspach, finding that his subjects in Franconia were 
 eagerly receiving the new doctrines, visited Luther privately and 
 came away a convert ; so that at the Diet the reforming party was 
 not unrepresented in the highest benches. But a second point was 
 this : the controversy with Rome had now developed far beyond the 
 question of indulgences or even that of the power of the Pope him- 
 self. Luther had begun to study the books of Holy Scripture deeply, 
 and had translated and published them one after another. Other 
 schools of reform had sprung up prepared to go to much greater 
 lengths than Luthor : on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there 
 was a division between the Swiss and Germans ; nay, there was 
 a schism within the Lutheran body, if it can be called a body, itself. 
 But this is not a question for us now.
 
 THE REFORMATION TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, 1.330 71 
 
 The first Diet of Speyer met in 1526 : Ferdinand of Austria pre- 
 siding as his brother's representative. It went off in every Vv'ay like 
 the former ones. The Emperor insisted verbpJly on the execution of 
 the sentence of Worms, but also that all contention on the subject 
 of religion should cease. He, however, took no measures to carry 
 out either one command or the other. The princes, as usual, prayed 
 for a free council, and urged that, until that should be held and the 
 points in debate decided, all should be allowed to think and manage 
 the religious affairs of their estates as they thought fit. These 
 wishes were embodied in a petition to the Emperor, who was now 
 (1527) actually at war with the Pope. 
 
 Again the secular quarrels gave the reformers a respite from per- 
 secution, and they now began to form themselves into something 
 like a party organisation. The German states had always conceived 
 themselves at liberty to form voluntary associations, leagues, or con- 
 federacies, for the carrying into effect of designs not proscribed by 
 law, or which the law, as administered in Germany, was unable to 
 carry into effect for itself. Such leagues were those of the fourteenth 
 century between local clusters of states for the purpose of enforcing 
 peace : such was the Vehmgericht, more or less, in Westphalia : and 
 out of these voluntary associations Albert II. first, and Maximilian 
 after him, had created the system of jurisdiction by means of circles, 
 which had done so much since the century began to consolidate and 
 pacify Germany. Some such association had been created by the 
 princes for the putting down of the Peasants' War in 1525 ; that 
 had suggested to the more papal of the princes a similar confederacy 
 against the reformers ; and this fact, or the suspicion of it, had 
 moved the reformers to adopt the same plan. In May 1527 the 
 Elector of Saxony, John the Constant, and the landgrave of Hesse, 
 Philip the Magnanimous, joined in a league for mutual defence ; and 
 they were soon joined by some of the free towns. John the Constant 
 further held a visitation of his dominions, in which Luther and 
 Melanchthon took part ; and finding the ignorance of priests and 
 people beyond what they had imagined, Luther undertook the com- 
 position of Catechisms for them : new forms of worship were intro- 
 duced into Saxony, and the Elector took advantage of the absence of 
 the Emperor and his quarrel with the Pope to make proselytes in 
 every quarter. But of course this state of things could not continue 
 long. The day of grace drew to a close when Charles signed the peace 
 of Barcelona in 1529 and embarked for Italy to receive the imperial 
 crown. Preparatory to this peace the second Diet of Speyer was held 
 in the spring of 1529. In that assembly the resolution of the Diet 
 of 1526 was rescinded : instead of leaving each prince free to manage 
 his own religious affairs, the Diet determined to enforce uniformity ;
 
 72 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, lol9-lG48 
 
 and prohibited as unlawful all changes in the worship of the Church, 
 until the council so often asked for should be at last held and should 
 decide. This was a reversal of the policy of the forrner Diets, and 
 was probably a concession to imperial pressure. It fell heavily on 
 the newly formed association ; and John of Saxony and George of 
 Brandenburg publicly remonstrated against it. Their remonstrance 
 took the juridical form of a protest, which was handed in to the 
 legate and Ferdinand on April 19, 1529 ; and the title of protest 
 earned for the remonstrants the title which has since become common 
 to all the reformed communities of Protestants. The protestants 
 on this occasion were John of Saxony, George of Brandenburg, 
 Ernest and PhiHp of Liineburg, Philip of Hesse, and Wolfgang of 
 Anhalt : all, you observe, except Brandenburg, the strength of 
 which lay in Franconia about Nuremberg, all North German States 
 under the influence of the Saxon Elector, and perhaps scarcely less 
 under the influence of the old Saxon spirit; strong in personal 
 piety, and also strongly opposed to an imperial policy. The fourteen 
 imperial towns which joined them were chiefly in South Germany, 
 where indeed free towns abounded more : the chief was Nuremberg, 
 but Strassburg, Dim, and Constance were also of great importance ; 
 nor had the others as yet sunk into that torpor, commercial and 
 political, into which they afterwards subsided. 
 
 But a mere protest did not, however well supported, carry with 
 it the effect of law. The Emperor himself was coming shortly into 
 Germany, and for him a declaration of the tenets of the reformers 
 must be prepared. Luther drew up the basis in seventeen articles : 
 which were rearranged by Melanchthon in scholarlike form in 
 twenty-eight : and these, known as the Confession of Augsburg, 
 were presented to Charles at the Diet there on June 25, 1530. With 
 the presentation of the Confession and the consequent formation of 
 the Smalkaldic league, which was in reality but the organisation of 
 the earlier league of 1526, with extended purposes, the first phase of 
 the German Reformation ends. 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 WARS OF CHARLES V. FROM 1529 TO THE TRUCE OF NICE, 1538 
 
 We have now brought down the history of Charles, in a sort of out- 
 line, to the peace of Cambrai, and, anticipating a little, the process 
 of the German Reformation to the second Diet of Speyer, the date 
 at which it becomes a political as well as a religious movement.
 
 WARS OF CHAELES V. FEOM 1529 TO 1538 73 
 
 Hitherto, with the exception of the campaign at Pavia, the main 
 interest has lain outside of Italy, although it was in Italy and by 
 Italians that the strings of politics were in a great measure pulled. 
 Charles himself had been occupied chiefly in Spain, somewhat in 
 the Netherlands, somewhat in Germany. Now, however, we have 
 to take him to Italy. We can no longer object to run our heads 
 into the wonderful cobweb of Italian politics, and we must go there 
 awhile to note the springs of the changes that were now about to take 
 place. For a change of partners and pieces is coming on. Bourbon 
 and Wolsey are disappearing : the connexion of Charles V. with Henry 
 VIII. is broken, and a close league between England and France has 
 now succeeded : the Reformation and the opposition to it are changing 
 their character, or the character of their weapons of warfare ; and we 
 look for the beginning of a new period during which the successes of 
 the Emperor will no longer be as decided or continuous as they have 
 hitherto been. From 1522 to 1529 Charles had been in Spain ; in 
 August 1529, after signing the treaty of Barcelona with the Pope, he 
 embarked on board the fleet of Andrea Doria, and landed at 
 Genoa on the 12th of the same month. I propose now to take a 
 review of the state of Italy, territorially rather than politically, from 
 the beginning of the century, so as to enable us, in some measure, 
 to unravel some of the leading complications which in the earlier 
 lectures we have had to take for granted. 
 
 The kingdom of Naples has, throughout medieval history, a more 
 puzzling series of revolutions than any other state in Europe, 
 Hungary excepted. For our present purpose, however, it is only 
 necessary to remember that Sicily had, since the thirteenth century, 
 belonged to the royal house of Aragon, whilst Naples had been held 
 by princes of the two lines of Anjou, French in origin and by 
 alliance. In the middle of the fifteenth century, Alfonso of Aragon 
 had got possession of the mainland as well as of the island, and 
 henceforth the Angevin kings, of whom Eene, father of our Queen 
 Margaret of Anjou, is the best known to us, had been titular only. 
 Alfonso had left Naples to an illegitimate son : Sicily and Aragon 
 going to his brother, John, father of Ferdinand the Catholic. The 
 illegitimate dynasty was ruined by Charles VIII.'s invasion of Italy, 
 one object of which was to vindicate his right to Naples, as testamen- 
 tary heir of the Angevin race of kings : but the French influence was 
 short-lived : Ferdinand of Aragon stepped in and ousted both com- 
 petitors, proclaimed himself the successor of his uncle Alfonso, and, 
 supported by the victories of Gonzalvo of Cordova, the last Spanish 
 hero of the medieval type, maintained himself from 1501 onwards 
 in Naples, and left the kingdom to his grandson Charles in 1516. 
 From the date of Ferdinand's conquest, Naples was governed by
 
 74 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 viceroys. Gonzalvo of Cordova was the first ; Don John of Aragon, 
 Count of Ribagorsa, the second. Don Rainiond de Cardona was 
 viceroy at Charles's accession ; he died in 1522. Charles de Lannoy, 
 a Fleming by birth, was the next viceroy ; he, as we have seen, was 
 Charles's general in Lombardy after the death of Bourbon, and he 
 it was who had the task of repulsing the attacks on Naples which 
 followed the peace of Madrid ; he died, however, in 1527. His suc- 
 cessors were Hugo de Moncada, who fell in the attack of Filippino 
 Doria on Naples in 1528; Philibert, Prince of Orange ; Ponipeo 
 Colonna, 1529 ; Pedro de Toledo, marquis of Villafranca, whose 
 viceroyalty lasted until 1553. These viceroys had their authority 
 fettered by what was termed the Collateral Council of two, three, 
 or four regents, as they were called, one of whom attended on the 
 King in person to advise him on Italian subjects. In lieu of a 
 single regent in attendance, Philip II. in 1558 instituted an 
 Italian council. The effect of this machinery was to withdraw the 
 several departments of government from native hands to Spanish 
 ones, and so to prevent the cordial union of the countries. But the 
 assembly of the estates, the nobility and commons, on the strictest 
 feudal model, continued to be called, and by it only taxation could 
 be decreed. 
 
 Proceeding northward we come on the Papal dominions. Since 
 the century opened we have seen four very conspicuous Popes, 
 Alexander VI., Julius II., Leo X., and Clement VII. : and we may 
 trace in them the development of a new and altogether secular policy 
 on the part of the heads of the Church ; the determined purpose to 
 found in their own families, not merely a noble and wealthy house 
 within, but a territorial principality outside the States of the 
 Church. Alexander VI. had done this for Cffisar Borgia, and Julius II. 
 for his nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere, out of the duchy of 
 Urbino. Paul III., later on, did the same for the Farnese out 
 of Parma and Piacenza. Leo X. and Clement VII. devoted their 
 political influence to establishing the sovereignty of their own 
 kinsfolk, the Medici, in Florence. At the end of the century the 
 Papal policy changed, and Urbino (1631) and Ferrara (1597) also 
 were added to the estates of the See. 
 
 As we advance northwards we come on the territories of the re- 
 publics, many of which still existed. Florence itself at this time 
 was in name a republic ; nay, for the two or three years of its revolt 
 from the Medici, from the capture of Rome to the peace of Barce- 
 lona, it had resumed its democratic institutions. Siena and Lucca 
 were still republics ; the latter retained the character until the 
 eighteenth century. The rest of Tuscany was dependent either on 
 Florence or, in the form of feudal vassalage, on the Empire. North
 
 WARS OF CHAELES V. FEOM 1529 TO 1538 75 
 
 of Tuscany were the ancient duchy (a marquisate until 1457) of 
 Modena, possessed by the house of Este, the marquisate of Mantua, 
 created out of a republic by the Gonzagas, the duchy of Milan, 
 also created out of a republic, and containing or ruling Parma and 
 Piacenza also, which, however, from 1521 to 1584 belonged to 
 the Popes, and the Venetian estates, which, themselves republi- 
 can, had achieved their present extent by absorbing their neigh- 
 bours, whether republican or feudal, to an unprecedented extent. 
 Beyond the territory of ]\Iilan were Montferrat and Piedmont, both 
 ancient liefs and not republican ; along the coast was the state of 
 Genoa, republican in form, but divided between two aristocratic 
 factions, one French (Fregosi) and the other imperial (Adorni)— 
 and from time to time actually under the protection, that is, in the 
 possession, of France. That dependence ceased in 1628 by the 
 return of the Dorias, and its emancipation was an article of the treaty 
 of Cambrai. Genoa, I may remark, had been from the time of the 
 crusades attached to France, the rival city of Pisa being imperial 
 or English as 1;he case might be. 
 
 So was Italy cut up : it inherited in the fullest measure the 
 traditions of ancient hatred. Every little prince was by hereditary 
 politics a Guelf or a Ghibelline. Though the last of that great 
 historic quarrel had been heard of in Germany only 800 years ago, it 
 had subsisted all along in Italy, and in every republic there were two 
 parties, Guelf and Ghibelline, Imperial and Papal, or German and 
 French. All these complications it is impossible to keep in mind, 
 greatly as it is required for the understanding of Italian history : 
 for, especially in the cities and in the more contested fiefs, the 
 parties changed sides more than once. Besides the French and 
 German political affinity, there was a strong hatred of any foreign 
 interference at all. Intrigue was used against intrigue ; the art of 
 Italian diplomacy was to weary out one foreign party by means of 
 the other ; the fault of it was that, when both foreign parties were 
 worn out, the Italians themselves fell to struggling and called them 
 in again. 
 
 Political interest centres in three of the strong powers, the duchy 
 of Milan, the republic of Venice, and the house of the Medici at 
 Florence. The interests of the Papacy do not change, although with 
 the change of hands its modes of action and the particular families 
 that it favours change. The empire and the kingdom remain opposed 
 to the independence of the republics, and jealous of the assumptions 
 of the princes, but willing to tolerate the former so long as their 
 own party is in the ascendant, and glad to mn over and attach 
 the latter by marriages, or by cheap grants of privileges which the 
 grantee must employ and exhaust his energies in securing for himself.
 
 7G LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1618 
 
 We have not now to examine how matters had got into this 
 state ; the circumstances from which it arose were, however, common 
 to Italy and Germany. The Italian republics were really nothing 
 nore elevated in origin or idea than the imperial free towns of 
 Germany, and, like the free towns, they had flourished by means of 
 trade, and decayed when, in place of trade, they took up politics ; 
 but otherwise their history was distinct. The German towns were 
 imperial in feeling as opposed to the aggressions of the great feu- 
 datories ; in Italy the nobles and princes were more imperial than 
 the towns ; the latter were the aggressive and perhaps also the more 
 purely national ingredient. But the internal struggles of the 
 Italian republics, their incessant changes of democratic forms, the 
 minutino of their organisation, are little more worthy of examina- 
 tion than the vagaries of a parish vestry. As the struggles of a 
 nation they are respectable, but in general the further removed they 
 are from extraneous influences, the more bitter their internal quarrels, 
 the more engrossingly powerful their suicidal mania. One great 
 advantage of the study of the present period of history is that you 
 need not load your memory with these petty details. The duchy of 
 Milan was the great bait for the French in Italy ; the supremacy in 
 Florence was the great end and aim of the Mediccan Popes ; the 
 humiliation of Venice was really a great object with all the sovereigns, 
 and had been openly attempted by the league of Cambrai. 
 
 Up to this time we have seen how these influences have worked. 
 The Milanese has been the battlefield and bone of contention 
 between Charles and Francis, the house of Sforza being the 
 shuttlecock : it was this that brought Francis into Italy for his 
 triumph at Marignano ; for this he fought and was taken at Pavia. 
 Here was the last struggle before the peace of Cambrai. For the 
 Medicean ascendency Leo X. had favoured first Francis and then 
 Charles in the competition for the imperial crown. Florence was 
 lost to the Medici when Clement VII. played the double game that 
 drew down Bourbon upon Rome, and was now to be recovered for 
 them by Charles himself as an article of the treaty of Barcelona. 
 This was the first thing to be done in Italy, when Charles made his 
 appearance there in 1529. His object, however, was nothing less 
 than the pacific action of Italy and the obtaining from the Pope a 
 promise to hold a council that might pacify Germany also. 
 
 He left in Spain as regent his wife Isabella of Portugal, whom he 
 had married in 1526, and he now intended to receive the imperial 
 crown. He landed at Genoa on August 12, 1529, and his presence 
 alone seems to have inspired confidence ; he conducted himself with 
 the same solid moderation which he had shown latterly in Spain 
 and Germany. Whatever harsh or cruel work had to be done, was
 
 WARS OF CHAELES V. FROM 1529 TO 1538 77 
 
 ever done by the subordinates ; in the face of the Emperor-elect 
 were always to be found clemency and sincerity. On November 5 
 he entered Bologna, where he was to be crowned ; and there he 
 summoned the princes and representatives of the States, which had 
 all, with the exception of Florence and Venice, sent to meet him 
 with addresses of congratulation. And everyone seemed to get 
 what he wanted. Francesco Maria Sforza was reinvested with 
 Milan (December 23), and received a niece of Charles as wife. The 
 Duke of Modena was confirmed (March 1530) in the possession of 
 Modena, Ferrara, and Reggio ; the Marquis of Mantua (March 1530) 
 was raised to the rank of a duke. Venice made peace on December 23 
 on condition of restoring the places which were unlawfully seized 
 during the war, and the same day concluded with Charles and the 
 princes of Savoy, Milan, Montferrat, and Mantua a league for the entire 
 pacification of Italy. Only Florence, which had been besieged since 
 the end of October, held out. At last, after six months spent in 
 Italy, Charles received the crown of Lombardy at Bologna from 
 Pope Clement on February 22, and on the 24th of the same month, 
 his birthday and the anniversary of the battle of Pavia, the crown of 
 the Holy Roman Empire. Charles was the last crowned Emperor, 
 and he was not crowned at Rome. 
 
 Florence was still holding out at the time, and held out until 
 August 12, 1530 : the imperial general, Philibert of Orange, having 
 been killed in a sortie on the 3rd of the same month. Charles 
 immediately restored it, according to the treaty of Barcelona, to 
 Alexander de' Medici. He had, however, before this time left Italy 
 to attend the Diet summoned at Augsburg for April 8, but at which 
 he actually arrived on June 13. Sismondi regards this visit of 
 Charles as accomplishing the evil destiny of Italy ; and in some 
 respects it did so, but it was a case in which the destiny was a less 
 evil than the suspense from which it delivered Italy ; for, for six- 
 and-thirty years, since the invasion by Charles VIII., the unhappy 
 country had been the battlefield of foreign armies, had been ravaged, 
 sacked, and plundered indiscriminately by friend and foe. The 
 subjugation of Italy to German influence dates from this time, and 
 from the league of Bologna concluded in 1532 for the peace of Italy. 
 The question of the evil or good of this is one that we shall answer 
 according to our own political prejudices. If it be a bad thing for 
 one nation to be ruled by another, one race by another, not for its 
 own good but for the good of the ruler, and against its own will, and 
 by means that only constant political intrigue and insubordination 
 in the subject people can justify, then it was a bad thing for Italy to 
 lie at the mercy of Austria. But if it is a necessity to the world 
 that nations which cannot govern themselves, which, when they are
 
 78 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 left alone, turn their weapons against their own throats, which are 
 constantly inviting foreigners to arbitrate in their quarrels, which 
 are as constantly, by their intrigues, fomenting ^ivars between 
 stronger powers — if it is a necessity that such a race should in the 
 end fall under a foreign yoke, Italy richly deserved what she got, 
 and so far it was for the good of the world. She exchanged the 
 shadow of liberty for the substance of peace. 
 
 Well, in the spring of 1530 Charles left Italy for Germany, and 
 there busied himself for some time with the religious quarrels, the 
 aspect of which was becoming threatening. In 1532 the urgent 
 necessity for a council to unite Christendom in reform of doctrine 
 and to defend it against the impending conquest by the Turks, 
 brought him again into Italy and to Bologna ; and in the second 
 interview with Clement (at Mantua, November 8, 1532) the league 
 for the defence of Italy was reconstituted. All the states except 
 Venice were included ; an organised confederacy, with definite con- 
 tributions and contingents, was formed, and at the head of it was 
 placed a Spanish General, Antonio de Leyva. The business of the 
 council the Pope temporised about. The league was arranged on 
 February 24, 1533, and Charles immediately afterwards sailed for 
 Spain, taking with him the Spanish troops, whose presence was 
 offensive to the Italians and whose place was to be filled by the 
 forces of the new confederation. (He landed at Barcelona in April 
 1533.) He left Italy, for the first time for nearly forty years, at 
 peace. And nominally the peace between Charles and Francis did 
 continue until 1536. In reality Francis was employed during the 
 whole of that time in undermining the influence of Charles amongst 
 his neighbours, and preparing for another war. He had already, in 
 1525, opened a secret negotiation with the Sultan Solyman ; in 
 1534, alarmed by Charles's naval preparations in the Mediteranean 
 he concluded a treaty of commerce and mutual defence with the 
 great enemy of Christendom. In 1532 he had made another alliance 
 with the Smalkaldic League at Esslingen ; in 1533 he entered into 
 the closest relations with the Pope, and even accepted as a wife for 
 his son, afterwards Henri II., Catherine de' Medici, niece of the Pope 
 and of a house as famous for its sudden rise to sovereignty as it was 
 remarkable for the meanness of its origin and the brilliant versatility 
 of its politics. He was also now drawing more closely to England 
 than any French sovereign had done before, and aiding Henry VIII. 
 in his plan of getting rid of Catherine of Aragon. Of these negotia- 
 tions, that which was most dangerous to Charles was the one with the 
 Pope, and to frustrate this he offered to marry Catherine de' Medici 
 to the Duke of Milan, to the disparagement of his own niece ; but 
 Francis was too quick for him, the marriage was arranged so as care
 
 WARS OF CHARLES V. FROM 1529 TO 1538 79 
 
 fully to avoid giving the Emperor a reasonable ground of offence, and 
 to keep him still more in good humour he was allowed to manage the 
 business of the English divorce in his own way. This was, how- 
 ever, soon taken out of his hands by the resolution of Henry ; and 
 the imperial influence exhausted itself in those fulminations against 
 him and his people which recoiled on the Papacy itself and ended in 
 the English Reformation. 
 
 Matters crept on towards a warlike solution. Francis was 
 gaining time, and Charles always benefited by peace ; besides, he 
 had other enemies to meet, and the defence of Christendom rested 
 solely on him. The death of Clement and the succession of Paul III., 
 Alessandro Farnese, a strong imperialist, also had the effect of 
 changing the tactics of the players. This event took place in 
 September 1534. The general history of the period is diversified by 
 the expedition of Charles to Tunis and the revolt and extermination 
 of the Anabaptists in North Germany, both incidents which belong 
 to another part of our scheme. The new storm rises again in Milan 
 but breaks in a new, though still an Italian quarter. Charles had 
 by this time returned from Tunis, September 1535, and was staying 
 in Sicily and Naples enjoying his triumph, and received everywhere 
 by his barons with the greatest magnificence. He was thus em- 
 ployed when the news reached him that the Duke of Milan was dead, 
 and that Francis had seized Savoy and expelled Duke Charles, the 
 Emperor's brother-in-law. The news of Sforza's death was to 
 him simply the news of an escheated fief ; but it was speedily 
 followed by a demand from Francis of the investiture of the duchy 
 for the Duke of Orleans, one of the vague promises which, both 
 before and afterwards, the Emperor held out, or suffered Francis to 
 believe that he did, in order to gain time. 
 
 In the matter of the Duke of Savoy, Francis appears in the new 
 character of a bully. The Duke was not a very wise man, but he 
 was wise enough to know how to give way when there was no chance 
 of success in resistance. And accordingly, when Francis, who 
 wished to pick a quarrel that would justify him in annexing Savoy, 
 demanded a passage through his territories, he immediately allowed 
 it. Francis — who, by the by, was nephew of the Duke, Louise of 
 Savoy, his mother, being the Duke's half-sister — then insisted that 
 all the demands which he had on Savoy, either as King of France or 
 as son of the Duchess Louise, should be satisfied. The Duke could 
 not undertake to do this, and his dutiful nephew thereupon drove 
 him out of Savoy, plundered him of all that he had, and occupied 
 his fortresses. Francis's errand to Italy was, however, originally 
 intended for the chastisement of Francesco Maria Sforza, who had 
 assassinated Merveille or Maraviglia, an envoy of Francis, with
 
 80 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 15)9-1648 
 
 whom he had been transacting treason, and who he feared might 
 betray him to Charles. Francis had seized Savoy on his way to 
 avenge this breach of international law, when he heard of the death 
 of Sforza (October 1535). On this he withdrew his army, re- 
 taining, however, the strongholds of Savoy, and betook himself to 
 negotiation. The Duke of Savoy, who had married a daughter of the 
 Kin" of Portugal, threw himself on his brother-in-law's protection, 
 the revolt of the Genoese, which had been prompted or connived 
 at by Francis, leaving him quite landless. Francis acted foolishly 
 in this. He had intended war, and might have taken Milan, if he 
 had proceeded at once on the news of the Duke's death : by opening 
 a negotiation with the Emperor he simply gave him all the advan- 
 tages of delay ; he could not hope to overreach him in negotiation 
 or to baffle him in intrigue. 
 
 Charles was prompt to take all the advantage afforded by 
 Francis's hesitation ; he played him with promises and half-engage- 
 ments until he had got together supplies for the war. These 
 supplies the Neapolitan kingdom afforded. Taking advantage of 
 his personal popularity, he called a Parliament (January 8, 1536) 
 at Naples and asked for a subsidy. The request was most liberally 
 answered. The Neapolitan barons saw the imminence of danger to 
 their coasts from both Francis and his friend Solyman : it was 
 better to give their money to Charles for defence than to be plundered 
 of it by the corsairs. They voted a million and a half of ducats, 
 three-fourths to be paid by the nobles and the remainder by the 
 towns. So well furnished with money, Charles proceeded on 
 March 22 to Kome: he had already ordered levies of troops in 
 Germany, and, peace being still maintained, provoked the fears and 
 suspicions of Francis. Early in April he reached Rome, and there, 
 in an assembly held by the Pope and cardinals, he declared his 
 grievances against Francis in the most vehement terms. He ended 
 by professing himself ready to meet Francis in single combat. 
 
 Robertson makes, on this speech, which doubtless was intemperate 
 and imprudent, some characteristically unfair comments. The idea 
 of the single combat had been broached by Francis himself before 
 the outbreak of war in 1528, and should not therefore be regarded 
 as an insane whim of Charles : in other points Francis had deeply 
 injured the Emperor, he had taken advantage of his exigencies, even 
 when he was at peace with him, he had broken faith continually, 
 and never for a moment stopped the most selfish and unscrupulous 
 intrigues with the Sultan on the one side and the discontented 
 princes of Germany on the other. Francis could have heard nothing 
 from Charles that he did not deserve, although Charles's conduct 
 touching M ilan had been far from immaculate towards him.
 
 WAKS OF CHAELES V. FEOM 1529 TO 1538 81 
 
 The Emperor's appeal seems, however, to have startled all parties. 
 The Pope earnestly pleaded loc peace ; and Charles himself con- 
 descended to make such an apclogy for his language about Francis, 
 as induced him to continue his negotiations. Nevertheless he must 
 have considered his speech equivalent to a declaration of war, for the 
 King of France still continued in occupation of Piedmont, and 
 Charles, having got together an army of 40,000 men, proceeded 
 northwards. He designed, we are told, no less a scheme than the 
 conquest cf France ; not content with carrying out the attack on 
 Provence, which he had seen fail under Bourbon, he planned an in- 
 vasion of the north also from the side of Flanders. The campaign 
 of Provence he reserved for himself. 
 
 Francis's army of Piedmont retreated before him ; the Mai-quis 
 of Saluzzo, a Savoyard by allegiance, to whom Francis had en- 
 trusted the Piedmontese fortresses, turned against him and betrayed 
 his trust to Charles ; but for the siege of Fossano, which detained 
 him a month, he would have taken Francis unprepared. He reached 
 the Var, which divides Piedmont from Provence ; his army under 
 Antonio de Leyva, his fleet under Andrea Doria : with fifty 
 thousand men he crossed the river on July 25 and proceeded towards 
 Marseilles. But Marseilles a second time proved impregnable : after 
 a fortnight's hard work, to his intense mortification, he was com- 
 pelled to raise the siege, and to return with the loss of half his 
 army. 
 
 Francis, or rather Montmorency his general, had devastated the 
 country before him so that he could not advance, and had skilfully 
 avoided any risk of a general engagement. The siege was raised on 
 September 11. As scon as he reached Genoa, unable to face the 
 Italians after so great a reverse, he embarked for Spain in October. 
 This was the greatest reverse that had ever befallen Charles : and 
 he had lost his best general, Antonio de Leyva, as well as the 
 prestige of all his former successes. 
 
 The invasion of Picardy by the Count Henry of Nassau was not 
 so prosperous as to counterbalance the misfortunes of the imperial 
 army in the south : the nobles armed, and the fortresses held out. 
 The Count had to retreat like his master. Montmorency, the 
 general personally opposed to Charles, gained the chief glory of the 
 struggle, which Francis would have risked by a battle ; the same 
 cautious policy, however, probably threw away the chance of over- 
 whelming the enemy on his retreat. Francis's triumph was saddened 
 by the loss of his son, the Dauphin, who died on August 12, and 
 whose death he did not hesitate to accuse Charles of causing, 
 although others attributed it to the machinations of Catherine 
 de' Medici, anxious to make a way for her husband to his father's
 
 82 LECTURES ON EUKOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 throne. Neither story, probably, is in the least entitled to belief. 
 So the year 1536 ends in the thorough discomfiture of Charles. 
 
 Francis began the new year with a proceeding which may be com- 
 pared for absurd unreality with Charles's escapade at Kome, and 
 which was probably modelled on Philip Augustus's mock trial and 
 forfeiture of John of England, which resulted in the restoration of 
 Normandy and Anjou to France. He appeared with his court and 
 officers in the Parliament of Paris, and preferred a charge of treason 
 against Charles of Austria. Charles, according to his showing, had 
 broken the treaty of Cambrai ; the treaty of Cambrai, by that act, 
 was annulled, and the rights and duties of each revived as they were 
 before it was agreed on ; therefore the suzerainty of France over 
 Flanders and Artois revived, and Charles became again a vassal. As 
 a vassal, he was ordered to appear and answer the charges of Francis ; 
 the summons was served by the proclamation of a herald on the 
 frontier of Picardy. Charles of course did not attend ; the Par- 
 liament pronounced him contumacious, and his French provinces 
 forfeit. 
 
 In order to give effect to the sentence, Francis marched towards 
 Picardy and gained some few places on his march ; but he was 
 obliged to leave the conduct of the war to his son Henry, who lost 
 all that his father had gained. He was just about to risk a battle 
 with the Flemish army, in order to relieve T^rouanne, which had 
 been besieged, when a truce was announced. Queen Mary of 
 Hungary the governante of the Netherlands, and Queen Eleanor of 
 France, both sisters of the Emperor, arranged this truce or armistice 
 between them ; it established for ten months peace between France 
 and the Netherlands, beginning from July 30. 
 
 It must be taken as a proof that at last the force of both parties 
 was abating, their resources becoming exhausted ; for, although the 
 war continued a little longer in Piedmont, the truce of the Nether- 
 lands was but an anticipation of the truce of Nice which followed in 
 the next year. The truces began indeed before the end of the year 
 1537, but were prolonged until June 1588,^ when, by the mediation of 
 the Pope, the two sovereigns met him at Nice and concluded a 
 truce for ten years. Paul III. did not allow them to meet one 
 another, although they were both for some days in the town : nor 
 did the arrangement go further than the temporary character of a 
 truce implies. It involved no permanent change of position of 
 either of the parties, simply the abstaining from warfare against one 
 another. It was in a manner a necessity for Charles. What with 
 the eftorts made by Solyman to help Francis, the devastation of the 
 
 ' League of Venice, Pope, Charles, and Ferdinand, against the Turks, 1538.
 
 WAES OF CHARLES V. FKOM 1529 TO 1538 83 
 
 coast of Naples and Spain by Hayraddin Barbarossa, and the per- 
 tinacious attacks on Hungary, great part of which was in possession 
 of the Turks : what with the rapidly increasing power of the Pro- 
 testant princes in Germany ; the importance of the Council, which 
 could not be much longer delayed ; the difficulties in Flanders, 
 which shortly after culminated in the revolt of Ghent ; and the 
 general unwillingness of the Cortes, the States General, the Diet, and 
 the Parliament in the several constitutionally governed kingdoms 
 which owned his sway, he must have required rest and opportunity 
 for preparing for the defence and conservation of Christendom. He 
 was indeed sick of governing ; and from this time, it is believed, 
 entertained the design, which he carried out many years later, of 
 retiring from active life and leaving his kingdoms to Philip as soon 
 as he should be old enough to manage them. 
 
 The truce of Nice settled nothing : it did not even obtain for the 
 Duke of Savoy the restoration of his fortresses. It did not settle 
 the question of the Milanese or set aside the verdict of the Parlia- 
 ment of Paris. It was merely the concession to the Papal media- 
 tion of an armistice, which for the moment was welcome to both 
 parties, which either might transgress as soon aa he felt himself 
 strong enough, and which left all the former causes of animosity 
 unextinguished. For Francis, then, it was a piece of good luck ; 
 he had no other formidable enemies to fear ; at peace with Charles, 
 he was at peace with or safe from attack from all the world. With 
 Charles it was far different ; to him peace with France meant only 
 an opening for work in other quarters, war with the Turks and 
 Algerines, war in Hungary and the Mediterranean ; quarrels with 
 his own Cortes or estates ; the incalculable weariness of the 
 religious struggle now threatening in Germany, and beginning to 
 threaten in the Low Countries also. Nay, in Naples and Spain the 
 doctrines of the reformers were gaining ground to an extent that en- 
 dangered the orthodoxy of the most Catholic nations. 
 
 It was not that in these countries the evangelical sentiments 
 had allied themselves, as in Germany, with independence in politics ; 
 but they had unsettled the faith of many in certain doctrines 
 preached commonly in the Roman Church, which were not as yet, 
 as they were a few years later by the Council of Trent, formally 
 determined to be of the substance of the faith. Protestant views, or 
 views which at a later period were marked as Protestant, made 
 themselves acceptable in the highest quarters of the Church ; men 
 like Pole and Contarini were both doctrinally and politically allied 
 on many points with the reformers : Charles himself had listened 
 gladly to the preaching of Bernard Ochino, who shortly afterwards 
 became a Protestant and subsequently a Unitarian ; and some of his 
 
 q2
 
 84 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 favourite chaplains, Carranza for example, figured afterwards as 
 victims of Papal persecution. But although these men were pre- 
 pared to go certain lengths towards reform, they weje not prepared 
 to cut themselves loose from the Church. The German and 
 English Protestants had convinced themselves of the falseness of 
 the Papal claims to supremacy in doctrine as well as in politics : the 
 Italian reformers, with some brilliant exceptions, chose to forfeit their 
 convictions of the need of reform, rather than risk the supremacy of 
 the Chair of St. Peter. And out of much the same series of causes 
 which produced this result arose the Society of the Jesuits, which, 
 more than any other like institution that ever was founded, was created 
 for the reformation of the Church, and yet ended in the most de- 
 termined maintenance of all the most flagrant abuses. 
 
 The attempts to introduce the Inquisition into Naples, which 
 were made during Charles's reign, were perhaps owing rather to the 
 zeal of his viceroy Pedro de Toledo than to his own inclination for 
 persecution. The history of the reform movement in Naples is, 
 however, complicated and puzzling : nor has it been yet written with 
 much pretence to fairness. The persons who were affected by it 
 were not persons who otherwise exerted much influence in Europe, 
 and their names are perhaps as well known now as they were in 
 their own days. Peter Martyr, Bernardo Ochino, Aonio Paleario, 
 Vittoria Colonna, are the most famous names of Italian reform : 
 but they have not left a considerable mark either on theology or on 
 political history. Nor can we, with any regard to the proportion of 
 our discussions now, turn out of the way to review them. These and 
 some of the Spanish divines, Valdes in particular, were much more in 
 accord with Luther than with Pole and Contarini. The Neapolitans 
 resisted the attempt to introduce the Inquisition, and successfully : 
 nor was it established in Naples during Charles's life. Unfor- 
 tunately, without recourse to the Inquisition, the ordinary process 
 by the canon law and the assistance of the secular arm afforded too 
 many opportunities for indefensible and irresponsible cruelty. 
 
 LECTUEE VII 
 
 FEOM THE TEUCE OF NICE TO THE PEACE OP CEESPY, 1544 
 
 We take up the string of history again at the truce of Nice, which, 
 having been negotiated from the month of June 1538 to the end of 
 the year, was finally ratified for ten years by the Emperor, February 1, 
 1539. The ten years ultimately turned out to be about three :
 
 FEOM THE TRUCE OF NICE TO THE PEACE OF CRESPY 85 
 
 another war follows in 1541, which also lasts for three years, and is 
 concluded by the peace of Crespy in 1514, 
 
 The truce of Nice had scarcely one of the elements of a sound 
 peace ; it scarcely even called itself a peace ; it was the result of 
 no great success on either side ; it was not the voluntary or spon- 
 taneous act of either sovereign ; it settled no disputed question ; it 
 was brought about by the Pope for purposes alien to the war which 
 it was intended to close, and between princes whom he so much 
 distrusted that, during the negotiations for it, he did not suffer them 
 to have one interview with each other. Notwithstanding this, cir- 
 cumstances, in themselves of minor importance, seemed, after it 
 was concluded, to make its permanence at least probable. 
 
 A few days after Charles's departure from Nice, he was forced 
 by stress of weather to put in to the coast of Provence, where 
 Francis met him and offered him hospitahty. The two great 
 princes, who had been more or less at war for twenty years, and 
 who had not only fought against one another, but brought mutual 
 accusations, such as seemed to make their personal enmity irrecon- 
 cilable, met and were, or pretended to be, pleased with one another. 
 It really appeared that war might be coming to an end. Both 
 princes were now experienced and sobered down. Charles was 
 indeed only thirty-eight years old now, but he had been accustomed 
 for twenty years to the most intricate and laborious sorts of public 
 business. He had lived such a life as is calculated to make a man 
 old before his time. You must have observed how very little any 
 other name than his own comes into the history of his counsels. 
 Doubtless he had faithful ministers, as he had skilful and vaHant 
 generals. But none rises to such eminence as to eclipse his master : 
 there is no Wolsey, or Cromwell, or Strafford in Charles's train. 
 Whatever is done, he must have the doing of it : and henceforth, 
 wherever there is a war, he will have a leading part in it. We may 
 be sure that he, for one, longed for peace ; although it must be a 
 peace which would be as laborious as war, for the consolidation of 
 perfect peace in Christendom must be the signal for an onslaught 
 upon the Turks. But, although he may have longed for it, it is 
 impossible to say that he expected it ; pressed by the Pope into the 
 truce of Nice, he was willing to use that truce as a breathing time ; 
 but he must have known that, from the first attempt to trample out 
 the smouldering ashes of the late war, a new flame would, as it did, 
 actually arise : he knew the hatred of Francis, and, although he 
 would temporise even to a degree that was hardly honest, he could 
 not forgive, or sincerely reconcile himself with, an enemy whom he 
 most entirely distrusted. 
 
 The three years of the truce are diversified with some very
 
 86 LECTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 memorable transactions: the subversion of the Cortes in Castile, 
 the chastisement of Ghent, and the expedition to Algiers. These 
 events, which belong to other portions of om- subject, are not with- 
 out their bearing upon this. The quarrel with the Cortes was 
 caused by the want of supplies to pay the wages of the soldiers 
 employed in the late war; and the exhaustion of the imperial 
 resources, by the unhappy expedition to Algiers, was no doubt one 
 of the arguments that induced Francis to begin a new war. But 
 the revolt of Ghent is the one that more immediately connects the 
 two acts of the drama. This occurred, as you will remember, in 1539, 
 owing to the refusal of the people of Ghent to pay the contribution 
 voted by the estates of Flanders in 1536. Charles's behaviour to 
 the Ghent envoys, who visited him in Spain, is a singular instance 
 of his occasional want of tact. There was no doubt that the 
 privilege claimed by Ghent, of not being liable to taxation which had 
 not been voted by its own representatives, was destructive of all 
 government ; had it been general, it must have precluded the 
 possibility of any taxation except local and unanimous taxation, and 
 taxation so transacted must necessarily lead to the loss, by the 
 powers taxed, of all opportunities of joint action in politics, and all 
 chance of obtaining redress of grievances. But, though Charles 
 saw this, Ghent, though a single city, had the riches and the pro- 
 portions of an independent state. Ghent was very dear to Charles, 
 and he should have treated the representatives with respect ; instead 
 of doing this, he remitted the discussion of their charter to the 
 Council of the Netherlands at Mechlin, from which under the circum- 
 stances they could barely expect such justice as they desired. They 
 did not wait for it, but applied to Francis for help ; if he would join 
 them in an attack on Charles, they would assist him to recover the 
 French provinces which were still in Charles's hands, Artois and 
 Picardy, the homage of which had been given up by Francis at the 
 peace of Cambrai, but which the Parliament of Paris in 1537 had 
 declared to be forfeited to the French crown in consequence of 
 Charles's treason. This offer was a very welcome one to Francis, 
 and, as later events have shown, the acceptance and carrying out of 
 it would have resulted well. The population of these territories is 
 more French than Fleming or Walloon, and now they are firmly 
 consolidated with France. But Francis had set his heart on Milan, 
 and Charles had played him with Milan for a bait. The interview 
 of the monarchs in Provence had been the beginning of a series of 
 civilities, and the Emperor had no doubt allowed Francis to believe 
 that he would, on the arrival of a settled peace, invest Charles Duke 
 of Orleans with the Duchy of Milan, as a fief of the Empire. Francis, 
 accordingly, not only refused the proposals of the men of Ghent, but
 
 FEOM THE TRUCE OF NICE TO THE PEACE OF CRESPi' 87 
 
 reported them in detail to Charles. The Constable de Montmorency 
 was the adviser of this policy, and afterwards suffered for it. 
 
 Charles saw the peril of his situation and was ready for all risks. 
 He trusted, it seems probable, more to Francis's regard for the 
 ordinary code of honour than to any good feeling on his part ; some- 
 what also to his own power of intrigue. 
 
 Contrary to the entreaties of his Spanish council, he determined 
 to ask leave to cross France on his way to Flanders ; he instructed 
 Granvelle to hold out hopes to Francis about the Milanese, but to 
 avoid any express engagement. Francis listened and was deceived, 
 partly perhaps by his own wishes, partly no doubt by the Emperor's 
 finesse. Charles was allowed to land at Bayonne, was met by 
 Francis himself at Bourges, and went by Orleans to Paris, which 
 he entered on New Year's Day, 1540. Six days he spent there, 
 during which Francis was sorely tempted to seek a short cut out 
 of his difficulties, but his dread of outlawry by all Europe was 
 too great, and he suffered the great bird to escape from the net. 
 Charles knew his man, and that, whatever he might be willing to 
 do underhand or with reservation, he dared not do it openly. I do 
 not say this to Francis's discredit : his character is too low to lose 
 at all by being credited with some respect for the appearance of 
 honour ; he should have the benefit of the fact. Charles was in his 
 power, and he neither imprisoned nor poisoned him ; as to binding 
 him with conditions, he knew how little likely compulsory agree- 
 ments were to be observed ; and he was conscious that the history 
 of the peace of Madrid was too fresh in all men's recollections to 
 allow him to claim the benefit of any such negotiations, even were 
 Charles liable to such coercion. 
 
 Putting the most favourable construction possible on this finesse 
 of Charles, we cannot acquit him of very disingenuous behaviour, or 
 of an unfair treatment of an enemy, on whose generosity he seemed 
 to be throwing himself. Charles was not the man to break a treaty^ 
 but he was quite the man to sail as near the wind as was safe. Hj 
 did not lie to Francis, but suffered Francis to be lied to by others, 
 and to deceive himself. He never dreamed of surrendering either 
 the Milanese or Flanders, but if the French King would deceive him- 
 self, why e'en let him. So he made his way to Ghent and punished 
 the burghers. When Francis applied to him to fulfil the understood 
 promise to the Duke of Orleans, and Charles found that he must return 
 a downright answer, he declared that he would give up neither 
 Flanders nor Milan ; Francis might do what he liked. Francis 
 prepared for war. 
 
 The rest of the year Charles spent in the Netherlands ; in April 
 1541 he was at a Diet at Eatisbon, in which some of the dispute-
 
 88 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 tions of Melanchthon and Eck were carried on, and in which he 
 put the Duke of Cleves to the ban of the Empire. This was, you 
 remember, Duke "William, brother of the unlucky Anne of Cleves, 
 and claimant, on the cession of Charles of Egmont, of the duchy of 
 Guelders. Charles had rejected the Duke's claim in favour of his 
 own : and the Duke had thrown himself into the arms of Francis, 
 and was now outlawed by the Empire. The Emperor, after the Diet, 
 went down into Italy, where he met the Pope at Lucca ; from Italy 
 to Majorca, thence to Algiers ; thence, after the failure of the expedi- 
 tion, back to Spain. That disaster was the signal for a new attack 
 on the part of Francis. This breach of faith on his part is neither 
 to be wondered at, nor very severely blamed, except in so far as it 
 really sacrificed the good of Europe and Christendom generally to the 
 desire of revenge. We have no reason to suppose that Francis was 
 amenable to the higher motives ; he saw his opportunity and took 
 it ; nor is Charles much to be pitied ; he had indeed avoided a breach 
 of treaty, but he had really deceived his rival ; he had wasted an 
 enormous force, which might have recovered Hungary from Solyman, 
 in a vain attempt on an untenable acquisition, which he had failed 
 even to acquire ; he had done this in a way that is little short of fool- 
 hardiness, contrary to the entreaties of the Pope, and contrary to the 
 advice of his own generals and admirals. Still Francis could not 
 look for much sympathy in Europe in an attack, itself made in breach 
 of truce, upon a monarch who had suffered so heavily for the defence, 
 as he thought it, the common defence, of Europe. The German Pro- 
 testants would have nothing to say to him ; Henry VIII. was rapidly 
 cooling towards him, and as many obstacles to a renewal of relations 
 with Charles were being gradually removed he was resuming his 
 ancient position with respect to them both. The Scots were as usual 
 a thorn in Henry's side, and the Scots were as usual emboldened by 
 their alliance with Francis. 
 
 The casus belli occurred in July 1541 ; but the very occasion of 
 it showed that peace would have been otherwise possible no longer. 
 Francis had concluded the truce of Nice without leave from his most 
 potent ally, Solyman, and, by doing so, had left Charles and his 
 brother Ferdinand at liberty to use their arms against the Turks, 
 had made in fact the great opportunity which the Algerine expedition 
 had wasted. Solyman had sulked in consequence, and Francis had 
 to request humbly a new alliance : into this he wished to draw the 
 Venetians also ; and for this end he accredited two envoys, neither 
 of them a subject of his own — Antonio Ein9on, a Spanish exile who 
 had been his ambassador at Constantinople, and Csesar Fregoso, a 
 Genoese. They were to go by Venice to Constantinople. The 
 Marquis del Guasto, who was governor of the Milanese, regardless
 
 FROM THE TRUCE OF NICE TO THE PEACE OF CRESPY 89 
 
 of their sacred character, or rather perhaps refrsing to recognise it, 
 arrested them and had them assassinated. Their papers revealed the 
 negotiation, betrayed the treachery of Francis, and left him no choice 
 but to begin war or wait until Charles should attack him. He did 
 not hesitate ; although the Lutherans of Germany would not listen 
 to him, the Kings of Denmark and Sweden were ready to join in an 
 attack which would relieve the fears of their co-religionists. 
 
 Francis I. and Christian III. proclaimed war against Charles in 
 the spring of 1542. There was no mistake as to the spirit and vigour 
 with which this was undertaken. Francis levied five armies, and 
 attacked the Emperor in five different points : Artois, Brabant, 
 Luxemburg, Piedmont, and Eoussillon. The Dauphin was sent into 
 Navarre ; the Duke of Orleans to Luxemburg ; the Duke of Vendome 
 to Flanders ; Van Rossem, marshal of Guelders, to Brabant ; the 
 fifth army, under Annebaut,'into Piedmont. Four of the five armies 
 represent the four great claims of France on Charles, for the Milanese, 
 Navarre, Flanders, and Burgundy ; the fifth, the quarrel of the 
 Duke of Guelders. The campaign, or the five campaigns, were not 
 brilliant. Charles was greater in defence than in attack, and the 
 force of Francis was wasted by being so divided. The story is 
 simple : the Dauphin was successful in Eoussillon and besieged 
 Perpignan ; the Duke of Orleans overran Luxemburg and captured 
 every fortress except Thionville — but, this done, he left his acquisi- 
 tions and hastened to join his brother, in fear of an attack by the 
 Emperor on the army of Navarre. That attack was never made ; 
 Perpignan, under the Duke of Alva, was proof against a siege, and 
 these two branches of the great design ended in a not inglorious 
 failure ; a result more brilliant than useful. The expeditions to the 
 Netherlands were delayed. The Piedmont one ended in the acquisi- 
 tion of a few towns and fortresses. 
 
 It was, however, high time for Charles to be on the spot. 
 Ferdinand held a Diet at Nuremberg early in 1543, which entreated 
 the Emperor to return from Spain and repel the attack of the Duke 
 of Cleves and the French. The fleet of Solyman was plundering 
 the coast of Italy, and Francis appeared to be stronger than ever, 
 beating up everywhere friends for himself and enemies for Charles. 
 Thus urged, the Emperor left Spain, which he placed under the 
 management of his son Philip, the estates of Aragon and Valencia re- 
 cognising him as heir and designate successor ; sailed to Genoa ; 
 saw the Pope at Busseto in Lombardy, between Piacenza and 
 Cremona, and then met the Diet of the Empire at Speyer. Thence 
 he hastened to the north. The Duke of Cleves was the first enemy 
 to be demolished, and he was effectually demolished. He had won 
 (March 24, 1543) a battle at Sittard, which had turned his brain ; for,
 
 90 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1G48 
 
 althouj^h he was at the time in treaty with Charles through his 
 ambassadors, and the Protestant powers had done their best to 
 procure a reconciliation, he repudiated all mediation ftnd defied the 
 Emperor. The poor Duke soon found out his mistake ; Charles 
 besieged in August and took his strongholds, and reduced him to 
 the condition of a suppliant. Charles was not a vindictive enemy, 
 and the Duke, from the position of his dominions, might become a 
 valuable friend. He was, at the intercession of the Duke of 
 Brunswick and Elector of Cologne, restored to Cleves, but compelled 
 to renounce the Duchy of Guelders, the league with France and 
 Denmark, and the Protestant religion. This done, Charles gave 
 liim as a wife, instead of the Princess of Navarre whom Francis had 
 promised him, his own niece, the daughter of King Ferdinand. 
 
 The importance of the Duke in this affair is well worth noting. 
 It might have been fatal to Charles's hold on the Netherlands to 
 leave a neighbour, whose dominions were so critically situated, 
 bound by any tie at all to his great enemy. But the war of 1543 is 
 not confined to Cleves. Francis knew the weak point of Germany, 
 and a second time seized Luxemburg ; whilst towards the Nether- 
 lands he occupied and fortified Landrecy, which gave him the com- 
 mand of Hainault. Charles preferred the latter battlefield. His 
 forces, assisted by the English contingent, which Henry, who had 
 finally broken with both the French and Scots, had supplied, besieged 
 Landrecy. He himself hastened to join them : Francis marched in 
 the same direction; and it seemed not impossible that at last a 
 general engagement might decide the long-standing rivalry. But 
 the world was disappointed. Francis manceuvred ; Charles was 
 cautious, the season was advanced ; the troops were wearied and 
 winter was approaching ; it was a very busy time in Germany, and 
 accordingly Charles retired into winter quarters. 
 
 If the war of 1542 was uneventful, and that of 1543 disap- 
 pointing, no such charge can be brought against that of 1544, in 
 which, as if for a last effort against one another, both parties put 
 forth their utmost strength and skill. Charles made the utmost 
 exertions to disarm the allies of Francis, by concluding separate 
 treaties with them. The intrigues of France and Scotland provoked 
 Henry VIII. into at last sincerely determining to help the Emperor ; 
 and Francis, finding that the friendship of Solyman did him more 
 harm than good, sent Barbarossa about his business. The Germans 
 were prevailed on by the concessions made at Speyer in April to 
 support Charles with a force of 20,000 foot and 4,000 horse. In 
 this, which was Charles's last campaign against Francis, in which 
 both put, or seemed to put, forth all their strength against each 
 other, and in which the allies on both sides showed an unusually
 
 FROM THE TRUCE OF NICE TO THE PEACE OF CRESPY 91 
 
 sincere purpose of fulfilling their obligations, almost everything 
 turned out exactly the contrary of what was to have been expected. 
 It would almost seem that Charles had at last got the power of 
 crushing his rival ; he had obtained active support from the Ger- 
 mans, who were more apt to retard than to promote his designs in a 
 general way ; and he had arranged a definite plan with Henry VIII., 
 who had so often contented himself with holding the balance between 
 the two, and doing no more. According to this latter arrangement, 
 the allies were to concentrate their attacks upon Paris itself, each 
 at the head of an army of 25,000 men ; they were, moreover, to 
 march direct upon Paris, not wasting time on the fortresses between 
 the border and the capital. Henry was further to disable the Scots 
 from bringing any assistance to Francis by an invasion of that 
 unhappy country, which it was supposed, without the material aid that 
 Francis could not afford to supply, must lie at the invader's mercy. 
 
 Matters were so far advanced before the end of 1543. Charles 
 delayed the opening of the campaign until the summer, in the 
 meantime securing the co-operation of the Diet with the force 
 already stated. Francis, however, in that quarter which was open 
 to his attack, did not hesitate to take the initiative, and this led to 
 one of the most famous battles which marked the whole struggle, 
 the battle of Cerisoles in Piedmont. The Marquis del Guasto, 
 Charles's general in Italy and Governor of Milan,. had, the year 
 before, seized and fortified Carignan, in the forfeited territory of the 
 Duke of Savoy. The Count of Enghien, whom Francis had placed 
 at the head of his army in Savoy, determined to besiege Carignan as 
 a step to the entire occupation of Piedmont. The Marquis advanced 
 from Milan to the rescue, and offered battle. Enghien had been 
 forbidden by Francis to risk one. Ready as both were for the 
 struggle, neither would begin it : Enghien restrained by his master's 
 orders, the imperial general by his wish to take the defensive. At 
 last, after a strong and earnest appeal from Enghien delivered by 
 Monluc, Francis sent him orders to engage. The battle really came 
 off" on April 14, and the result was the decisive victory of the 
 French. The actual advantages gained by this were rather negative 
 than positive. Del Guasto was disabled from joining his master in 
 the invasion of France from the south-east, but the capture of 
 Carignan and a few other Piedmontese towns was the sum of the 
 positive gains. 
 
 It was not before June that Charles felt himself strong enough 
 to take the field. He then advanced from Speyer, where he had 
 remained since the Diet, to Metz, and awaited the action of 
 Henry VIII., whose fleet and army, under the Earl of Hertford and 
 Lord Lisle, took Edinburgh and Leith, and devastated the south of
 
 92 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Scotland early in the year. Charles's army now amounted to fifty 
 thousand men, twice the number with which his treaty with Henry 
 bound him to attack Paris ; but he advanced slowly, and gave time 
 to Francis to place every available obstacle in his way. He first 
 retook Luxemburg and the other fortresses of the duchy, and then 
 invaded Champagne. Henry, in July, crossed over to Picardy to 
 fulfil, or rather to shirk, his part of the arrangement with Charles. 
 In singular forgetfulness of the agreement they had made not to 
 waste time on the fortresses, both Henry and Charles devoted them- 
 selves, late in the year as it was, to that very point. Henry stayed 
 before Boulogne for seven weeks, and only succeeded in taking it a 
 week before the final peace was made. Charles, who had lost, a 
 fortnight before, Luxemburg, and also had stopped to retake Com- 
 mercy, Vaucouleurs, and the other places seized by the French in 
 1543, adopted the same plan when he had actually entered Cham- 
 pagne. Francis removed all supplies out of his way, not scrupling 
 to devastate the most fertile province of France, if he could by so 
 doing starve out the enemy. Ligny, which Charles took after the 
 capture of Commercy, was an ofi"-lying piece of Luxemburg sur- 
 rounded by the territories of Lorraine ; the first place in Champagne 
 which he besieged was St. Dizier, which commanded the passage of 
 the Marne, and was defended for five weeks by the Count of San- 
 cerre. This loss of time and force, for the army before St. Dizier 
 had suffered greatly by disease, was unquestionably the ruin of the 
 campaign and the salvation of France. Even whilst France seemed 
 most defenceless, Charles had learned his own weakness, and was 
 negotiating for peace. 
 
 It is frightful to read that, with the greatest prince of Europe 
 actually en route to attack the capital, Francis's time was occupied 
 and the unity of his council disturbed by the quarrels between two 
 wretched women, the mistresses of his son the Dauphin and himself. 
 The negotiations hung fire in consequence ; and Charles, feeling 
 himself unfettered, put an end to them by surprising Epernay and 
 Chateau-Thierry, and advancing within two days' march of Paris. 
 The panic that followed this hasty movement brought the duchesses 
 to their senses : the Dauphin threw a force into Charles's way by 
 garrisoning strongly both Meaux and La Ferte. And the Emperor, 
 seeing himself at last seriously opposed, turned northwards to 
 Soissons. He felt, no doubt, that now he had done all he could 
 safely attempt. Henry would not fulfil his part of the agreement 
 until Boulogne and Montreuil were taken. 
 
 Charles and Francis suddenly arranged peace. This was settled 
 and signed at Crespy, near Meaux, on September 18, 1544. The 
 terms consented to by Charles in this treaty are only less astonishing
 
 FEOM THE TEUCE OF NICE TO THE PEACE OF CEESPY 93 
 
 than the apathy shown by Francis during the invasion : the result 
 of the war bearing no proportion whatever to the greatness of the 
 forces employed and the energy exhibited, or the success really 
 gained by the invasion. It would almost appear certain that Charles 
 could have made good his retreat into the Netherlands without a 
 struggle : it would almost seem as if his march on Paris was really 
 intended only to compel Francis to peace ; yet the peace, when it was 
 agreed on, was scarcely less advantageous to France than it must 
 have been if victory had declared for Francis. 
 
 In the complicated web of wars and peaces, we are liable to lose 
 sight of the real causes of the several detached struggles, and to take 
 too general a view of a contest which had its origin far deeper than 
 any contested claims to the towns on the Somme or even the sove- 
 reignty of the Milanese. But when it becomes necessary for the 
 adversaries to take breath, we are obliged to see that the minor 
 points must be at least formally and temporarily settled. The 
 treaty of Crespy, as the closing act of the wars between Charles and 
 Francis, has to be looked at somewhat minutely ; for it has its own 
 bearings as to these particular points, as well as its place in the 
 strategic or politic programme of Charles. The former are these : 
 
 (1) All places taken since the truce of Nice are to be restored. 
 This, I conceive, would leave the Emperor in possession of Luxem- 
 burg, in which he had done no more than retake his own strongholds, 
 which had been taken by Francis after the conclusion of the truce. 
 It involved, however, the severance of the alliance with Henry VIII., 
 who was not likely to give up Boulogne after a week's possession 
 of it. 
 
 (2) The two princes are to unite for the maintenance of the 
 Catholic religion : Francis is to contribute 600 cavalry and 10,000 
 infantry towards Charles's war with Turkey ; Francis thus throws 
 over Solyman as Charles threw over Henry, a treatment which shows 
 that the one was regarded only as a little more tolerable and less 
 dangerous than the other. 
 
 (3) Francis renounces all claims whatever on Naples, Flanders, 
 Artois, and Guelders also as ally of William of Cleves : Charles, on 
 the other side, renounces the towns on the Somme, the old bone of 
 contention between the Dukes of Burgundy and France a century 
 before this, and likewise the duchy of Burgundy and county of 
 Charolois, the claims on which had now become a matter of 
 respectable antiquity. Francis, moreover, gives up the defence of 
 Navarre and undertakes the restoration of Savoy to its displaced ruler. 
 
 All this is right and fair : the remainder of the treaty is the 
 astounding part. Charles, by this, promises to Francis that he will 
 give either his daughter, or his niece the daughter of Ferdinand, in
 
 94 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1648 
 
 marriage to the Duke of Orleans. If he gives the daughter he will 
 pivo wUh her the entire succession to the Netherlands, as an indepen- 
 dent state from the date of his own death ; if he gives the niece, she 
 shall have the :Milanese in the same way : and, by a further arrange- 
 ment, if the Milanese is given, Charles is to retain Burgundy ; if the 
 Netherlands are given, he is to retain the Milanese without claim 
 from Francis. Within four months Charles is to state which of the 
 young ladies the Duke is to have. 
 
 Such are the provisions of the treaty. That Charles should con- 
 sent to the alienation in permanence of so large a part of the inheri- 
 tance of Philip as either the Netherlands or the Milanese, whilst he 
 himself had the upper hand, is extremely strange ; nor can it be ex- 
 plained on any theory, except the absolute necessity of peace. How 
 and why that peace had, within two years from the opening of the 
 war, and whilst he had so much still on his side, become such an 
 imperative necessity, requires a careful study of the state of affairs in 
 Germany and Italy to understand. Robertson is, I think, right in his 
 belief that the action of Pope Paul III. is traceable in this : that 
 Charles was partly wearied and partly exasperated by the Pope, and 
 really saw, in an alliance with Francis, a way to settle the religious 
 question, which must be settled before Europe could be at peace. 
 With all his dislike and jealousy of the Pope he saw that he must be 
 satisfied, and in this matter the political interests of Francis, looked 
 at with the eye of a statesman, were identical with his own. If he 
 offended the Pope, he threw him and what remained of independence 
 in Italy into the arms of Francis ; if he made peace with Francis, a 
 solid peace, or one that looked fairly solid, he might yet have time 
 to put down the Protestants, to attack the Turks, and to reduce the 
 Pope to political insignificance. 
 
 The extirpation of Protestantism was made the subject of a 
 separate article with Francis, but the extirpation of Protestantism 
 was as valuable to Charles, as involving the securing of peace in 
 Germany and his own consequent supremacy in Italy, as it was 
 because he was a bigoted Catholic, and one who, as we saw, sympa- 
 thised ^^^th the cruelties of the Inquisition. It was then, I think, 
 a real and great concession on the part of Charles, to secure Francis 
 as a friend : a concession which, when the occasion was past, it would 
 not be hard to repudiate on some ground to be found among the 
 many complicated agreements of the treaty. At all events, however, 
 at first, he showed the intention of keeping it, and, within the four 
 months specified, promised definitely his niece and the Milanese to 
 the Duke of Orleans. 
 
 The treaty was not approved of by the Dauphin, who considered 
 that Francis sacrificed too much : but, if we consider how often the
 
 FROM THE TRUCE OF NICE TO THE PEACE OF CRESPY 95 
 
 renunciations made by the King had been repudiated and renewed, 
 and how lightly any obligation sat upon the father, we shall be sur- 
 prised to see that the son, with his eyes opened by their common 
 mistress, could have given him credit for even such a little quantum 
 of sincerity. But, all things considered, we must allow something 
 to the already failing health of Charles : he was a martyr to the j 
 gout ; and although he had acted with great speed and decision in 
 several matters, and although in the war in Germany which soon 
 followed he displayed perhaps to a greater extent than at any 
 period of his life his skill and promptness in execution, we may 
 quite believe that he was weary of the labours which had tasked his » 
 energies for so many years. He had long contemplated resignation f 
 as possible ; he persuaded himself to believe that, disabled as he } 
 was, he would only hold power until Philip was old enough to I 
 succeed him. Philip was now seventeen, and at seventeen Charles I 
 had been King of Spain and ruler of the Netherlands. 
 
 The main provision of the peace of Crespy came to nothing : 
 within a year after the signing of it (September 8, 1545) the Duke 
 of Orleans died, and Charles considered himself freed altogether from 
 any further obligation. The two years succeeding the peace were 
 occupied, by Francis in war with England, which ended in June 
 1546 ; by Charles in fruitless negotiations about the Council of 
 Trent and preparations for the Smalkaldic war, the first year of 
 which, with the increasing chances of Charles, Francis watched with 
 anxiety. Charles was wise in his suspicions of the Pope, whose 
 conduct was dictated rather by regard to the interests of the Farnese 
 than by a regard for religion. The Emperor was fighting the 
 Protestants in defence of the Pope's spiritual authority, the Pope was 
 intriguing against the Emperor in defence of the temporal posses- 
 sions of his own family. Francis was watching his time, making 
 new friends and looking up old ones. Before the crisis came, how- 
 ever, he died on March 31, 1547. Henry VIH. had preceded him 
 by a couple of months, dying January 28. Luther had died a year 
 before. Charles saw himself the last left of the chief players in the 
 great game of war, and he had the chief part of his work still to do. 
 
 We ought not, perhaps, to bid good-bye to Francis without one 
 more word of execration. A contrast between Charles and him is 
 the correct thing in this place. But I cannot see that such a 
 contrast can seriously affect our notion of Francis's character and 
 place in history. The lowest estimate may be taken of Charles ; 
 but it does not help Francis""to~rise one instant in our opinion. 
 Charles may or may not have been prosaic and unchivalrous : but 
 that does not make Francis poetic, or his sham chivalry anything ; 
 more than a sham. Charles may have been a sincere bigot, but it is
 
 'M 
 
 96 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 no help to Francis that he was an insincere one. If you had to 
 choose between two persecutors, you would, I imagine, prefer the 
 honest one to the dishonest one. Charles was a bigot ; Francis does 
 not therefore become an enlightened man : nay, his superstition is 
 more contemptible than the other's narrowness. For want of faith, 
 for unparalleled selfishness in a ruler ; for utter heartlessness as a 
 man and a king ; for incapacity as a ruler at home unredeemed by 
 any brilliant successes in wars, which he never suffered to be inter- 
 rupted by a sound peace ; for a degree of laches incompatible with 
 personal honour ; with a reputation for the grossest ingratitude to his 
 best servants, and for any unscrupulous tyranny exercised on behalf 
 of the basest favourites, Francis occupies among the Kings of France 
 a bad pre-eminence ; deserves a condemnation \^ hich the splendour 
 of his court, the magnificence of his buildings, the charm of his 
 manner, the patronage of art for which he is famous, the general air 
 of chivalry which, like our Edward III. — a prince whom he strongly 
 resembles in everything except power and success — he tried to throw 
 over his dishonourable and abandoned life ; not one of these, nor all 
 of them together, serves to do more than gild his infamy. All that is 
 bad about him is too substantial and effective ; all that seems good 
 or noble is sham, and a sorry sham, a very ragged covering to the 
 mismanagement, misrule, and tyranny that make him the fit repre- 
 sentative, as he was the father, of the worst dynasty that ever reigned 
 in Europe since the rotten empire of Eome fell to pieces — the 
 dynasty of Henry II. and his sons; or, if you please, that of 
 Catherine de' Medici. 
 
 LECTUKE VIII 
 
 THE BEFORMATION FROM THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, 1530, TO THE 
 
 INTERIM, 1548 
 
 The history of the Keformation in Germany falls into three epochs, 
 which we describe as the period of argument, the period of intrigue, 
 and the period of war. The first reaches from the year 1517 to the 
 second presentation of the Confession of Augsburg; the second 
 from the formation of the league of Smalkald to the outbreak of 
 the Smalkaldic war ; the third from the Smalkaldic war to the peace 
 of rehgion, which shortly preceded Charles's resignation. At the 
 risk of seeming to give a disproportionate amount of discussion to 
 the subject, we must devote two more lectures, one to the second, 
 and one to the third phase. We have traced the movement up to
 
 THE EEFOKMATION FKOM 1530 TO 1548 97 
 
 the date of the Augsburg Confession, which was presented to 
 Charles on June 25, 1530, a few months after his coronation as 
 Emperor, and whilst he was still, as indeed he was always, only not 
 so hopefully as now, earnestly pressing on the arrangements for 
 the peace of Christendom, preparatory to a general attack on the 
 Turks. At this time but five princes of the Empire and two 
 imperial cities had committed themselves on the side of reform ; the 
 names attached to the Confession when it was presented are those of 
 the Elector of Saxony, Margrave George of Brandenburg, Ernest 
 duke of Ltineburg, Philip landgrave of Hesse, Wolfgang duke of 
 Anhalt ; and the towns of Nuremberg and Reutlingen, a place in the 
 south of Swabia ; but before the end of the Diet four more towns 
 added their names ; and the example was quickly followed. 
 
 To begin, however, with the Diet of Augsburg itself. Charles, 
 before he was crowned at Bologna, made (January 21, 1530) the 
 summoning of a Diet his first business. According to the Golden 
 Bull of Charles IV., this first Diet ought to have been at Nuremberg. 
 Charles, however, summoned it at Augsburg, which, amongst other 
 advantages, had this, that it was the residence of his faithful bankers 
 the Fuggers. For the Diet was not called only for the purpose of 
 settling the religious dispute ; there was the demand for supplies for 
 the never-ending Turkish war, and Charles, moreover, was desirous, 
 by procuring the election of his brother Ferdinand as King of the 
 Romans, to rid his own shoulders of the pressure of imperial business. 
 And the religious question was now quickly ceasing to be a merely 
 domestic one. The Lutheran opinions had taken deep root in 
 Denmark as early as they had in Germany, and the questions were 
 there, as in Germany, complicated by the overweening secular 
 claims of the prelacy. Three kings — Christian II., a bully and a 
 tyrant, Frederick I., and Christian III. — successively devoted them- 
 selves to the task of promoting the Gospel and humbling the bishops. 
 In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa, who had learned Lutheran doctrine 
 whilst in exile at Liibeck, brought teachers from Germany, had the 
 Holy Scriptures translated, and in 1527 obtained from his States 
 the recognition of the reformed religion as that of the State. 
 
 Although in France the movement against the Church and clergy 
 was not so successful as among the Scandinavian nations, it yet 
 found support largely among the nobility and people ; nay, it had 
 its proselytes within the circle of the royal house. But the kings of 
 the house of Angouleme never really favoured it ; Francis, his son, 
 and his grandsons, with perhaps the single exception of Charles IX., 
 were men singularly devoid of principle and were attached to the 
 Church simply by reason of habit with a dash of superstition. A 
 religious man in those days must have taken one side or the other : 
 
 H
 
 98 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 an irreligious man then, as now, simply adhered to the side on 
 which his own interests seemed to lie, and Francis and his sons 
 found that on the side of Rome. England was rapidly tending 
 towards a change : therefore France and Scotland must continue 
 and wax more exceeding Catholic. In Germany Charles was 
 politically inclined to be merciful, though, as a strong Catholic of 
 those days, he was religiously bound to persecute ; and Francis 
 would have a becoming policy marked out for him by Charles's 
 changes : he could vindicate his own orthodoxy by persecuting at 
 home, and, having laid up a stock of merits thereby, could afford, 
 without loss of character or risk of his salvation, to support Charles's 
 heretical subjects in their opposition to his authority. 
 
 Thus the Protestants were by no means likely to be helpless in 
 a struggle if the Emperor should provoke one. But Charles had no 
 wish to do so ; he wanted the schism to be closed ; and as yet only 
 two ways approved themselves to him, the two ways that had been 
 tried and proved failures already, argument first and a sentence of 
 the Diet to follow. He did not want to go to extremities. Saxony 
 and Brandenburg and Hesse were rich States ; he could not afford 
 to lose their contributions ; nor could he afford to dispense with the 
 help of an old friend like George of Brandenburg. A campaign 
 against the Turks was a much better way of defending the faith 
 than the burning of heretics. On June 15, 1530, Charles came to 
 Augsburg, and the first sign he found of the spirit of the Protestants 
 was the refusal of George of Brandenburg, in the name of the other 
 princes, to attend the Corpus Christi festival on the following day ; he 
 would rather, he said, part with his head than forsake the Gospel. On 
 the 20th, the Diet opened ; on the 25th, the Confession was pre- 
 sented ; and Charles determined on hearing the confutation : this 
 was drawn up by Faber, Eck, and Cochlreus, and read on August 3. 
 The reformers were ordered to submit at once, but they determined 
 on answering this. Melanchthon drew up his apology for the 
 Confession and offered it to Charles (September 22). He refused 
 to receive it. The end of the Diet was the publication (November 19) 
 of a decree against the Reformation : passed in the absence of the 
 Elector of Saxony and his friends : reviving the Diet of Worms with 
 new sanctions ; insisting that the princes should return to the old 
 religion within so many months or be declared enemies of the 
 Empire ; and finally repeating the often made and broken promise 
 of a Council, this time to be held within six months. 
 
 This done, Charles issued summonses for a Diet at Cologne in 
 December, at which the election of Ferdinand was to be transacted. 
 The Elector of Saxony protested against this as an infringement of 
 the Golden Bull, though what his arguments were is not very clear ;
 
 THE EEFOEMATION FROM 1530 TO 1548 99 
 
 but he sent his son with his excuses to Charles and himself called 
 together the Protestant princes at Smalkald on December 22. There 
 he formed with them the league of Smalkald, contrary to Luther'g 
 wishes, who desired the struggle to be conducted on strictly legal 
 principles ; the lawyers, however, convinced him that combination 
 was recognised by the Constitution, and he acquiesced. Philip of 
 Hesse wished to include the Swiss in the league, but they were con- 
 sidered by the strict Lutherans ineligible, their view of the Eucharist 
 being irreconcilable with that of the Saxon reformers. This league 
 was more completely organised and defined for defence for six years 
 on March 29, 1531. In the meantime the election at Cologne went 
 on, and on January 5, 1531, Ferdinand became, in spite of the pro- 
 tests of John of Saxony, King of the Romans. Ferdinand was as 
 faithful a Catholic as, and a more unscrupulous one than, Charles ; 
 and the confederates having, as I think, taken their first wrong step 
 in opposing his election, added another, by canvassing for support 
 among the foreign states hostile to or only formally at peace with 
 the Emperor. Neither Henry VIII. , however, nor Francis I. showed 
 any inclination to join the league of Smalkald as yet. Henry was 
 too sound a Catholic, and Francis was not ready to renew the war ; 
 his interest, moreover, lay rather in the favour of Pope Clement VII. 
 
 But Charles had for the present played out his hand ; the very 
 existence of his hereditary dominions in Germany was imperilled by 
 the Turkish invasions which year after year poured through Hungary, 
 his brother Ferdinand's kingdom, into Austria. He had already 
 resigned to Ferdinand the Austrian patrimony, but he could not, the 
 leading and most victorious prince in Europe, suffer the loss and 
 disgrace to continue. In spite of the extent of his dominions he 
 was always poor : in Germany he was poorer than elsewhere, he 
 must have peace and he must have money. So having failed to 
 frighten the Protestants into submission, and to bribe the Pope into 
 concession, he found that his best, indeed his only, policy was peace. 
 He began to negotiate, and in the following year peace was made ; 
 the Archbishop Albert of Mentz and the Count Palatine Louis were 
 the mediators. The representatives of the two parties met at 
 Schweinfurt in April 1532, and again at Nuremberg on June 3. 
 On July 23 Charles proclaimed peace throughout Germany, and 
 immediately went off to meet the Turks, who retired before him, as 
 we saw, without a battle. On August 16, within a month of the 
 peace, John the Constant died, leaving his electorate to his son, 
 John Frederick the Magnanimous, one of the best and most unfor- 
 tunate princes of the century. 
 
 By the terms of this peace of Nuremberg the Protestant princes 
 recognised Ferdinand and undertook to vote money for the war : 
 
 h2
 
 100 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1648 
 
 Cbarles en his part annulled the edicts of Worms and Augsburg, 
 and, as had been done at the first Diet of Speyer, put it in the powor 
 of each State to regulate its own religious affairs, until the Council, 
 which, as usual, was to be held in six months. For some years 
 matters went on quietly so far as the relations of Charles to the 
 Protestants are concerned. He had other work to do, and they en- 
 joyed a comparative quiet. But the period was not uneventful. In 
 the first place the movement in England, some of the principal actors 
 in which were inclined to Lutheranism, although the mainspring 
 was a very different influence indeed, went on apace. The supremacy 
 of the Pope was repudiated ; Catharine of Aragon, the Emperor's 
 aunt, was divorced, and her daughter bastardised ; Cranmer, a friend 
 of the German reformers, was now Archbishop of Canterbury ; the 
 Bible was translated, and men like Fox and Latimer were on the 
 highway to promotion. Henry even sent over an envoy to the 
 leaf^ue of Smalkald in 1535, and Francis was desirous of intriguing 
 with them as Charles's enemies. But the reforming spirit had got 
 ahead in France likewise, and the cruel way in which it was there 
 repressed was repellent to the Germans : they in their turn declined 
 to listen to Francis's dishonest and unprincipled invitations. Neither 
 France nor England was anxious, it seemed, to do more than make 
 use of them for its own designs ; neither was willing to adopt the 
 Augsburg Confession, as its supporters desired. Cromwell, who was 
 the leading man in England, in spite of his Protestant leanings, was 
 a time-serving rogue, and eventually came to grief in consequence. 
 
 Nor was the Pope at this time able to do much. Clement VII., 
 intriguing on the one side with Francis against Charles' and with 
 Charles against Henry, had so mismanaged matters that no one 
 trusted him. He lost the obedience of England, and risked that 
 which remained of Germany. Nor was it likely that Charles would 
 sacrifice the Protestants to him before the result of the ever future 
 Council should be seen. He died, however, in 1534, and Paul III., 
 his successor, had nothing better than the same promise to move the 
 Emperor with. Clement would have called an Italian Council will- 
 ingly, and Paul did in fact promise to call one at Mantua in 1535 
 and the next year issued the formal summons. But the Germans had 
 from the beginning demanded a free Council on their own soil, and 
 ■ such the Roman Pontiffs never had called voluntarily, and now, since 
 j the example of the Council of Basel, had determined that they never 
 ; would. The promise of Paul III. had the effect of stirring up the 
 ^ princes to a greater effort : in 1535 the league of Smalkald was re- 
 newed ; and in 1537, after the summoning of the Council, they drew 
 up a new series of articles, far more strongly expressed than those 
 of which the Confession of Augsburg consisted, to be presented to
 
 THE EEFOKMATION FROM 1530 TO 1548 101 
 
 the bishops when they should meet. Bat the idea of a Council blew 
 over for the time. 
 
 It was just now that the terrible outbreak of the Anabaptists in f 
 Miinster took place : an event which, although it in some respects % 
 resembles the Peasant War of 1525, must be carefully distinguished | 
 from it. In the Peasant War, as in every insurrection of the kind, f 
 thefe was, no doubt, an element of religious enthusiasm, for which | 
 the Lutherans at the time were taken to task unjustly ; but the ° 
 Anabaptists, although their tenets were repudiated by the reformers, |i 
 were a sect of religionists distinctly, and based their claims on mis- ^ 
 interpretations of the Scriptures, much as a sound Eomanist would 
 consider that the Lutherans themselves did. No doubt, the general 
 break-up of the blind confidence in the ancient forms of faith con- | 
 tributed largely to the growth of such sects, even where it did not 
 originate them ; the ancient rule of authority, rightly or wrongly, 
 was broken down, and out of the gap went the madman and the 
 criminal, as well as the innocent who had been captives. The wicked- 
 nesses of the Anabaptists cannot be laid more justly on one than I 
 on the other of the two parties, the one of which had set at naught | 
 authority, whilst the other had strained it beyond endurance. But I 
 the coincidence of these exaggerated forms of tenet and monstrosities I 
 of practice with extreme Puritan vieAvs is too common in history to |. 
 allow us to separate the Anabaptist excesses altogether from the 
 doctrinal movement of the German Eeformation. Those excesses 
 called for, and received, the severest punishments, and an unhappy 
 frequency of persecution was thus inaugurated. In fact, the repres- 
 sion of the Anabaptists was the first step in Germany towards the 
 attempts later made to extinguish heresy by sword and fire. It | 
 must not be forgotten that Charles had lived for years in Spain, in | 
 constant view of the acts of the Inquisition, and had early introduced f 
 it into the Netherlands, and only been prevented by the resolution of i 
 the people from doing the same in Naples. But the Inquisition 
 was a force too unmanageable and irresponsible to be introduced 
 into Germany ; nor hitherto had any attempt been made to imitate | 
 its proceedings. The reformers lived in a constant state of alarm, f 
 but up to this time blood was not shed for religion. ■' 
 
 So we come down to the year 1541, when disputations were 
 renewed, this time between Eck and Melanchthon ; and the revival 
 of the talk about a Council which ended the next year by Pope 
 Paul's proposal that Trent should be the place of meeting. Trent i 
 was geographically in Germany, but it was much nearer to Italy 
 than to Saxony, and, lying in the midst of the Austrian estates, < 
 although itself under a prince bishop, could not be regarded as a 
 safe place for the Emperor's enemies or those whom he might incline
 
 102 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 I to treat as such. During these years Charles was obliged by the 
 exigencies of his wars to keep good terms with the Protestants, who 
 in the great Diet of Speyer in 1544 laid him under the greatest 
 obligations (March 24) by a grant of men and money. The King of 
 the Romans accepted the place as fitting, and the Pope gave notice 
 of tho Council throughout Christendom. In 1545, at a Diet at 
 Worms, Charles attempted to win the Protestants to attend the 
 Council ; but in vain of course. Ferdinand had no better argument 
 than the duty of submission to the decrees of the Council as soon 
 as they should appear, and such advice was but mockery in the ears 
 of the princes. And the princes were not in a mood to submit ; 
 their influence and numbers were increasing. In 1544 Frederick the 
 Wise, the Count Palatine who had defended Vienna against the 
 Turks in 1529, succeeded to the electorate, and he was known to 
 have reforming tendencies. In 1545, although he had not joined 
 ■^ the Smalkaldic League, he abolished the ritual of the Mass in his 
 dominions. Since 1540 Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne, 
 had been an earnest reformer and had employed Bucer to preach the 
 new doctrines in his electorate. Three of the electoral body were 
 now openly Protestant ; the Archbishop of Mentz continued averse 
 to persecution. Joachim, since 1535 Elector of Brandenburg, 
 although he did not join the league of Smalkald, and remained 
 , faithful to the Emperor, became in 1539 a Lutheran so far as to 
 I swamp three bishoprics. 
 
 Nearly all North Germany was now subject to Protestant rulers. 
 
 It was not probable either that these would submit blindly to the 
 
 decrees of a Council in which they were not represented, decrees which 
 
 Avere not yet conceived ; or that when the decrees were conceived and 
 
 published they would be accepted by men against whose cherished 
 
 beliefs they were framed. Nor was it to be expected that Charles 
 
 would suffer the defection of half the Empire from the Roman faith 
 
 without a struggle. It was clear that, as soon as the Council should 
 
 publish a decree, submission or war must follow ; both sides were 
 
 prepared for such an arbitrament. Charles, released from immediate 
 
 pressure by the peace of Crespy in September 1544, was for the 
 
 moment at peace and able to bring a force into Germany. The 
 
 league of Smalkald was armed and ready for resistance. On 
 
 January 7, 1546, the Council of Trent held its first sitting; on 
 
 - February 18, Martin Luther died at Eisleben. The first decrees of 
 
 . Trent were laid before the Diet at Ratisbon in April and there 
 
 ' rejected by the Protestants : the princes refused to recognise the 
 
 i Council as that for which they had prayed and waited so long. 
 
 The war was not long delayed. In this war it is worth while 
 attending particularly to the attitude of the princes. We are not to
 
 THE REFOEMATION FROM 1530 TO 1548 103 
 
 suppose that the taking up Lutheran views, or even the introduction 
 of them by some of the princes into their dominions as the State 
 religion, is the same thing as to join the league of Smalkald or 
 to go to war against the Emperor. We have to distinguish between 
 the Protestant States : (1) Those which were prepared for rebellion 
 and self-defence in resistance to the Emperor ; (2) those which were 
 averse to war and did not regard the religious cause as sufficient to 
 warrant them in taking up arms, and so remained neutral ; (3) 
 those which, whilst upholding the Protestant religion, were fighting 
 on the side of Charles, either on account of some private and personal 
 quarrel with the leaders of the league, or because they believed the 
 assertion, which Charles was never weary of making, that he took up 
 arms to bring his rebel subjects to order ; not to oppress Protes- 
 tantism, but for a merely secular purpose. It is hard to see how 
 anyone who was not wilfully blind could accept Charles's statement 
 that such was the cause of the war, for his own persecutions in 
 the Netherlands and in Spain were sufficiently notorious ; but it was 
 on this understanding that Maurice of Saxony and the princes of 
 Brandenburg, Joachim the Elector, John of Brandenburg-Anspach, 
 and Albert of Brandenburg-Culmbach and Baireuth, continued 
 faithful to Charles. The Elector Palatine remained Protestant and 
 neutral ; the brunt of the struggle was borne by John Frederick the 
 Magnanimous of Saxony, Philip also the Magnanimous of Hesse, 
 the Duke of Wiirtemberg, Ulric VI., and the free cities. 
 
 The influence of the Brunswick dukes was paralysed by a division, 
 the history of which explains the attitude taken by the Brandenburgers 
 in the Smalkaldic war. The Duke of Wolfenbiittel, Henry, was a 
 bigoted Catholic ; Ernest of Liineburg was one of the original pre- 
 senters of the Augsburg Confession. In the year 1542, Duke Henry, 
 by an attempt to enforce on the citizens of Goslar the restitution of 
 the ecclesiastical property which they had seized, drew down on him- 
 self the anger of the Elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse, who 
 deprived him of his dominions. In 1545 he returned with a force 
 supplied by France and attempted to recover them, but he was de- 
 feated in this and compelled to surrender himself and his sons to the 
 Magnanimous landgrave. Albert and John of Brandenburg as well 
 as the Elector Joachim, offended at this harsh treatment of their 
 kinsman, joined the Emperor instead of the league, to which by 
 religion they were before inclined. The defection of Maurice of 
 Saxony is traceable to a similar want of tact on the part of John 
 Frederick, giving an excuse for the ambition and jealousy of his 
 kinsman which ended in his own downfall and the transference of 
 the electoral dignity to the younger branch. 
 
 This division among the Protestants was promoted, of course, by
 
 lOil LECTURES ON EUROPExVN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 the Emperor's declaration that his purposes were solely directed to the 
 restoration of order, in the secular sense, throughout Germany. But 
 ^ there were further difficulties in the Protestant camp arising from 
 the opposing views of Philip of Hesse, who was a politic and ener- 
 getic man, very unscrupulous as to the means he adopted for his 
 righteous ends ; and those of John Frederick the Magnanimous of 
 Saxony, who was a hrave good man, but very innocent of policj^ and 
 obstinate to a fault. They did not indeed quarrel, but the elector's 
 conscience fettered Philip's political genius and was indeed for the 
 time fatal to the good cause. One of the first signs of the struggle 
 approaching was the deposition by the Pope of Hermann of Cologne ; 
 he was displaced by the Pope (July 7, 1546), and, the Emperor ha^dng 
 consented to enforce the sentence, he solved the difficulty by resign- 
 ing the see which he had held for thirty-two years in February 1547. 
 This is, however, to anticipate a little. Well, the Protestant princes, 
 after being tried by Charles singly and collectively, refused, at 
 Katisbon in April 1546, to accept the decrees of the Council of Trent. 
 In June (19th) the Emperor made a secret agreement with Maurice 
 of Saxony to give him the electoral hat if he would join in displacing 
 his cousin John Fredericl^ ; he also concluded an alliance with the 
 Pope, who was to send forthwith a large force into Germany ; he 
 stirred up the Brandenburgers to attempt the deliverance of Henry 
 of Bruns^vick, and summoned his own forces from Spain and the 
 Netherlands. 
 
 The state of peace ended formally, I believe, on July 15, when 
 the league of Smalkald published the reasons for taking up arms. 
 The following day Philip of Hesse moved his force southward to 
 attack the Emperor, who was at Eatisbon, as usual behindhand with 
 his preparations, with about 8,000 infantry, to resist Philip, who 
 came against him with 50,000. Not a whit, however, frightened by 
 the superiority of his force, Charles, on the receipt of the manifesto 
 of the league, put the elector and Philip (July 20) under the ban of 
 the Empire. He had no right to do this without trial or summons 
 at least before the Diet, but he dispensed with this, as perhaps he was 
 justified in doing by the open attitude of war assumed by the con- 
 federates. They, in retaliation, proclaimed war against him by a 
 herald and renounced their allegiance, treating him as a pretender 
 to the Empire and calhng him Charles of Ghent (Avigust 11). Charles 
 refused to receive the proclamation, and threatened to hang any more 
 such heralds that might come to him. He had by this time moved 
 from Eatisbon to Landshut, where the Papal force joined him after 
 a passage through the Tyrol, where they might easily have been cut 
 off if the elector and landgrave had been as prompt as their captain 
 Schertel. Finding himself followed by the enemy, he removed to
 
 THE REFOEMATION FROM 1530 TO 1548 105 
 
 Ingolstadt, where he fortified a very strong camp, from which all the 
 insults and assaults of the leaguers failed to draw him. Whilst at 
 Ingolstadt he received the succours from the Netherlands which 
 they had failed to intercept. He then extended his hnes, occupied 
 Donauwerth and Nordlingen (September), and waited until the con- 
 federates should quarrel. 
 
 It was now time for Maurice of Saxony to play his game. His 
 innocent and magnanimous cotiS^inV ignorant of the secret treaty, had 
 actually left him to govern Saxony as his deputy. To him Charles 
 directed the letters of proscription against John Frederick. He 
 took the advice of his states, which agreed Avith him that he must 
 obey the Emperor, and, after proposing to his cousin that he should 
 give up his part of Saxony to him, took up arms and defeated the 
 little band of men left to protect the electorate. With the aid of 
 Hungarian auxiliaries, supplied by Ferdinand, he occupied the whole 
 electorate excepting the fortified towns of Wittenberg, Gotha, and 
 Eisenach. The news of this struck consternation into the leaguers, 
 whose headquarters were at Ulm : John Frederick wished to return 
 northwards, but the rest proposed to treat with Charles. He of course 
 would be content with nothing short of absolute and unconditional 
 submission. John Frederick in consequence put an end to the cam- 
 paign, and, leaving nine thousand men to defend the cities of Swabia, 
 returned home to meet his treacherous cousin. The imperial forces 
 thus set free immediately took possession of the cities within their 
 reach, and amongst them the great fortress of Ulm. The Count 
 Palatine was obliged to renounce his neutrality ; the Duke of Wiir- 
 temberg to submit to an enormous fine, and Strasburg, Augsburg, 
 and Frankfort to renounce the league. 
 
 Such were the successes of Charles's quiet and deliberate tactics. 
 The enormous superiority of the leaguers in point of force was 
 counterbalanced by a defensive attitude and prudent delay ; whilst 
 the diversion in Saxony not only dispersed the great force of John 
 Frederick and Philip, but actually gave the Emperor the opportunity 
 of repairing his finances by the fines he could impose on the cities 
 and princes who were left alone, unable to resist him. The return 
 of John Frederick turned the fortune of war in Saxony. He quickly 
 recovered all that he had lost, took prisoner Albert of Brandenburg 
 whom Charles sent to the aid of Maurice ; harried Maurice in turn 
 out of his own dominions, and closed the year 1546 in triumph. 
 
 The gradual improvement in Charles's prospects was, as usual, 
 calling forth the fears of his rival Francis and of his never 
 very zealous friend the Pope ; and the year 1547 would have 
 undoubtedly witnessed some very serious modifications in the state 
 of parties, had not the deaths of Henry VIII. and Francis I. robbed
 
 10(5 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 the Protestants of any hope of a diversion in their favour. Charles 
 did not hesitate for a moment, on receiving the news of Francis's 
 death, to march towards Saxony and make a bold stroke to end the 
 war. He had but 16,000 men with him, but they with the benefit 
 of his caution and experience were enough, he thought, to defeat 
 and reduce the elector, whose usual imprudence and ill-luck he 
 counted upon. John Frederick determined, after separating his 
 force and changing his plans more than once, to contest the passage 
 of the Elbe at Miihlberg. There the great battle was fought on 
 April 2i. John Frederick showed incapacity as well as magnanimity. 
 The Saxon force was thoroughly beaten, Charles losing only fifty 
 men as against the elector's 1,200 ; and John Frederick himself, 
 ■? with Ernest of Brunswick, son of Duke Philip of Grubenhagen 
 (not, you observe, the hero of the Augsburg Confession, who had 
 died in 1546), was taken prisoner. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that so great a success should have 
 provoked Charles to exult in an unseemly way over his prisoner. 
 John Frederick had indeed brought upon himself, partly by impru- 
 dence and partly by vanity, all that he had to suffer. The Emperor 
 at first threatened the extremest measures against him and by that 
 means frightened the Electress Sybilla of Cleves into surrendering 
 Wittenberg : he went so far as to bestow all his estates upon 
 Maurice, but he spared his life, holding out, however, no hope of 
 release from imprisonment. John, who was greater in adversity 
 than in prosperity, and whose firmness was greatly exercised in 
 patient endurance of imprisonment, bore his fate with equanimity. 
 
 The formidable confederacy was now thoroughly disabled ; only 
 Philip of Hesse remained, and he was by this time as penitent as 
 could be wished. Charles got him into his power on June 17. He 
 had taken Wittenberg ; and whilst bestowing Saxony on Maurice, 
 he had reserved Gotha and its little territory as a future provision 
 for the imprisoned elector : and he had liberated Ernest of Brunswick 
 in exchange for Albert of Brandenburg. The friends of Philip, his 
 son-in-law Maurice and the Brandenburg princes, interceded for him. 
 In faith in their undertaking he presented himself before Charles 
 and submitted to the most abject terms : he renounced the league, 
 acknowledged the jurisdiction of the imperial chamber, consented to 
 pay a fine, to release Duke Henry of Brunswick, and to do and 
 suffer whatever the Emperor wished. With the greatest difficulty 
 he avoided having to receive the decrees of the Council of Trent. 
 He condescended, as a matter of form, to ask pardon on his knees. 
 But when the time came for him to return home, Charles consigned 
 him to captivity, declaring that he had bound himself by no other 
 promise than to spare him perpetual imprisonment. The document
 
 THE REFOEMATION FROM 1530 TO 1548 107 
 
 which he had signed, according to the tradition of the Germans, 
 read ewigc for cinige. Philip supposed that he should be spared all 
 imprisonment, the Emperor read it only as sparing him imprison- 
 ment for life. By this very disingenuous pettifogging act, Charles 
 disgraced his great and deserved triumph. 
 
 He had now the two great leaders of the league in his hands, 
 and all the inferior ones had submitted. But the end was not yet. 
 The Pope was, as usual, alarmed at the imperial success, and 
 suspected that, if the Council of Trent continued to sit, Charles's 
 influence would be found greater in it than his own ; nor was it his 
 interest that the Emperor should be all-powerful in Germany. He 
 connived at, therefore, if he did not actually suggest, a division in 
 the Council : half the prelates, for fear of the plague, seceded to 
 Bologna and reconstituted themselves there as the veritable Council. 
 Until that schism was healed the business of the reformation could 
 not proceed. It became, therefore, Charles's object to reunite the 
 two divisions, in order to pacify Germany by reforms whilst his 
 successes were still fresh : it became the Pope's aim to hinder this 
 reunion, lest under the Emperor's influence the reforms should go 
 further than was convenient to himself, and Charles's power in 
 Germany increase to a degree incompatible with any independent 
 spirit in Germany, such as had been so often, from the time of 
 Henry IV. downwards, the salvation of the Apostolic See. The 
 influence of the family interests was also still strong with Paul III. 
 The Emperor had refused to give Parma and Piacenza to his son 
 Pietro Ludovico, and he was half inclined to go to war. 
 
 Charles again saw that no time must be lost. He summoned 
 the Diet to Augsburg, and during a sitting of some months prepared 
 the minds of the princes. Among the other business transacted in 
 this session were the release of the landgrave : the investiture 
 of Maurice with the electorate of Saxony ; the reform in the 
 imperial chamber, which was loudly called for and had been indeed 
 one of the stated causes of the war of Smalkald ; but the most 
 important was the obtaining a consent to receive the Tridentine 
 decrees. By intrigue of one sort or another, Charles persuaded the 
 states to give a conditional consent : they would receive the decrees, 
 but not without terms. Maurice was bought by the electorate : 
 Joachim of Brandenburg followed Maurice's line ; the Elector 
 Palatine Charles frightened into consent, but the cities would have 
 a pro\asion made for their teachers being heard before the Council 
 of Trent, and for the decision of all points by Holy Scripture and 
 primitive tradition. Charles pretended to accept this as an explicit 
 promise to obey, and forwarded to the Pope, as the wish of the Diet, 
 a petition for the reunion of the Council. But the Bologna division
 
 108 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-164S 
 
 proved obstinate, and, the Pope declining to coerce them, Charles 
 took on himself to provide a cure for the spiritual evils of Germany. 
 After protesting by his ambassadors against the conduct of the 
 council (January 1548), he propounded what was called the Interim, 
 because it was intended as a provisional arrangement for the interval 
 before the Council should determine on reformation, on May 15, 
 1548, at Augsburg. 
 
 This document or declaration of the Emperor, which may be 
 ' compared with some of Henry VIII. 's manifestoes in England, was 
 a summary of Christian teaching drawn up by two Catholic divines, 
 Julius Pflug and Michael Sidonius, and one nominally Protestant, 
 John Agricola. Unfortunately for its character as a compromise, it 
 ^■i contained nothing but Roman doctrine ; two points of practice only 
 being temporarily conceded to the Protestants : the retention by the 
 married clergy of their wives, and the giving of the cup to the laity 
 in the districts where it had been customary. Unpalatable as it was 
 : to the whole party, it was accepted by the Diet in which it was pro- 
 mulgated. The Archbishop of Mentz rose immediately on hearing it, 
 and in the name of the assembly approved it, without their avithority 
 indeed, but uncontradicted. Charles pretended to receive this un- 
 authorised assent as satisfactory and dissolved the Diet. Both parties 
 were equally outraged, yet Charles declared that he would enforce 
 , the Interim on them alike. John Frederick gained dignity by re- 
 I fusing, and Philip lost it by promising adhesion. The Electors 
 '' Palatine and of Brandenburg, with Maurice of Saxony, reluctantly 
 * received it ; but the Margrave John refused, pleading the Emperor's 
 promise to his Protestant allies. The Spanish forces took the cities 
 one by one, and compelled submission in them, Charles abolishing at 
 \ the same time their ancient constitutions. Hollow as the peace was, 
 Charles pretended to believe it, and, seeing only peace in Germany, 
 I departed to the Netherlands with his prisoners. 
 
 LECTUEE IX 
 
 CHABLES V.'S RELATIONS WITH MAURICE OF SAXONY 
 AND HENRY II. OF FRANCE 
 
 The Interim was propounded by Charles on May 15, 1548. Two 
 years of uneasy quiet followed it, during which the Protestants were 
 discussing among themselves how to avoid any decided action that 
 would either commit them to the objectionable formula, or draw 
 down upon them the vengeance of the Emperor, who was for the
 
 CHAELES V.'S EELATIONS WITH SAXONY AND FEANCE 109 
 
 time irresistible. Charles had survived his rivals, and his chief 
 enemies were in his own prisons. He had extinguished political life 
 in Spain, and had nearly done the same in Germany, partly by divid- 
 ing the Protestants against one another, partly by breaking down 
 the constitutions of the free cities which refused to receive the 
 Interim, and imposing on them a new municipal system and new 
 Catholic magistrates. He lived during this time in Belgium, m^aking 
 a royal progress in company with his son Philip, and, during the 
 intervals of gout, bending his politic mind to the compassing of two 
 ends : the greater one, the recalling of the Council of the Church to 
 Trent ; the smaller, the substitution of Philip for Ferdinand as his 
 successor in the Empire. 
 
 It is possible that the next two years might, but for the gout, 
 have been the quietest years of Charles's life. But his two sets of 
 negotiations gave him employment and sowed the seeds of difficulties 
 which, in spite of the gout, were to put him to as great trouble and 
 exertion as he had ever had before. The negotiation with the 
 electors for the substitution of Philip had no effect except to offend 
 Ferdinand and cause a sort of political alliance, or rather resumption 
 of friendly relations, between him and Maurice of Saxony, which 
 bore fruit later. The negotiations for the re- summoning of the 
 Council and closing of the schism of Bologna were hampered by the 
 difficulties touching Parma and Piacenza, which were claimed by the 
 Pope as the property of the See of Rome, by his grandson Ottavio 
 Farnese as his duchy, the investiture of which, either from Emperor 
 or Pope, he insisted in vain on receiving, and by the Emperor as over- 
 lord of Milan. So long as the Emperor refused to recognise either 
 the Pope or his grandson in the possession of Parma and Piacenza, 
 so long Paul III. declined to recall the Council to Trent ; so long 
 Charles could make no use of the pretended consent of the Protestant 
 princes to receive the decrees ; and there was no chance of perma- 
 nent peace in Germany. Several cities, Hamburg, Bremen, Liibeck, 
 Magdeburg, refused to receive the Interim altogether, and the states 
 which received it were already quarrelling about the extent to be 
 allowed to the class of questions that were called adiaphora, which 
 the divines were anxious to make as definite and the politicians as 
 large as possible. 
 
 This state of uncertainty ended with the death of Paul III. on 
 November 10, 1549 : accelerated, as his contemporaries beUeved, by 
 the conduct of Ottavio Farnese, who had seized Parma, then held by 
 a Papal garrison, and offered to hold it of the Emperor. The election 
 of the Cardinal del Monte, who had acted as Paul's representative in 
 the Council of Trent, and who became Pope, as Julius III., on 
 February 8, 1550, puts an end to the complication of the Farnese
 
 110 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 rights, with the other obstacles to the Council ; although Parma and 
 Piacenza continued not only now but long afterwards, nay, almost to 
 the present day, to act as an open wound in Europe. - To sum them 
 up briefly and put them out of the way, Ottavio Farnese got from 
 Julius III., in the beginning of his reign, a recognition as duke. 
 Julius repented very soon of having thrown away what might have 
 been kept to the Holy See. Ottavio placed himself under the pro- 
 tection of Henry II. of France, with whose forces he fought a cam- 
 paign against the Papal and imperial forces, the King and Emperor 
 being still at peace. After the peace of Passau, Charles secured 
 Ottavio in possession of the duchy, and in 1556 Philip II., in order 
 to draw him off from France, gave him the town of Piacenza, the 
 castle of which was, however, retained by him as overlord until 1585. 
 
 The accession of a new Pope inspired Charles with renewed 
 hopes of the Council. He plied Julius with constant requests, 
 and, not content with that, took the business of Germany again in 
 hand, summoned the Diet to Augsburg for June 25, left the Nether- 
 lands at the end of May ; met the Diet in July 1550, and laid 
 before it a proposition to renew the promise made in 1548 to receive 
 the decrees, and another to force the Interim on Magdeburg by a 
 regular siege. 
 
 The conduct of the siege was committed to Maurice of Saxony, 
 who becomes for the remaining years of his life the chief man in 
 Germany. We have traced his career hitherto as that of a 
 thoroughly selfish and unscrupulous man ; he was a sound Protes- 
 tant, but had stood aloof from the league of Smalkald, had ruined 
 the Protestant cause by the attack upon Saxony in the Smal- 
 kaldic war ; had risen to the electoral dignity by an act of treason 
 to the head of his family, and had urged with the whole force of his 
 authority, and with the insinuating power of his dissimulation and 
 address, the hateful Interim upon the unwilling people. His action 
 now might well astonish the faithful, if any of them retained any 
 belief in his sincerity. Possibly some few were aware of the depth 
 of his schemes, and to a certain extent took part in his design ; 
 but it would seem certain that his purpose, even at the moment 
 he undertook the siege of Magdeburg, was hostile to the Emperor. 
 Either he intended to create for himself an independent dominion 
 or to turn the tables on Charles. That he had determined to 
 revenge himself for the long-continued detention of his father-in- 
 law the landgrave Philip, who had consented to receive the Interim, 
 and whose imprisonment was a disgrace to Charles, as it was an 
 insult to Maurice ; that his selfish ambition was so great that it 
 would shrink from nothing by which an increase of power might be 
 seized or purchased, although it does not follow that he had formed
 
 CHAELES V.'S RELATIONS WITH SAXONY AND FRANCE 111 
 
 any definite design of founding a new dominion since he had sup- 
 planted his cousin ; that he and Germany in general had a real ground 
 of complaint and even of armed resistance against the Emperor, 
 on account of the forcible abrogation of the constitution of the free 
 towns and the high-handed way in which the Diet had been treated 
 ever since the battle of Miihlberg ; and that, moreover, his alliance 
 with Ferdinand somewhat countenanced the idea that in resist- 
 ing Charles whose plan to substitute Philip was unquestionably 
 dangerous to Germany— all this, I think, may be regarded as certain. 
 But although these reasons or some of them may justify resistance, 
 and others palliate the treason of rebellion, it could only have been 
 a very deep-laid scheme of revenge that induced him to dissemble 
 so long and so craftily. If he was merely waiting for his opportunity, 
 we may admire his adroitness and rapidity in seizing it ; but the 
 voice of history generally accuses him of deliberately and expressly 
 deceiving Charles, of studiously lulling his suspicions, and, having 
 done so, of sparing no weapon of political warfare against him. 
 
 He is a wonderful man, Maurice, I am afraid we must allow it — 
 a wonderful scoundrel. Scoundrel or not, he undertook the siege of 
 Magdeburg, confiding the personal management of it to George of 
 Mecklenburg, a Protestant of his own stamp, who had the command 
 of a host of mercenaries trained under the wretched Henry of Bruns- 
 wick, whose history we discussed in the last lecture. The siege was 
 not a very brisk one. Magdeburg was a strong place ; and Maurice's 
 plans wanted time to ripen. Negotiations alternated with attacks 
 and sorties, in one of the last of which George of Mecklenburg was 
 taken prisoner. 
 
 Whilst the siege, which lasted from November 1550 to November 
 1551, was in progress, Charles was urging the Council on Julius III., 
 who, not having a family interest to maintain, had only the usual 
 Papal obstacles to prevent his concurrence. The month that the 
 siege of Magdeburg began, he recalled the Council to Trent, and on 
 May 1, 1551, it met. One of its first acts was to accord safe- 
 conduct to the representatives of the Protestant doctrines, whom 
 Charles was strongly urging all the princes to send from Germany. 
 In conformity with his command a large number of divines were 
 selected to attend the Council, and some of them actually reached 
 Trent : but the King of France protested against the holding of the 
 assembly under imperial influence ; and Charles at the same time, by 
 forcibly ejecting the Protestant ministers in Swabia and Augsburg 
 itself, afforded great reason for suspicion that there would not be 
 fair play. Philip Melanchthon, who had agreed to attend and 
 present the Confession of the Saxon Churches, got as far as Nurem- 
 berg and there thought better of it, for he went no further. Charles
 
 112 LECTUEES ON EUKOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 himself, who at all events was thoroughly in earnest about this, 
 and of whom it is too much to say that he was insincere in his 
 desire of religious peace, betook himself to Innsbr\ick, two days' 
 journey from Trent, and there watched the proceedings. So entire 
 was his security that he retained only a small guard about him 
 and sent away the little army that he had always so much difficulty 
 in paying, partly to fight against the Turks in Hungary, partly to 
 support Julius III. in the little war of Parma. 
 
 Well, the Council drew its slow length along from the eleventh 
 to the sixteenth session : and the siege of Magdeburg proceeded 
 almost as slowly until it surrendered on November 9, 1551. Before 
 it surrendered, Maurice had made a league with Henry II. against 
 Charles, and the surrender was the signal for renewed and reunited 
 action on the part of the Protestants. All along, to the very last 
 moment before he proclaimed war, Maurice took the most elaborate 
 measures to deceive the Emperor. Of course his treaty with 
 Henry II., as well as his abortive negotiation with England for help, 
 was kept profoundly secret. But if Charles had not entertained 
 some suspicions, Maurice's zeal must have overdone the thing. It 
 is wonderful how he got both parties to believe him, prevailed on 
 the Magdeburgers to elect him their burggrave, whilst the merit of 
 his victory was urged on Charles as a ground for entire trust in 
 him ; prevailed on Ferdinand by the zeal with which he supported 
 his right to the succession, and through Ferdinand blinded the eyes 
 of Charles ; and prevailed on the Protestants to confide the entire 
 management of their affairs to him, although he had so often 
 betrayed them. The mercenaries who had helped to besiege Magde- 
 burg were taken into the pay of Mecklenburg, lest Maurice should 
 be suspected of keeping too large a force, and Melanchthon was sent 
 to Trent, for fear he should be thought likely to act up to his own 
 pronounced views as to the decrees, the only point on which the 
 Emperor had mistrusted him, and on which he was obliged to make 
 a show of firmness for fear of alienating the Protestants. Charles, 
 perhaps, believed that this also was a trick of Maurice, intended to 
 betray the reformers once again. But if Maurice was so cunning a 
 man, and yet had resort to such elaborate artifice to outreach 
 Charles, we cannot but conclude that, though in this case unques- 
 tionably hoodwinked, Charles was no mean adept in the same art. 
 
 At length the plan was ripe. Henry II. was ready for war. 
 He had renewed his alliance with the Turks, and was ready to do 
 what his father had never been able openly to do, to assist the 
 Protestants of Germany in the field. The league between him and 
 Maurice was renewed at Chambord on January 5, 1552 ; and as 
 soon as the spring opened war began. Maurice secretly moved into
 
 CHARLES V.'S RELATIONS WITH SAXONY AND FRANCE 113 
 
 Thuringia. To the last he had kept up the deception, and pretended 
 to Charles's envoys that he was going to visit their master at 
 Innsbruck ; instead of going to Innsbruck he joined the forces 
 which he had collected under William of Hesse and the Duke of 
 Mecklenburg, and hastened by forced marches into South Germany. 
 As he began his march he published his complaints and demands 
 on the Emperor. Three reasons were given for rebellion : the 
 safety cf the Protestant religion, the unconstitutional behaviour of 
 Charles to the Diet and the free cities, and the imprisonment of 
 the landgrave Philip. All of them were reasonable grounds, and 
 moderately stated. Unfortunately, one of his allies, Albert of 
 Brandenburg, who had got a little force of his own together to seek 
 adventures and found a principality, thought it necessary to issue 
 another manifesto, in which the same principles were stated in 
 offensive and exaggerated language. 
 
 Coincidently with Maurice's action, Henry II., on March 15, began 
 his own movement. He also proclaimed war on Charles, and 
 announced himself the defender of the liberties of Germany and of its 
 captive princes. This was a poor .reason for an orthodox tyrant like 
 Henry to give, but as usual matters were in an uneasy condition, and 
 swords had been drawn already, both in the Low Countries and on 
 the Italian frontier, on the old pretexts. The Constable Mont- 
 morency commanded, and led his army into Lorraine. He took the 
 imperial cities Toul and Verdun, and on April 10 Metz also. On the 
 18th Henry joined the army in person and overran Lorraine, levying 
 contributions through Alsace also, and even from Strassburg itself. 
 
 Maurice on his part lost no time ; after his proclamation he 
 marched towards Augsburg. Everywhere he was received as a 
 deliverer, restored the displaced magistrates to the free towns, and 
 the churches to their Protestant ministers. The garrison of Augs- 
 burg fled at his approach ; and Charles saw him at a distance of 
 two days' journey from Innsbruck, where he was absolutely defence- 
 less. Charles's fortune had hitherto never failed him, and very 
 confidently he must have trusted it when he ventured to stay 
 at Innsbruck. He besought his brother Ferdinand to mediate, 
 and perhaps trusted that Maurice would not go to extremes with 
 him. But Maurice's masterpiece was now in hand. He did not 
 refuse to negotiate, far from it ; he left his army under the Duke of 
 Mecklenburg and met King Ferdinand at Linz on the Danube. 
 Whether he prevailed on Ferdinand to let him give Charles a lesson 
 in diplomacy I cannot say, but the two, finding that they could not 
 arrange matters at once, agreed to meet again at Passau on May 26, 
 on which day a truce was to begin for the purpose of negotiating, to 
 last until June 10. 
 
 I
 
 114 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1619-1648 
 
 Until May 26 Maurice was free to gain any advantage he could ; 
 after that his hands would be tied. He determined to make one 
 bold stroke for the highest stake, and seize the Emperor himself. 
 He took the command of his army again on May 9, and hurried 
 them on towards the Tyrol. On the 18th they arrived at the border, 
 routed the little force that Charles had placed at Giissen and Ruten, 
 and seized Ehrenburg by storm, or rather by panic. If it had not 
 been for the mutiny of a body of mercenaries at Ehrenburg, he 
 would have taken Charles in his bed. As it was, the delay gave time 
 for the news to reach Innsbruck ; the Emperor was carried off in 
 a litter into Carinthia, where it was impossible for an army to follow 
 him, and rested at Villach. Before he left Innsbruck he set the 
 Magnanimous elector free ; but the poor fellow did not know what 
 to do with himself, and, thinking Maurice a more dangerous friend 
 than Charles, posted off to Villach with him. Maurice, finding that 
 the bird was flown, returned to the army in Bavaria, where Albert 
 of Brandenburg was doing mischief to both sides ; and then went 
 on to Passau to keep his engagement with King Ferdinand. 
 
 At Passau a congress of the powers of Germany was held, from 
 May 26 to August 2. Charles was utterly impotent for present 
 resistance. The Council of Trent had collapsed on the news of 
 Maurice's march southwards, and on April 28 adjourned for two 
 years, not to meet again for ten. Henry was threatening not merely 
 the imperial dominions but the Empire itself, and had inflicted a 
 wound from which, as a matter of fact, it never recovered. The 
 three bishoprics Toul, Verdun, and ]\Ietz, were permanently lost to 
 the Empire, and Lorraine, Alsace, and Strassburg were going too. 
 The war of 1870 was the revanche for 1552. Ferdinand himself 
 saw that the succession which he was waiting for would not be 
 worth having, unless Charles were brought to reason. The congress 
 comprised representatives of nearly all the German princes. Maurice 
 acted for the Protestants, Ferdinand, moving to and fro between 
 Passau and Villach, for the Emperor. The immediate demands of 
 the former were : the release of the landgrave ; religious peace and 
 liberty, and the redress of civil grievances, the despotic aggressions 
 of Charles and the iniquities of the Imperial Chamber. The whole 
 assembly of the princes. Catholic and Protestant, joined in begging 
 Charles to satisfy Maurice and stay the civil war. Ferdinand was 
 as anxious for peace as any of them ; and Charles, when he saw 
 that to prolong the struggle at present would be to give up the 
 Netherlands to Henry, and Naples to Solyman, was ready to yield 
 if he could save his dignity. Even as it was, he was the gainer by 
 delay, and if he could have prolonged this, he might have managed 
 to divide the allies : but Maurice was too wide-awake for that, and
 
 CHAELES V.'S EELATIONS WITH SAXONY AND FRANCE 115 
 
 chose to yield somewhat, rathei- than to risk the loss of the 
 advantage he had so cleverly won. Now that the great point was 
 within reach, he saw clearly that Charles might do him much harm 
 yet, and that the only sound peace would be one that Charles could 
 be compelled to keep. 
 
 The principal articles of the treaty were: the release of the 
 landgrave of Hesse ; the holding within six months of a Diet 
 which should provide means for settling religious disputes hence- 
 forward ; the abstinence in the meantime on both sides from 
 interference with each other in religious matters ; the admission of 
 Protestants to be members of the Imperial Chamber ; the provision 
 that, in case the future Diet should fail to provide machinery for 
 the settlement of religious questions, the article of this treaty shall 
 continue in force by which the security of the Protestants is 
 provided for ; both parties forgive each other the injuries done in 
 the war ; and the unruly Albert Alcibiades may, if he likes, be 
 included within the settlement. The question of Charles's uncon- 
 stitutional dealings with the cities was to be referred to the proposed 
 Diet. 
 
 I shall spare you any reflexions on reflexions, such as Robertson 
 favours us with, on this collapse of the design which he imputes to 
 Charles of establishing a despotic government in Germany. If all 
 is well, we can consider some of them in the last lecture, when I 
 shall hope to give you my idea of the character and policy of the 
 Emperor. But now we must follow up the other half of the 
 struggle. The treaty of Passau pacified the Protestants, and they 
 had shown their regard for their generous protector and avenger 
 Henry of France, by omitting any mention of him in the treaty. 
 Albert of Brandenburg, who had done them more harm than good, 
 was provided with an escape, but nothing was done for Henry. 
 
 Charles saw the mischief that the alliance between France and 
 the Protestants had done him ; saw that the wound given to his power 
 inside Germany was curable : time might give him another chance ; 
 but if Germany were ever to be defensible on the side of Lorraine, 
 the three bishoprics must be speedily recovered. As soon as the 
 treaty of Passau was concluded, he set out at once towards Lorraine. 
 Maurice he sent to Hungary to fight for Ferdinand ; Albert of 
 Brandenburg, who declined to join in the peace and was ravaging 
 the Catholic states still with 20,000 men, he thought a more 
 endurable evil than the retention of Metz, Verdun, and Toul by the 
 French, and on the whole wisely. By Augsburg, where his army 
 met him, and where he divided the churches of the city between the 
 Protestants and the Catholics, he proceeded, on September 1, towards 
 Lorraine. On October 22, he began the siege of Metz. Metz was 
 
 i2
 
 116 LECTURES ON EUIIOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1048 
 
 defended by Henry of Guise, who brought to the task a greaL deal of 
 spirit, and skill far beyond the then undeveloped science of military 
 defence. His bravery and earnestness created in the very inhabitants 
 of the town, which had until that year been German, a perfect /z6/-orc 
 of independence. He had with him the very flower of the French 
 nobility and army, whilst with Charles were a magnificent force of 
 50,000 men and uninterrupted communications. 
 
 The siege of Metz was, no doubt, the thing that broke the spirit 
 and heart of Charles. For fifty-six days he persisted in continuing 
 it, in spite of gout, of intolerable weather, and of terrible pestilence 
 in the army. It is easy to condemn him for cruelty and waste of 
 the lives of the thousands who perished in that awful time : but it 
 should not be forgotten that Metz had been torn from the Empire 
 by a wanton, unprovoked aggression, and that the holder of it had 
 the key of Germany in his hands. It was not a mere retaliation by 
 war, but the expulsion of a foreign invader from the imperial 
 territory, that Charles had undertaken. We know that he failed, 
 lost his army, and was obliged to retire on January 1, 1653, into 
 the Netherlands, the French exulting in the thought that they had 
 at last seen the demolition of the power which had overcome them 
 so often. 
 
 The same time saw several mishaps in Italy : the expulsion of 
 the imperial garrison from Siena, and an alarming show of 
 hostility on the Neapolitan coast by the Turks. But these events 
 are not of great interest as touching the string of Charles's history. 
 Siena was recovered in the year 1555, and annexed in 1557 to the 
 Medicean state in Tuscany, which had also acquired Piombino from 
 Charles by mortgage, and which was raised by the Pope in 1570 to 
 the title of Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Another Italian republic 
 thus tasted death, and, if it were worth while going into particulars, 
 tasted it by the same means so many before had done, a preference 
 of French intrigue for the risk of imperial oppression. The 
 republics insisted on being republics, the Empire insisted on regard- 
 ing them as imperial free towns ; trying to become independent 
 by French aid, they lost both characters, missed being republics, and 
 ceased to be free. 
 
 The break-up of the siege of Metz is the last great event of 
 Charles's life, but it is not the end of his political intrigues, nor even 
 of his active mihtary career. Notwithstanding the gout, he thought 
 of marrying again, and not only thought of but actually fought 
 another campaign. But his disappointments and ill-health were 
 telling upon him ; the defeat at Metz brought all his failures home 
 to him, and, although we must not exaggerate his failures as those 
 writers do wh'^ make capital by ascribing to him superhuman designs,
 
 CHARLES V;S RELATIONS WITH SAXONY AND FRANCE 117 
 
 we cannot doubt that, both at Villach and at Metz, personal humilia- 
 tion had come to him as intolerable to bear as the breakdown of great 
 projects. His conduct of affairs in 1553 was enough, however, to 
 show that the French had counted too certainly on his declining 
 power. Early in the year he sent an army into Picardy, took and 
 destroyed Terouanne (June 10), which was in some respects to 
 France what Metz was to Germany, and took also Hesdin by storm. 
 This provoked Henry, who led an army in the direction of the 
 Netherlands, thus rousing up Charles in person from the retreat at 
 Brussels, where he had buried himself since his return from ^letz. 
 But, as usual when both princes were in the same campaign, a 
 general engagement was avoided. Henry, it seems, was at this very 
 time trying to draw on Maurice again into alliance and aspiring to 
 the Empire, which he calculated would soon be vacant. 
 
 In Germany matters were proceeding rapidly towards a deter- 
 mination for the time of the religious crisis. The Diet promised by 
 the treaty of Passau was not yet called, but the Protestants were in 
 no hurry about that, having secured liberty for themselves during 
 the interval ; and Charles and Ferdinand were too busy to set about 
 it on the Catholic side. Maur^'ee of Saxony had returned from 
 Hungary ; and Albert Alcibiades, having made his peace with Charles 
 and joined in the siege of Metz, had again rushed into his robber 
 warfare and attacked the Franconian cities, Bamberg and Wiirzburg 
 bishoprics, and the Niirnbergers. Albert Alcibiades was not a man to 
 make friends ; he had persecuted the Catholics, and refused to com- 
 bine with the Protestants ; there was scarcely a state in the Empire 
 that he had not outraged, and, now that there was time and lei- 
 sure, all men joined against him. I cannot think, notwithstanding 
 Carlyle's admiration of him (and he was a true Hohenzollern), that 
 there was much good in him ever ; at all events now there was none. 
 He was little better than a robber chieftain, a sort of Arab or 
 Bohemian, as the modern phrase is, fighting about everywhere on a 
 pretence of religion. He roused all the princes against him. 
 Maurice was put at the head of the army of the allies, and Albert 
 Alcibiades was thoroughly beaten in the battle of Sievershausen, near 
 Llineburg, June 9, 1558. There Maurice himself fell, but Albert 
 Alcibiades never lifted up his head again. He was put under the 
 ban of the Empire in May 1554 ; he fled to France, and, failing of 
 help there, to Baden, where he died in 1557. 
 
 Germany, in this action at Sievershausen, lost her two most 
 brilliant men ; for whatever was the moral character of x\lbort 
 Alcibiades, of his extraordinary ability there can be no doubt ; either 
 in military capacity, or in political intrigue. The way in which he 
 was able for so long a time to stand practically outlawed against all
 
 118 LECTUEES ON EUEOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Germany proves it if nothing else did. Carlyle calls him a ' failure 
 of a Fritz ; ' that is, an abortive attempt at a Frederick the Great. 
 This is unfair ; Albert at the lowest estimate was in character as 
 much above Frederick the Great as he was in success beneath him. 
 If success is the criterion of character, William I. of Prussia is above 
 Frederick the Great himself, Philip Autijustus a greater man than 
 St. Louis, and so on. In truth, Albert was very like the original 
 Alcibiades, able and somewhat taking, but desperately unprincipled 
 and picturesquely adventurous, and that seems to be all. But for 
 Maurice we must say more : we read with astonishment that he 
 was only thirty-two when he died ; he had done so much good and so 
 much harm already. Perhaps his youth, coupled with his wonderful 
 ability, may be the fairest key to the difficulties of any consistent 
 view of his conduct and character. He was clearly immensely 
 ambitious and perfectly conscious of his great ability. His perfidy 
 to his cousin John Frederick may not be defended, but may partially 
 be accounted for, I think, by his natural contempt for the narrowness 
 and obstinacy, amounting to pigheadedness, of that heroic and 
 virtuous prince. No doubt John Frederick was magnanimous ; no 
 doubt Philip of Hesse was magnan^'mous too ; I do not see anything 
 they had in common, except that they were both Protestants, and 
 both had to endure imprisonment. In other matters the similarity 
 did not go far. 
 
 John was a good man, Philip a bad one ; John a religious 
 Protestant, Philip an irreligious one ; John a patient prisoner, 
 Philip an impatient one ; John would not accept the Interim to 
 deliver himself from prison, Philip did accept it and did not escape 
 any the sooner ; John was content with one wife at a time, Philip 
 used his Protestant liberty by having two. I suppose the Germans 
 called Philip magnanimous for fear he should be jealous of John 
 Frederick. 
 
 But it was Maurice that I was speaking of. If he — conscious of 
 his own ability, seeing the way open to his ambition and despising 
 his worthy cousin ; warranted in his adhesion to the Emperor not 
 merely by interest, but by the example of other princes of far higher 
 rank, the Count Palatine and Elector of Brandenburg — made by one 
 act of faithlessness to John his way to the electorate, and by one act 
 of faithlessness to Charles the pacification of Germany ; why, he 
 did, certainly, what no thoroughly conscientious man would do, but 
 what any young prince of his power and opportunities would be very 
 strongly tempted to do. He died too soon for us to conceive at all 
 what he might have come to : but I should think it extremely pro- 
 bable that he would have been Emperor if he had outlived Charles, and 
 that as Emperor he might have given a new history to Germany.
 
 CHAELES V.'S EELATIONS WITH SAXONY AND FRANCE 119 
 
 It is astonishing to see how, notwithstanding his treatment of John 
 Frederick, the whole of the Germans trusted him. 
 
 The battle of Sievershausen closes the history of Germany for the 
 year 1553. Charles continued in the Netherlands, negotiating the 
 marriage of Philip with Mary of England, and preparing for another 
 campaign which Henry was provoking him to. The promised Diet 
 was still postponed ; it was summoned for August 1553 ; then for 
 November 1554 ; it was not got together finally until March 1555. 
 By that time Charles's active career was over. The history of 
 1554 consists of the attack by Henry II. on the Netherlands, in 
 which he took Marienburg, Bouvines, and Dinant ; but which fell, as 
 a campaign, into a merely marauding expedition. It is redeemed 
 by the events of the siege of Eenti, where the Emperor took personal 
 share for the last time in the actual labours of war. The Duke of 
 Guise, who was besieging, was compelled by Charles to raise the 
 siege and retire into France. In Italy there was the siege and 
 surrender of Siena. The next year began with an attempt ot 
 Cardinal Pole to negotiate a peace between Charles and Henry, 
 which failed ; the attempt to surprise and betray Metz, which also 
 failed ; and Ferdinand's first essay to get the princes to Augsburg 
 to the Diet which was to settle the questions that had been troubling 
 Germany for nearly forty years, and whose work was really the fit 
 termination of the reign of Charles. 
 
 This Diet began, or at least the first attempts at it were made, on 
 February 5. Then, in a very thin meeting, Ferdinand stated his 
 ^dew ; the Council was for the present hopeless, he had nothing 
 better to propose than a revival of the plan of disputation and con- 
 ference between the best men on both sides. This alarmed the Pro- 
 testants, who saw all they had struggled for again risked ; and they 
 were further startled by the appearance of Cardinal Morone as Papal 
 legate at the Diet. It is possible that a secession might have fol- 
 lowed, but peace was saved by two things, the death of Julius III. 
 and the political interests of Ferdinand. Julius III. died on 
 March 5, and his successor, Marcellus II., on April 30. Cardinal 
 Morone left Augsburg on the death of the Pope whose commission 
 he had received. Paul IV., who succeeded Marcellus, was a 
 determined enemy of Charles V. : it was morally certain that there 
 could be no effective operation in religious matters between them ; 
 and Charles's aversion to beginning a new struggle with the 
 Papacy may have been one reason for hastening his resignation. 
 Ferdinand's interests were greatly dependent on the support of the 
 Protestant princes. Charles was moving heaven and earth to obtain 
 the imperial succession for Philip, and had offered to buy off his 
 brother's claims, and take any means whatever to reconcile the
 
 120 LECTURES 0\ EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 hostility of the princes. But they knew too much of Philip, and 
 indeed Charles himself was learning that he had shown far too 
 much consideration for an ungrateful son. The princes stood by 
 Ferdinand, and Ferdinand could not help giving in to the desires 
 of the Protestants, which they would, as soon as he was left to him- 
 self, be perfectly able to enforce upon him. He saw, too, that the for- 
 mation of a league between Saxony, Brandenburg, and Hesse, by 
 which they added to their ancient treaty of erhverhrudervng, or 
 mutual right of succession and cross-remainder, an article binding 
 them t;) support the Augsburg Confession, would put an end to the 
 imperial power in the North altogether if it were ever to be ranged 
 against it. 
 
 The negotiations dragged on until September 25, when the 
 Recess of Augsburg was drawn up and published, for the peace of 
 religion. By this it was provided that all states which had adhered to 
 the Confession of Augsburg should be free from interference of any 
 Ivind from Ferdinand, nor should Catholic ecclesiastical jurisdictions 
 be exercised in them : and that war should no more be undertaken 
 for causes of religion ; that all church revenues seized and appro- 
 priated before the treaty of Passau should be retained by their 
 holders ; that every state should be at liberty to establish its own form 
 of religion, and those of its subjects who reject that form should be 
 at liberty to emigrate ; and that any Catholic prelate changing his 
 religion shall cease to hold the dignity which entitled him to his 
 place in the Empire. 
 
 Such, I said, is the last act of the reign of Charles. A month 
 after the issue of the Recess, Charles resigned the Netherlands to 
 Philip as the first part of his abdication of his whole estates and 
 functions. On February 5, 1556, he resigned Spain also to Philip, 
 and on September 7 of the same year he sent the imperial ornaments 
 to Ferdinand with the act of renunciation of the Empire. The last 
 year of Charles's nominal reign belongs to that of Philip and Ferdi- 
 nand ; the latter of whom had exercised any imperial functions that 
 could be exercised in Germany since the treaty of Passau. I shall 
 say a word or two about the abdication in the last lecture, whilst 
 contemplating the reign and character of Charles in a general 
 review. 
 
 LECTURE X 
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF CHARLES V.'s REIGN 
 
 As the head of the Empire, as the inheritor of many great names 
 and dignities, and as the actual possessor of widely extended terri- 
 tories exposed to the aggression of the Mahometan states Charles V.
 
 GENERAL EEVIEW OF CHAELES V.'8 EEIGN 121 
 
 was marked out as the defender of Christendom. And amidst 
 the varied and complex questions of the politics of his reign, compli- 
 cations in which we lose sight for years of any individuality of 
 character in the principal actor, it is refreshing to see him from 
 time to time distinctly buckling on his armour and setting out on 
 his crusades. It is curious to remark how in this respect he repeats 
 the policy of the earlier emperors, in particular of Sigismund ; and 
 how closely bound up with the desire of repelling the Turks is the 
 urgent demand for a Council to reconcile all the Churches, to reform 
 the relations between the Papal See and the national Churches, to 
 reform and purify religion itself. It was not thought likely that a 
 divided Christendom would succeed in an attack on the Turk, or 
 that an unsatisfied population would subscribe liberally the funds 
 needed for such an enterprise. 
 
 On re\dewing the relations of the European states at this date, 
 the internecine quarrel of Francis and Charles, the divisions pro- 
 duced by the Reformation, and the amount of intrigue that was 
 winding its way into the general politics of Europe ; and on the 
 other hand, the long reign and immense power and prestige of the 
 Sultan Solyman (1520-1566) ; it does seem an extraordinary thing 
 that Europe continued to be Christian. It was on Charles alone 
 that the defence of Christendom rested ; and if his successes were 
 not brilliant, the reality and efficiency of his defence are rather to 
 be admired than to be depreciated. The march of Solyman was 
 stopped, although there might be no great victory ; he was not 
 suffered to reach the heart of the West, although the selfish dissen- 
 sions of the princes and the divided heart of the people suffered a 
 territory far too large to be spared to fall into his hands. Although 
 these matters have not in the ordinary text-books the importance 
 they deserve, we will devote a morning to the exhibition of them. 
 
 Not only were Charles's Spanish dominions exposed to the 
 constant attacks of the maritime powers of North Africa, who for 
 the most part were independent of the Turk, and his Neapolitan 
 dominions in the same way threatened from the sea, but the 
 whole of Eastern Germany lay open to attacks which a strong 
 government in Hungary and Bohemia was requisite to ward 
 off. In defence of Spain, Charles made his expedition to Tunis ; 
 in defence of Italy the one to Algiers ; his defence of Germany 
 brings us into direct relation with these two kingdoms, which the 
 inertness, or rather perhaps the honesty, of Frederick III. had 
 suffered to slip out of the hands of the Austrian family. Albert II. 
 had been King of Hungary and Bohemia as well as King of the 
 Romans and Duke of Austria. His little posthumous son Ladislas 
 had succeeded to both as soon as he was born ; and on his death at
 
 122 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, lol9-1648 
 
 the age of eighteen in 1458, each kingdom, irreRpectivo of the claims 
 of Frederick III., had chosen for itself a king alien to the royal 
 houses of Europe. Matthias Corvinus was King of 'Hungary from 
 1458 to 1490 ; George Podiebrad of Bohemia from 1458 to 1471. 
 They were reunited, however, on the deaths of these two great 
 princes, by another Ladislas, a son of Casimir IV. of Poland by 
 Elizabeth, daughter of Albert II. 
 
 Ladislas after a short quarrel with Maxmilian, who compelled 
 him to surrender the share of Austria proper which he had received 
 with his two kingdoms and to secure the succession on the failure 
 of his own family to the house of Austria, was for the rest of his 
 life employed in the struggle with the Turks. In this he was by 
 no means successful. He was not well supported by Maximilian, 
 who indeed had much else to do ; nor by his own subjects, who 
 were too ready to turn their arms against one another. In 1516 he 
 died, leaving his kingdoms to his son Lewis, a boy of ten, whose 
 minority as usual opened the way to civil disturbances, and these to 
 new attacks by the Turks. 
 
 When Lewis was fourteen, the Ottoman succession fell to 
 Solyman the Magnificent. The thrones of Europe were now filled 
 by the strongest men who ever contemporaneously occupied them. 
 There may have been greater sovereigns than Charles, Henry, Francis, 
 and Solyman ; but there never were so many great ones together, of 
 so well-consolidated dominion, so great ability, or so long tenure of 
 power. And of the four not one had any particular love of peace : 
 each had a taste for war and an engrossing thirst for power. But 
 Solyman had to make his way by aggression ; the others had but 
 to hold their own, or to fight for what they thought they had a 
 claim to. Solyman's first steps to conquest must be made in 
 Hungary, the second in the Mediterranean. Hungary, a prey to 
 dissension and with a child king, was a tempting bait ; the destruc- 
 tion of the settlement of the Knights of St. .John at Ehodes was an 
 absolute requisite for the obtaining that command of the IMediter- 
 ranean which could secure Egypt, the conquest of his father 
 Selim, and the supremacy in North Africa on which he had set his 
 heart. There is much nobility about Solyman in his earlier history, 
 and his chivalrous and merciful character reminds one of Saladin ; 
 but, like so many Eastern heroes, he outlived his virtues, and fell, 
 under female influence, into a dishonoured old age. But his early 
 successes were conspicuous. In 1521 he took Belgrade and over- 
 ran Eastern Hungary and Croatia. In 1522, after a long siege borne 
 with unparalleled heroism and endurance, he wrested Rhodes from 
 the Hospitallers and so opened the Mediterranean to his own fleet. 
 Cyprus still remained in the hands of Venice, but Venice was not yet
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF CHARLES V.'S REIGN 123 
 
 involved in hostility to the Turk ; her mercantile interests were 
 still predominant, and she was more enriched by peace than 
 war. 
 
 In the destruction of Rhodes, Solyman cleared out of his way 
 the greatest and foremost hindrance to Ottoman conquest. For two 
 hundred years and more, since the last effort of the Crusaders had 
 ended in the loss of Acre, the Hospitallers had been the great 
 defence of Christendom by sea ; their exjDloits are amongst the most 
 wonderful in all history, but they are forgotten for the want of 
 a nationality that can claim them as its own. In 1530 they settled 
 in Malta, which Charles V. gave them as King of Sicily : there they 
 established themselves in nearly their former glory, and Solyman 
 lived long enough to endure at thoir hands not merely reprisals for 
 the treatment they had received from him, but a victorious resistance 
 to another siege as carefully planned and as elaborately carried out 
 as the siege of Rhodes had been. 
 
 In 1525 the captivity of Francis I. had opened to Solyman 
 another way towards influence in the West. Francis negotiated 
 with him preparatory to an alliance which was to bring him down 
 on Germany itself. But Hungary still lay in the way to Germany ; 
 and to subdue Hungary Solyman first bent his energies. He 
 marched in 1526 on the young King Lewis, who was defeated and 
 killed in the battle of Mohacs (August 29). Solyman took and 
 burned Buda, the Hungarian capital. The death of Lewis left the 
 succession to his two kingdoms open. Ferdinand, his brother-in-law, 
 to whom by the treaty between Ladislas and Maximilian the king- 
 doms were secured, entered at once upon Bohemia ; but the Hun- 
 garians, a prey, as usual, to domestic quarrels, refused to receive him, 
 and elected John Zapolski, voivode of Transylvania, who conde- 
 scended to apply for the support of Solyman. This was readily 
 accorded, and for ten years he was maintained by Eastern aid in 
 half the kingdom. In 1536 he made peace with Ferdinand on 
 condition of being allowed to retain his possessions for life ; and he 
 died in 1541. 
 
 Both during his life and after his death, John Zapolski's alliance 
 opened the way for Solyman into Hungary : in 1529, as his ally, he 
 advanced and again took Buda, crossed into Austria, and besieged 
 Vienna. From Vienna, which was defended by Frederick, the Count 
 Palatine of the Rhine and afterwards Elector, he was compelled to 
 retreat (October 14) with great loss, whilst Charles was in Italy on 
 the business of his coronation ; but he made a second attempt in 
 1532. Charles on that occasion met him with an army of 120,000 
 men, but the two hosts parted without a battle. Solyman, it is said, 
 distrusted the good fortune of Charles ; and to Charles men and
 
 124 LECTURES OX EUr.OPEAN inSTOT^Y, l.-,19-16}8 
 
 arms were too precious to be wasted in conflict when the desired 
 object was efiected in Solyman's compulsory retreat. 
 
 Leaving John Zapolski to fight Ferdinand by himself, Solyman 
 next devoted his attention to the Mediterranean ; or rather, having 
 views upon the East and the Persian Empire in particular, he gave a 
 commission of admiral to Hayraddin Barbarossa, the famous corsair 
 of Algiers ; who not only ravaged the Christian territories bordering 
 on the Mediterranean, but, anxious to found a strong kingdom for 
 himself, expelled IVIuley Hassan, King of Tunis, and made that city 
 the headquarters of the fleet and army with which he threatened 
 both Spain and Italy. Muley Hassan, in his distress, had recourse 
 to Charles ; and Charles, proud of his success against Solyman, 
 undertook the expedition to Tunis, which you have so well described 
 by Robertson. For this expedition Charles brought together forces 
 and ships from all parts of his dominions ; the fleet was under 
 Andrea Doria ; the army Charles himself commanded, with the 
 Infante Lewis of Portugal and the Duke of Alva. The expedition 
 was successful in spite of great losses and expenses. He took the 
 Goletta, with Barbarossa's fleet, and drove him himself out of Tunis 
 to Algiers. Muley Hassan was restored, surrendering the Goletta 
 as the payment for the help he had received. The dates of the 
 Emperor's movements are : July 16, 1535, he sailed from Cagliari : 
 August 6, he reinstated Muley Hassan ; August 17, sailed for 
 Sicily ; August 20, landed at Trapani ; September 12, he was back 
 at Palermo. The great corsair was far from being annihilated : for 
 several years, however, the struggle was carried on by sea ; constant 
 flights and pursuits, but no great battle. 
 
 In 1536 Hungary was pacified by the treaty between John 
 Zapolski and Ferdinand, and Solyman had there no pretext for inter- 
 ference ; but in 1540, on John Zapolski's death, on the pretext of 
 defending the rights of his widow and child, the Sultan took up arms 
 against Ferdinand for the conquest of Hungary. In this quarrel the 
 Hungarian element was represented by George Martinuzzi, Bishop 
 of Waradin, whom John Zapolski had left guardian to his infant 
 son. The widow would gladly have fulfilled the arrangement with 
 Ferdinand, but Solyman and Martinuzzi objected, and the former 
 prepared to sustain his objection with an immense army. Ferdinand 
 was weak enough to offer to pay tribute on condition of being allowed 
 to hold Hungary ; but, happily for the credit of the Empire, Solyman 
 refused the offer. He then brought up his army, drove the Germans 
 from before Buda, took possession of the capital and the little King, 
 and annexed Hungary to his own Turkish Empire. Martinuzzi he 
 rewarded with the regency of Transylvania, which had belonged to 
 John as voivode, and which Solyman generously left for a portion to
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF CHARLES V.'S REIGN 125 
 
 the little King Stephen ; there, under the name of John Sigisraund, 
 and as the patron of the Socinians, he ruled until his death in 1571. 
 
 This conduct is the greatest blot on the public fame of Solyman ; 
 and it was crowned by the murder of the German prisoners. Buda 
 became a Turkish city ; the churches even were turned into 
 mosques. 
 
 And now we have to set against this unscrupulous act of Solyman 
 an equally singular mistake on the part of Charles, or at least a 
 measure which its ill success qualifies for the character of a blunder. 
 His pertinacity and his pride were both involved in the hunting of 
 Barbarossa out of the Mediterranean ; and in the interval of peace 
 with France that followed the truce of Nice, and the league of Pope, 
 Charles, and Ferdinand against the Turks (which the Venetians also 
 joined 1538-1540), after great preparation and the liberal contribu- 
 tions of all his kingdoms, he in 1511 sailed from Majorca to Algiers. 
 The expedition was most unfortunate : a terrible storm dispersed 
 and wrecked the armament ; one short skirmish, in which no success 
 was achieved, was the sole act of hostility that took place. The 
 destruction of the fleet and army by the storms put an end to hope : 
 after a series of unparalleled disasters, distresses, and personal hard- 
 ships, which the Emperor shared with the meanest of his soldiers, the 
 remains of the army were got away from the hostile coast, and, after 
 a tedious voyage, returned to Spain, landing on December 6, 1541. 
 
 I do not quite see how this expedition can be justified when the 
 condition of Ferdinand in Hungary was what it was ; but it is 
 possible that Charles considered the defence of Hungary to be safe 
 in his brother's hands during the winter months when the Turks 
 were pretty sure to be quiet, and that the Algerine expedition was 
 fixed for this unfortunate time of the year in consequence. But it 
 was every way most disastrous, for it invited Francis I. to a renewal 
 of the war, it destroyed the Emperor's prestige, and, to a lamentable 
 degree, wasted his resources. 
 
 Solyman now renewed, and drew closer, his relations with Francis, 
 and the Venetians also entered the league. In 1548, and again in 
 1544, Solyman, having quite paralysed all action on the part of poor 
 Ferdinand, invaded Austria again, and ravaged Silesia and Moravia. 
 In 1545 he turned his attention to Italy, and by the agency of Bar- 
 barossa, threatened, and even ravaged, the coasts from JSice to Messina. 
 The same year he made peace with Ferdinand on. the condition of 
 receiving a tribute of 50,000 crowns annually, and that each should 
 retain what he held in Hungary. The peace of Crespy in September 
 1544 had, in fact, robbed him of the open alliance of Francis. As 
 they had never been able to act in concert, this made no practical 
 difference ; nor did the coolness last long, for, shortly before his
 
 126 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 death, in preparation for a renewal of war, Francis was urgent in 
 entreating Solyman to strengthen his grasp on Hungary. The 
 attitude of hostility was not materially altered by the peace, but, 
 during the Smalkaldic war, Ferdinand was too weak to take the 
 aggressive, and Solyman was growing old, weary of the sameness of 
 the war, and busied with designs in the East. 
 
 Nor were Marti nuzzi and the young ruler of Transylvania getting 
 on well with the Turkish pashas whom the Sultan had left to be 
 their allies and defenders. In 1651 Martinuzzi offered his services 
 to Ferdinand ; the Queen and the little King received two duchies 
 in Silesia in exchange for their rights in Transylvania ; Martinuzzi 
 a cardinal's hat and the government of Transylvania. Castaldo, 
 Ferdinand's minister, and Martinuzzi were to join their forces to 
 carry on the war ; but the jealousy of Castaldo and the conscious 
 superiority of Martinuzzi prevented any cordial co-operation. Fer- 
 dinand was persuaded of the treason of the bishop, and was prevailed 
 on to allow him to be assassinated. The Turks, rejoicing in the 
 removal of such a formidable minister, proposed to renew, and to 
 throw more energy into, the war. Solyman, in conformity with his 
 part of protector, declared that he would avenge the murder. 
 
 Again the war is carried into the Mediterranean ; Dragut, the 
 successor of Hayraddin Barbarossa, ravaged the coast of Calabria. 
 Mehemet, beglerbeg of Koumelia, restored the Queen and Prince of 
 Transylvania. Ferdinand's mismanagement and poverty combined 
 caused his forces to mutiny, and his subjects to rebel. The treaty of 
 Passau (August 2, 1552) enabled Ferdinand at length to bring Maurice 
 of Saxony with 20,000 men against the Turks, but the success of 
 Maurice was not equal to his fame ; he also was hampered with 
 Castaldo, as Martinuzzi had been, and could effect nothing per- 
 manent. Nor is it worth while to attempt to trace the further steps 
 of the struggle : the war of Austria with Turkey continues for a 
 century and a half with little intermission and with various success, 
 the battle of Lepanto (1571) itself scarcely shows the turn of the 
 tide. 
 
 The defence of the Mediterranean during this long struggle 
 rested partly on the Sicilian viceroy, partly on the imperial 
 admiral, Andrea Doria, partly on the Knights Hospitallers, now 
 established at Malta. As I feel some remorse for the cursory way 
 in which we have treated these great men, we will, at the risk of 
 some repetition, have a word about them, and close the lecture with a 
 remark or two about the progress of the Spanish arms in the new 
 Western world. 
 
 Don Pedro de Toledo, who was Charles's viceroy at Naples from 
 1532 to 1653, was a man after Charles's own heart : he was a good
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF CHARLES V.'S REIGN 127 
 
 general, an able administrator, a reformer of the law, a persecutor 
 of the Protestants. And, although from time to time the greatest 
 efforts were used, even by persons like the Marquis del Guasto, to 
 supplant him, he retained his master's good will until he died at 
 Florence of the malaria fever, caught in the expedition of that year 
 for the recovery of Siena. On his vigilance depended the defence of 
 the Italian coasts, as on Andrea Doria the command of the open 
 sea. The first great alarm from the Turks during his viceroyalty 
 was that of 1537. Don Pedro, on the news of this, organised a 
 general defence ; summoned the whole regular force of the kingdom, 
 and chose for encampment a central point in Lower Apulia, whence 
 succour might easily be sent to any threatened point ; ai-med the 
 citizens of Naples, and trusted the defence of their city to them in 
 company with a handful of trained soldiers ; and, calling a parlia- 
 ment of the barons, engaged them in like manner to give their own 
 services and those of their vassals. 
 
 Solyman's expedition was partly under Barbarossa, who was 
 burning to avenge the loss of Tunis ; partly under Solyman himself, 
 with the Pasha Lussibeo as admiral. The former landed in the 
 province of Otranto, and plundered there ; the latter took Castrio 
 and Urgento, and enslaved and carried off the inhabitants ; but the 
 approach of the viceroy's army, and the news that Andrea Doria 
 was taking reprisals in the Levant, sent the Turks back in a hurry 
 to their own regions ; and Pedro took advantage of the patriotic 
 furore thus created to rebuild the castles and other fortifications on 
 the coast, and at the same time prevailed on Charles to furnish 
 supplies for the building of a chain of watch-towers round the coast, 
 which, by beacon-fires and other ante- telegraphic contrivances, could 
 at once spread the alarm of a threatened invasion, and summon 
 the defenders to the spot. The next great alarm was, however, in 
 1541, when Barbarossa sacked Eeggio and threatened Rome itself. 
 It was on this occasion that he joined the fleet of Francis at Mar- 
 seilles and besieged Nice. The fleet of Andrea Doria again frightened 
 him away. In 1544 Barbarossa ravaged the islands of Ischia and 
 Procida, and purposed a landing at Pozzuoli. But the viceroy was 
 ready to meet him, and he did not venture to approach. 
 
 The war of 1552, in which for the first time the French were 
 able to afford armed aid to the Protestants, was also the occasion on 
 which Solyman seemed most likely to lend effective aid to the 
 French. And this time the attack was no doubt caused partly 
 by the discontent prevalent in Naples, consequent on the attempt of 
 Charles and his viceroy to introduce the Inquisition, and partly 
 directed by the King of France at the suggestion of the Prince of 
 Salerno, who had rebelled against Charles and fled to Henry.
 
 128 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORy, 1519-1648 
 
 Again Don Pedro had recourse to the good will of the barons, and 
 300,000 ducats were raised for the payment of a force of 30,000 
 men to be used in a sudden emergency. On July 15, 1552, the 
 enemy really came : it was a great fleet of 150 galleys under Dragut, 
 the successor of Barbarossa, and Sinam Pasha, anchored at Procida, 
 within sight of Naples. There, however, they stayed for a month 
 and then sailed away without waiting for the French fleet which 
 was to have acted in concert with them : according to one story, 
 they were bribed by the Viceroy, according to another they were 
 dissatisfied with the French. After their departure the French 
 arrived at Genoa with the Prince of Salerno, but their friends were 
 by that time in the Levant and would not return. Thus the 
 greatest storm blew over, and although Dragut continued annually 
 for a long time to give alarm and even to plunder the coasts of 
 Sicily and Naples, nothing like an invasion or attempt at conquest 
 was made. The incitements of the French had failed to produce 
 their former effect, and the frequent betrayal of Turkish interests 
 by them for their own ends wearied out the patience of their allies. 
 
 The later expeditions were rather piratical than warlike ; and, 
 indeed, from the beginning of the career of Hassan and Hayraddin, 
 the piratical was no small element in the naval expeditions of the 
 Sultan. This comes out more distinctly in his dealings with the 
 Maltese knights, whose settlement at Malta by Charles in 1530 had 
 exposed them to constant aggression from Barbarossa and his 
 imitators. The gift of Charles to the Order was one which brought 
 them great labour and little profit, and rid Charles of considerable 
 responsibility. It comprised not only Malta and Ctozo, the adjacent 
 island, but the city of Tripoli on the mainland of Africa, which was, 
 indeed, nearly all that remained of the conquests of Cardinal 
 Ximenes, under whose administration it had been acquired for 
 Spain in 1510. Of this splendid endowment, Malta was a barren 
 island, producing a revenue of 41 ducats per annum ; Gozo was 
 fertile, but without a harbour. Tripoli was a well-fortified city, but 
 in a situation indefensible against the arms of modern warfare. It 
 was a very poor exchange to the knights for the rich island of 
 Rhodes, which they had defended to the last, and which ought to 
 have been defended by the joint fleets of all Europe, and might have 
 been but for the guilty ambition of Francis I. 
 
 The Hospitallers, however, were eager to get an independent 
 home, which would rid them of the restraints of their Papal allies 
 and render them less of a tool in the hands of Clement VII. They 
 accepted the gift, and after an unhappy attempt to get a better settle- 
 ment at Modon, in the Peloponnesus, set themselves to conduct the 
 defence of Earope from this unpromising standing-ground. Under
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF CHARLES V.'S REIGN 129 
 
 their management Malta became fertile ; and fortified by their skill 
 it became practically impregnable. As soon as they had settled in 
 their occupation they threw down the challenge to the Turk : in 
 1531, their fleet, in conjunction with that of Andrea Doria, took 
 Coron, in the Peloponnesus, with Patras and some other less 
 important places, and strongly fortified the first. In 1532, Coron 
 was besieged by one of Solyman's corsairs and relieved by the two 
 fleets after a general engagement with the Turks, in which the 
 Christians were victorious. 
 
 In the Tunis expedition of 1535 the knights fought side by side 
 with Charles and drew down the vengeance of both Barbarossa and 
 his patron on the Order. Tripoli was the most accessible of their 
 possessions, and Tripoli was attacked by Sinam, the Devildriver, who 
 had built a fortress called Alchaide, near Tripoli, to watch for a 
 favourable opportunity. He was not, however, successful ; he was 
 himself defeated by the garrison, and a detachment of the fleet from 
 Malta destroyed his castle. 
 
 The Algerine expedition of Charles for a time drew off the 
 vengeance of Solyman ; but on the death of Barbarossa, shortly 
 after, he promoted another corsair, named Dragut, to the command 
 of his fleet, and Dragut set his heart on acquiring Tripoli. His first 
 acquisition was Mehedia, a fortress which had advantages that 
 Tripoli wanted, a strong situation as well as fortifications almost 
 unassailable : it had been a sort of petty republic until Dragut 
 seized it, being one of the old dependencies of Tunis, which, after the 
 break-up of the power of Tunis, had not been thought worth 
 appropriating by the Sultan. From Mehedia, Dragut pillaged the 
 opposite coasts and watched for Tripoli. The knights, on the other 
 hand, watched Mehedia, and in 1550, in conjunction with the 
 viceroy of Sicily and Don Garcia, son of Pedro Toledo, they took it, 
 after a very brave, nay savage, resistance. Dragut persuaded 
 Solyman to make an expedition against Malta. In July 1551, just a 
 year before the similar expedition to Naples, Dragut and the Devil- 
 driver made a descent on the island and ravaged Gozo ; having thus 
 distracted the attention of the knights, Dragut turned on Tripoli. 
 Unfortunately the garrison had quarrelled among themselves, and 
 one party declared the place untenable. With this insubordinate 
 crew, the governor saw nothing better to do than to capitulate. 
 Whilst negotiating, he was, contrary to the laws of all nations, seized 
 by the Devildriver, and the rebellious faction concluded the surrender. 
 The following year the Maltese fleet, under Leo Strozzi, made an 
 unfortunate descent on Barbary ; and from that time for many years 
 the knights played the part of crusading corsairs. 
 
 The great ineffective siege of Malta by Solyman falls some years 
 
 K
 
 130 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 after the death of Charles ; in 1565 the whole power of the Turkish 
 Empire was brought against the little rock, and was driven off with 
 a loss of 25,000 men. Charles had used the services .of the knights 
 without showing them much gratitude ; he had, perhaps, hardly 
 appreciated their value ; and after they had fortified Malta he coolly 
 proposed to them to emigrate to Mehedia. This they refused to do, 
 at the risk of offending Charles. 
 
 I have said, perhaps, too much about the knights, but they are very 
 interesting people, and there is a picturesqueness as well as utility 
 about their proceedings which is inviting. Anyhow, no view of 
 Charles's measures for the defence of Europe can be complete with- 
 out attention to them ; although practically independent in their 
 action, they were nominally his vassals, and must have been always 
 an important element in his calculations of the expense and necessity 
 of a crusade. Their existence was one long crusade— a link between 
 the present age and that of Frederick Barbarossa and Kichard 
 Cceur-de-Lion, which an historian, if not a politician also, may grieve 
 to see finally and completely broken. 
 
 The knights lost Malta in 1798. We took it from the French in 
 1800, and although the restoration of it to the Order was provided 
 for by the peace of Amiens in 1802 we have continued to hold it 
 ever since, justifying ourselves by the weakness of the Order and 
 our own necessities, a plea as strong, perhaps, as any by which the 
 modern sovereigns of a great part of Europe can maintain their own 
 position in great portions of their territories. 
 
 Into the career of Andrea Doria I cannot, in conformity with the 
 plan I have adopted of avoiding personal details and devoting our 
 attention to political events, now attempt to go. I may, however, 
 say that from 1528 to 1560 he not only maintained the possession of 
 Genoa against the French and their faction in the republic, but 
 commanded the imperial lleet against the Turks. His interests were 
 one with those of Charles, who trusted to him without misgiving 
 and without jealousy. In relation to Genoa, the chief events of his 
 long domination as the chief citizen although not the presiding 
 magistrate of the republic were the attempt of the Fieschi in 1547 
 to seize the city on behalf of the French, and the loss of Corsica to 
 the united fleets of France and Turkey in 1553. Andrea was then 
 eighty-four, but he took the command or direction rather of the 
 expedition which was intended to recover it, and kept up the struggle 
 against France for several years with varying success. In 1559 he 
 saw the island restored, by the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, to his 
 native city ; he died in 1560, aged ninety-two. 
 
 It would be pleasant if we could add to these defenders of 
 Christendom the name of the rich and powerful republic of Venice ;
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF CHARLES V.'S REIGN 131 
 
 but with the exception of the league of Pope and Emperor against 
 the Turks in 1538, in which the Venetians joined, we read of littly 
 done by them in the way of crusade ; and this show of hostility 
 was terminated by a peace between Venice and Solyman in October 
 1540. The interests of the Venetians were purely selfish, whether 
 their momentary policy was a merely commercial one or a design of 
 territorial and political aggrandisement. The peculiarity of their 
 situation and their history, and the great strength of their internal 
 organisation, seem to set them quite by themselves; they are 
 dependent on no alliances, constantly inviting but as constantly 
 escaping attack, ever growing richer and more powerful and more 
 self-contained. Their policy with respect to Turkey, although, 
 looked at from the modern point of view, it was prudent and 
 enlightened, was, according to the medieval idea, ungenerous and 
 treasonable to Christendom. It must be allowed, however, that, 
 although a high-spirited and really chivalrous nation would not have 
 entered into the relations with the Turks into which Venice had 
 entered, it was a different thing to accept the necessity of maintaining 
 and increasing them. Nor had Venice begun her career as a chivalrous 
 state ; her beginning was mercantile, and as Genoa had been to the 
 Byzantine Empire, Venice, partly perhaps by defence against the 
 aggression of Genoa, was to the Ottoman. It was no small contribu- 
 tion to civilisation that resulted from the Venetian policy ; whether 
 it was enough to justify neutrality in the perpetual crusade may 
 well be doubted. 
 
 Before leaving the subject we may hurl a last stone at Francis 
 and the French policy which invited the Turks into Europe, 
 to the destruction of the Church and Empire of Christendom. 
 Were it for this alone, his memory is stamped with eternal infamy. 
 The wretch who was murdering the Protestants at home and intri- 
 guing with them abroad added yet this, that he invited into Hungary 
 and Naples and the coasts of the Mediterranean generally the forces 
 of a prince who, whilst he was no doubt as good a Christian as 
 Francis and far more noble and honest in every way, stood at the 
 head of a system which men believed to be Antichrist, and main- 
 tained an army and fleet every act of which was full of relentless 
 barbarity and wanton cruelty. The sin of Francis is unpardonable, 
 and in any comparison between him and Charles it is enough to 
 decide the inclination of the scale, however scanty the estimate of 
 Charles's merits, and the overvalue set upon Francis's brilliancy and 
 ability. Nor has his conduct the catchpenny excuse of enlighten- 
 ment. Francis was as ignorant and bigoted as any man of his age : 
 he was purely selfish, wanton, and revengeful, and for the gratifica- 
 tion of these instincts he sacrificed the welfare of Europe. 
 
 k2
 
 132 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 1 cannot, in the last place, pass over altogether unmentioned the 
 exploits of Hernando Cortez and Francisco Pizarro. I can only, 
 however, mention them to show that I have not unintentionally 
 omitted them. But in truth the plan of the lecture has not been 
 such as to involve any reference to them. The Spanish colonies in 
 the New World had begun under Ferdinand and Isabella, and a 
 consideration of the policy by which they were managed belongs to 
 the earlier period. The conquests of Peru and Mexico fall within 
 Charles's reign ; but they introduce no new elements into the 
 government or political condition of Spain ; and their other results 
 on her social condition really fall outside of Charles's life altogether 
 and belong to the later history. Charles's relations to both the 
 great conquerors were generally those of respect and gratitude. He 
 is accused of neglecting Cortez, because he did not place him in the 
 government of the country which he had conquered. But this was 
 not neglect : it was a part of the policy which had been pursued, 
 with far less reason, in the case of Columbus ; nor can it be said 
 that Cortez suffered, for, although he Avas not made civil governor, 
 he remained Captain-General of Mexico. But the truth of the 
 matter is that the visits of Cortez to Charles were ill-timed. One 
 was in 1529, whilst the negotiations for the peace of Cambrai were 
 pending, and the interests of all Europe were on the Emperor's 
 mind. The other was in 1541, when he joined the unhapj)y 
 expedition to Algiers, and Charles was overwhelmed with vexation 
 and chagrin. The subsequent neglect into which he fell may be 
 as easily accounted for. Charles was never actively ungrateful ; he 
 perhaps thought that Cortez had received his reward. Pizarro did not 
 live long enough to have to complain. The money that Mexico and 
 Peru poured into Spain had scarcely begun to flow in such abundance 
 as to affect political history. 
 
 LECTURE XI 
 
 THE CHAKACTEK OF CHAKLES V. 
 
 We have now to attempt some estimate of the character of Charles V., 
 of the distinguishing features of his policy, and of the actual results 
 of his reign on the history of Europe. We must first, I think, beg the 
 question that he had a character, and that he was not, as Robertson 
 makes him, a mere machine on whose wooden framework you can cal- 
 culate exactly the mechanical effects of every blow of fortune. I shall 
 not ask you yet to beg the question that he had a consistent policy.
 
 THE CHARACTER OF CHARLES V. 133 
 
 As for the general result, we know that there must have been one 
 unless the whole theory of cause and consequence is a mistake. He 
 had, then, a character, some traits of which were doubtless inherited, 
 some points of which were brought out more prominently than others 
 by his education, and still more by his being called on at so early an 
 age to rule without a guardian so enormous an extent of dominion. 
 I will try not to analyse the characters that other people have 
 written of him, but to say what seems to me, from the careful 
 reading of his life, to be the most reasonable view of his character. 
 
 I think, then, first, that we cannot deny him the character of a 
 great sovereign and a great man. Doubtless there are degrees of 
 grea"tness, and there is a difference between the greatness that is 
 backed by thorough goodness and the greatness that achieves 
 success : a difference between the man who makes himself great and 
 the man who shows his power only by maintaining an inherited 
 position. But to say this is not to deny greatness to the latter if 
 the difficulty of sustaining the position increases as the exaltation of 
 the position increases. I mean to say that only a great sovereign 
 could have kept together the empire that Charles V. did keep to- 
 gether for forty years. This I claim for Charles to begin with : 
 power and force of character that entitle him to be called Great. 
 Greatness may be shown in several ways ; the end may be sought by 
 different means. One king is great in directing everything himself ; 
 another in organising the work of his servants ; a third in choosing 
 servants who will organise, direct, and do everything obedient to the 
 impulse of a will that has but to indicate its direction and to be obeyed. 
 Of these there can be no doubt that the last is the highest degree. I 
 think that Charles can only be said to have had it in a measure ; and 
 this was perhaps his misfortune rather than his fault. He had no 
 minister whose greatness in the least degree encroaches on the great- 
 ness of his master. He had ministers and advisers, and good ones, 
 who did his will and managed the details of his work for him care- 
 fully ; but he had no minister who ruled him or directed his policy ; 
 he had none who had a policy at all likely to run counter to his own ; 
 he never betrayed or was betrayed by any of them ; not one has left 
 anything like a great name behind him. We conclude that he had 
 not the material of great ministers to choose from, but that he found 
 good and able administrators. His generals and admirals were well 
 chosen ; and his other subordinates hardly come at all into history. 
 He chose his viceroys of Naples and his queens governantes for the 
 Netherlands well ; none ever thought of treason or rebellion. Even 
 his brother Ferdinand, placed in a position of all positions the most 
 trying, and certainly attached to him by no tender fraternal affection — 
 for during their youth they could scarcely ever have met — was faith-
 
 134 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 ful to him throughout, even when sorely tempted at the end of the 
 reign by Charles's manoeuvres in favour of Philip. This gives one 
 the notion of a very businesslike, commanding, and overseeing 
 mind. 
 
 But again ; success may be won either by force or by policy, or 
 by a persistency which partakes of both and has something besides 
 of its own. Charles had this last, and with it considerable energy. 
 Some of his rapid effects are as fine as anything one reads of in 
 medieval history ; he had great power of deceiving other people 
 without committing himself ; that is a great gift of policy. The way 
 in which he played Francis from time to time with different baits is 
 amusing enough and a sign of great power in its way ; but neither 
 of these can account for his success. There was a certain persistent 
 steady defensiveness about him that is more distinctive than either 
 his force or his craft. I should roughly describe this as wiriness : 
 Charles's character is altogether wiry ; not deficient in muscular 
 force, not deficient in grace and agility, but pre-eminently tough and 
 wiry. 
 
 Further, in social life it would seem that he was a good friend 
 and kind master ; he was never betrayed by a servant ; never, from 
 the time he came to maturity of character, did he disgrace or abandon 
 a minister ; he was not intolerant to an unsuccessful general. He 
 trusted and was trusted by his own people ; he was not vindictive 
 as an enemy ; he was not wasteful of the lives of his people, except 
 as every warrior or king with a warlike policy must necessarily be. 
 But Charles's policy was not intrinsically warlike ; he kept up no 
 great standing army, his wars were generally defensive, and poverty 
 as well as humanity compelled him to be economical of his fighting 
 material. 
 
 He was, although a reserved man, kind and genial : he was a 
 faithful husband and had a very good wife. His appetites were 
 strong but under considerable restraint ; his morality compared 
 with that of his contemporaries is pure ; his illegitimate children 
 were born either long before his marriage or long after his widow- 
 hood ; and " no vile connexion was ever flaunted before the world. 
 The children were indeed the result of what in the case of kings was 
 a sort of legalised concubinage ; but Charles was not an adulterer 
 nor a slave of women, nor a taker of other men's wives. He was 
 not a drunkard, as, considering Flemish habits, he might have been. 
 If, like many men who have led hard lives, he was a heavy feeder, 
 one can hardly wonder, but even this was only a peculiarity of his 
 latter years, and may have been attributed to him without much 
 cause by people who were set to watch whatever he did, and had 
 little else to do than to count the number of the different
 
 THE CHAEACTER OF CHARLES V. 135 
 
 dishes at his dinner. He was certainly a sincere Catholic; a 
 strict observer of the letter of all covenants ; for even in the famous 
 case of Philip of Hesse he took care, if the story is true, to 
 have the letter of the law on his side ; there was, I am inclined to 
 think, more wiriness than tenderness about his conscience in such 
 matters. 
 
 The articles of impeachment against him generally are ambition, 
 dishonest policy, and persecuting cruelty. As for the last,"Tgaid so 
 much whilst speaking of his administration of the Netherlands that 
 I need not dwell on it now. It is too true, Charles was not only a 
 man of a persecuting age, but sympathised and organised persecution 
 and urged on the already too willing inquisitors. He is guilty on 
 the face of the matter. He did not persecute in Germany, partly 
 because he could not, partly because his position would have been 
 endangered if he had made the attempt ; that he persecuted the Cal- 
 vinists because their views were political, and spared the Lutherans 
 because they were not pronounced heretics, as Motley says, can hardly 
 be true. The Inquisition was established in the Netherlands before 
 Calvinism had got any real power or displayed any dangerous politi- 
 cal tenets ; and the measures which he took to force the Interim on 
 the Swabians were not less than persecuting, though blood might not 
 be shed or the fires lighted for religious causes alone. I think he 
 was a sincere persecutor, and that his professions of tolerance were 
 transparently insincere, were merely a political device intended to 
 bring about the result they actually effected — the division of the Pro- 
 testant princes of Germany. From this fearful accusation there is 
 no escape : the persecution might be allowed for, but the strong and 
 urgent sympathy with the persecutors can never be extenuated. 
 
 We should be glad to know that he repented ; and some historians, 
 arguing from the line which his favourite priests took after his death, 
 have imagined that it was so, and that the reaction was such as to 
 incline him in some measure to receive Protestant tenets. But 
 I believe this is a mistake and that to the last his instructions 
 to Philip were to go on as he had begun. To his memory this accu- 
 sation is doubly fatal : doubly, because we lose all pleasure, contem- 
 plating it, in defending the defensible parts of his character ; and 
 because it has drawn down on him the vengeance of the bitterest of 
 all critics and placed him guilty before a tribunal that knows no 
 mercy. But grant it all, and try to look at the other two articles of 
 impeachment : he was ambitious ; he was ambitious of glory in war, 
 and of extensive dominion ; he was deceitful, he had no chivalry ; 
 he was tricky, cunning, unscrupulous in the means he took to gain 
 his ends ; he played on the weakness of men, both his friends and 
 his enemies.
 
 136 LECTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 Take them singly. He was ambitious : was there anything wonder- 
 ful in that ? At the age at which a boy leaves a public school, he was 
 a King of three years' standing in the wealthiest realms' of Europe, and 
 elected Emperor, titular ruler of the world and defender of the Church. 
 He was, as I remarked once or twice, slow in coming to maturity. 
 His early administration of Spain was that of an ignorant, hot-headed 
 boy, easily led, fond of his old friends, shy of new ones ; ungrateful 
 to one certainly to whom he owed a great debt, but whom he had 
 never seen, of the nature of whose obligations he was ignorant, and 
 whom he knew to be hostile to the friends whom he trusted. Then, 
 if ever, we might look on it as likely that he would be ambitious. 
 The most able, intelligent, and fortunate warrior of his time, with a 
 vast empire, and a great multitude of princes to make fortunes for 
 by war, would there have been anything strange if this power and 
 fortune had led him to entertain views incompatible with the peace 
 of Europe ? Power, youth, skill, and opportunity, are no small helps, 
 no small spurs to ambition. Yet did Charles ever engage in war that 
 was not in its nature defensive ? Did he ever claim an acquisition 
 that was not his own by legal right as Emperor or as heir of his fore- 
 fathers ? He held fast what he had received, but he did not increase 
 his European dominions, the real field for his hypothetical ambition, 
 by conquest at least, by a single acre. He was ambitious of glory in 
 war ? Truly ; yet he was the most cautious of all tacticians. Even 
 where he seems, as in the campaign of Miihlberg, to have neglected 
 advice and to have risked too much, the result justified his calcula- 
 tions to a degree that convinces us that he knew what he was about 
 better than his counsellors ; and so great were his skill and foresight 
 in this respect that, knowing his habitual caution, we may confidently 
 acquit him of rashness. He was a most cautious tactician ; a most 
 economical general ; most averse, from first to last, to risk anything 
 in battle. I repeat, his warfare was forced on him, and was in its 
 whole spirit defensive. He kept no great army, he was too poor. On 
 all sides he had enemies, who never ceased to attack him ; his own 
 safety was peace, but it was no peace to suffer himself to be beaten. 
 This charge of ambition is a vulgar and unmeaning accusation. No 
 man can be blamed for an ambition which consists in holding fast 
 that to lose which would stamp him as a mean and unintelligent 
 coward. 
 
 And now for his unscrupulous craft, his deceitfulness, and what 
 Motley calls his want of chivalry — the way in which he laid snares 
 for men and took advantage of their weakness, and deceived them in 
 intention whilst he spoke the truth in words. I think the defence 
 in this point is this : First, he never deceived his friends or any that 
 trusted in him ; he did not forsake his allies or sacrifice their interests
 
 ■p 
 
 THE CHARACTEE OF CHARLES V. I37 
 
 to save his own. Secondly, he did not break his plighted word, nor 
 incur the stain of personal dishonour. What is the meaning of 
 chivalry? Is it not the gloss put by fine manners on vice and 
 selfishness and contempt for the rights of men ? Edward III, was 
 chivalrous ; he thought nothing of risking the lives of 10,000 men on 
 an enterprise which could bring no good to any mortal man but 
 himself ; involved Europe in a war in which he had not the shadow of 
 a right, and brought more misery on England than any other man 
 before or since. Francis I. was chivalrous, a man who spared no ^ 
 woman in his lust, or man in his revenge ; whose futile ambition f 
 never let him rest, whose unscrupulous lying wore out every shred 
 of honour, who never scrupled to desert an ally, or purchase a 
 moment's ease and luxury by the sacrifice of a friend. George IV. 
 would, no doubt, have been chivalrous if he had lived a few hundred 1 
 years before his time. He was behind his age in this as in some f 
 other points of more importance. The chivalry of such men is un- 
 worthy of the name ; true chivalry has indeed existed, but not in 
 many cases in which the world has regarded it. But as a system, as 
 a rule of society or a prevailing influence, it never existed but in the 
 Romance writers. Happily in all ages there have been true knights 
 of God without fear and without reproach, sacrificing themselves for 
 others, self-denying, bearing death sooner than wrong another ; but 
 I doubt whether the majority of them would be what is called 
 chivalrous. About Charles V. there was no pretension: he falls 
 very far below the real thing ; but his dignity, his reserve, and his 
 self-respect set him far above the sham, "'^^^f^,^^..!;).*-*** 
 
 But he was tricky ? Yes, he took full advantage of all that 
 delay and concealment and tact and management could do for him : 
 as with his force, so with his policy. He was determined to hold 
 fast, and he did hold fast. His enemies are the evidence against him : 
 the French, and the Protestants of Germany. These last he did not 
 deceive, they were far too wary to let him, although by his policy he 
 divided them and made them fight his battles. I do not call him 
 ingenuous ; he was most artfully politic : but, first, was not the age 
 politic ? What were Charles's sins in this matter compared with 
 those of Francis, of Clement VII., of Henry VIII. ? Was not the 
 whole policy of the Italians based on this principle, and carried out 
 without faith to friend or mercy to a foe ? I would not defend dis- 
 honesty, but Charles may fairly be defended by a comparison with 
 the men of his own time. His treatment of Philip of Hesse may 
 be paralleled by Maurice's treatment of himself ; it is very far 
 outrun by Maurice's treatment of his magnanimous cousin; and 
 beside that there is absolutely nothing against Charles but his 
 dealings with Francis I. What could he do with a man so false
 
 138 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 as to defy all open obligations ; who would justify himself by private 
 renunciation of a treaty which he was going to sign ; who would 
 betray his closest friend ; who stood throughout his reign — and this 
 mark is a matter on which the conscience of the age was very tender, 
 whilst Francis's unscrupulousness showed that he had no such 
 conscience — who stood in lifelong alliance with the Turk, the pirate 
 and plunderer of the West, the enemy of God's Church and Empire ? 
 Charles had no weapon but cunning against a man so false ; and as 
 it is against Francis that his policy is chiefly demanded, that 
 cunning has given a colour to the policy which perhaps, judged by 
 the standard of the age and the morality of its great men, it hardly 
 deserves. 
 
 But I have not undertaken to prove Charles to have been a good 
 man, or within the highest ranks of greatness. I should only like 
 so far to clear him from the censures of incompetent and insincere 
 judges. The cry of ambition is a mere cuckoo cry ; the charge of 
 deceitfulness I admit in so far as to allow that his policy with 
 regard to enemies whom force and honour could not bind was dis- 
 ingenuous in itself and artful, but not dishonest beyond the diplo- 
 matic dishonesty of that age and of many since. I think the Prussian 
 policy of 1866 was immeasurably falser, immeasurably more dis- 
 honest. 
 
 Take now our second point. I have maintained that a wiry 
 pertinacity was the distinctive feature of Charles's character, and that 
 the maintenance rather than the extension of his dominion was the 
 aim of his reign, the end of his ambition and his contrivances. Had 
 he, in conformity with this character, and as conducive to this end, 
 a settled plan of despotism ; a conscious intention to destroy liberty 
 of religion, and the remains of political freedom and constitutional 
 independence which continued to exist in his wide and varied 
 dominions ? Had he this despotic plan ? Was it disappointment 
 at its failure that drove him to abdication ? If he had it, was it 
 a plan of mere despotic power, or an imperial design for complete 
 and united organisation ? 
 
 Of the facts upon which such a theory might be based there is no 
 doubt. It is certain that Charles V. did in Spain reduce the Cortes 
 to insignificance ; that in the Netherlands he acted, with regard to 
 Ghent, with justifiable severity but with unconstitutional vindictive- 
 ness, a swiftness to take the opportunity of abolishing the danger- 
 ous privileges of his native city, that looks almost as if he had been 
 waiting and watching for it. It is true also that he tampered with 
 the Diet in Germany, and that, in his efforts to force the Interim 
 on the princes and cities, he broke through charters and abolished 
 constitutional liberties. And, further, it is true that his contem-
 
 THE CHAEACTER OF CHARLES V. 139 
 
 porai'ies gave him credit for a design to raake himself absolute in 
 Germany, and in Italy to reduce the Papacy to insignificance. This 
 last, as it is the widest, and the hardest to prove and to disprove, is 
 also the most popular view. 
 
 In all these respects he has to pay for the sins of many genera- 
 tions that went before and came after him. It is regarded as 
 Austrian policy ; he is the exponent if not the father of it. Austrian 
 policy is supposed to have grown by a combination of successful diplo- 
 macy abroad and repression of constitutional life at home ; Prussian 
 policy, by the similar combination of unscrupulous \'iolence abroad 
 and the silence of discontent at home, by maintenance of the 
 forms without the life of constitutional government. 
 
 I am willing to grant, to begin with, that Charles's policy was 
 repressive : certainly in Spain and the Netherlands ; more or less 
 so in Germany and Italy. The question becomes one of degree ; 
 was his idea of repression a fixed and conscious design of abso- 
 lutism ; or was it the pursuit of hereditary policy ; or are these 
 instances only cases of momentary treatment, the only way in which 
 at the moment he saw he could meet his difficulties ? I grant that 
 his policy was repressive, but it might be that, mthout his having 
 a settled purpose to destroy liberty. Was his repressive policy 
 defensive or aggressive ? You will be prepared for my first answer. 
 I believe it was defensive ; but I think we may go further, and say 
 that, beginning on the defensive, he did towards the end of his life 
 see that the struggle was becoming one on both sides for existence, 
 and that he had begun to entertain designs which, whether he saw 
 it or not, would, supposing them to be successful, end in absolutism. 
 There are many factors in this discussion : there is first his own 
 mind, which we cannot penetrate ; his own servants could not, and 
 he has left behind him no confession, only the results of his work. 
 His own mind was slow in coming to maturity ; but when it was 
 matured, when, I think, he was tAventy-two or twenty-four, he had 
 the mature mind of an old man. He was a long time young : 
 ceasing to be young, he was old all at once. In every way, in 
 policy, in business, and in warlike skill, he gained and had little to 
 gain from experience ; the only mistress to whom he bowed was 
 disappointment. 
 
 I do not think, then, that we are justified in attributing to 
 him a conscious origination of a design of despotism, when for at 
 least twenty years of his reign there is no sign of it. All that was 
 repressive in these earlier years was an inherited policy, both in 
 Spain and in the Netherlands. 
 
 In Spain Charles cannot be exactly said to have broken down 
 the constitution : here, as in many other matters, we can trace his
 
 140 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1648 
 
 observance of the letter of the law whilst he transgressed it in its 
 spirit. He acted with great art, according to Robertson, in this : 
 in 1521 he used the nobility to overwhelm the towns, and in 1539 
 he put an end to the power of the towns in the Cortes, by summon- 
 ing only a limited number, and those in many cases crown 
 nominees. It is not, howevei", true that Charles in 1521 availed 
 himself of the aid of the nobles to crush the independence of the 
 commons. Spain was at that time in a state of revolution, pro- 
 voked, no doubt, by the impolicy of Charles and his favourites. 
 The nobles and clergy were engaged in it as well as the commons ; 
 but the revolutionary junta, by its proposition to tax the nobles, 
 threw them into opposition, and placed them at once at the disposal 
 of the regents. The commons were beaten, and for nearly twenty 
 years performed their duty of voting supplies, with murmurs perhaps, 
 but without resistance. In 1589 they refused supplies, and Charles, 
 in the exercise of his power of summoning only those communities 
 whom he would to the Cortes, reduced their constitutional power to 
 a cipher. 
 
 But there is no conceivable unity between his policy, or rather the 
 policy of the nobles, in 1521 and his conduct to the Cortes in 1539. 
 It is an indispensable duty of all constitutional parliaments to keep 
 the administration of the country afloat. If the king is bound to 
 consult his parliament, the parliament also has its duties not to 
 refuse supplies until there is reason. That is how the parliament of 
 Charles I. began to get wrong ; and it is how the Cortes of Castile 
 incurred their fate. Do not mistake me : I do not mean that a 
 national assembly has not a right to refuse money, but it has not 
 the right to refuse it unreasonably, either as an attack on the king, 
 as was the case in England, or as a means of increasing its own 
 independence, as was the case in Castile. English law in the circum- 
 stances compels the king to svibmit, even where he is iniquitously 
 treated : Castilian law, without any pressure, placed Charles's remedy 
 in his own hands. The expedient had been tried under the earlier 
 kings ; the Cortes had rarely attempted to thwart Ferdinand and 
 Isabella. Anyhow, the system on which it was constituted, based 
 on privilege and limited by royal will, broke down when it came 
 into direct opposition with the persistent and strong will of Charles. 
 
 In the Netherlands, the same year (1539), was the affair of Ghent. 
 But at Ghent, whatever may have been the original right of the 
 case, and granting that there could have been a privilege so destruc- 
 tive of all constitutional right as that a single city should have the 
 power of refusing to pay a tax levied and assessed in an assembly 
 in which it was represented — Ghent, even if right to begin with, 
 was unquestionably guilty of the worst and most deliberate treason.
 
 THE CHAKACTER OF CHARLES V. 141 
 
 Charles's revenge on Ghent was perhaps impolitic, but it was not 
 unprovoked, and it was not undeserved. After all, the line taken 
 by the burghers of Ghent was an hereditary one, and Charles's 
 repressive policy towards them was hereditary too. It was the most 
 turbulent town in the Netherlands, and had given more trouble 
 than any other to his ancestors. 
 
 But are we called on to believe that Charles in this same year, 
 1589, was so besotted with a design of absolutism as to strike two 
 such blows intentionally ? Surely he would have made certain of 
 one before he attacked the other : as it was he submitted for the 
 time to be thwarted by the Cortes ; and his design in the Nether- 
 lands went no further than the destruction of the liberties of Ghent. 
 
 His conduct in Germany is at first sight a more plausible ground 
 for the assertion of this design ; but even this, when it is looked at 
 closely, fails. Even here, where more than anywhere else he breaks 
 the spirit of constitutional law, breaks through the charters of the 
 imperial towns, and forces on the Diet the acceptance of the Interim, 
 he does not infringe any written law. The Diet did accept the 
 Interim, and the towns refusing to receive it refused to obey what, 
 by an unworthy procedure, had become the law of Germany. But 
 surely Charles's end in this business was not to set up a new 
 system ; it was simply to settle the religious question which was 
 dividing Germany and paralysing the imperial jurisdiction ; obliging 
 him to intrigue with the Pope, and disabling him from the defence 
 of Europe. To put down Protestantism is one thing, to destroy the 
 constitutional status of the members of the Empire is another. If 
 the former could not be done without the latter, Charles no doubt 
 was willing to humble the princes ; but also a great number even of 
 the Protestant princes were on his side ; and the constitution of 
 the league of Smalkald was such that he might fairly deem it 
 necessary, both for religion and for the sake of the unity of the 
 Empire, to break it down. 
 
 I do not now unsay anything I have said before : in the main 
 quarrel I do not see how Charles could have sat down and let the 
 Elector John Frederick and Philip of Hesse have their own way. 
 Having once taken up arms, the constitutional law was in abeyance : 
 and, that being so, the system of which the ill-treatment of the 
 Swabian towns was a part became a vexatious necessity. The 
 Interim must be adopted. It is curious that in each of his states 
 the town element is the one which complains of being unconstitu- 
 tionally dealt with. Having said thus much, I must add that whilst 
 these events to my mind afford no convincing proof of any fixed 
 purpose of destroying liberty, such as is ascribed to Richard II. in 
 the madness of his last years, and to Charles I. and Strafford by
 
 142 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 those who would justify their own iniquities by charging con- 
 templated iniquities on those who could not contradict them, 
 there is no doubt that Charles was being forced into a. path in which 
 the formation of such a design would soon have become needful to 
 him. Separate as we may the political and the religious sides of 
 the great quarrel, and to some extent they were separable during 
 the life of Charles, there can be no doubt that they must in the 
 end become one. Political liberty is absolutely inconsistent with 
 religious compulsion. Charles was finding it so, and Philip, 
 advancing with accelerated speed along the groove in which his 
 father had placed him, found it so to his ruin, at least in the 
 Netherlands, where the determination to force the Catholic doctrine 
 on the Protestant people cost him seven of his fairest provinces ; 
 seven of the most attached and most anciently loyal of all his 
 states. 
 
 In Germany, it was as much, perhaps, the weakness as the will 
 of Ferdinand that prevented him from attempting the same course ; 
 but it must not be forgotten that Charles had failed to set the 
 machine going in that direction there. Germany was too strong for 
 him, and there can be no doubt it would have been too strong for 
 Philip had he, as his father wished, succeeded to the Empire. 
 
 That this was so, I think, Charles realised ; I think so sagacious 
 a man could not fail to do so. Whether it was that he saw that 
 failure must attend the scheme, or that he felt his own attempt to 
 stay the Reformation had been abortive, or that he knew himself to 
 be worn out, and retired accordingly to have time to think about 
 death, may be questioned. There are some to whom the possession 
 of power seems so sweet a thing that they cannot understand how a 
 man can by his voluntary act bring himself to renounce it : but are 
 there not some to whom, however dear power may have been, 
 responsibility is so heavy a weight that they are glad to renounce 
 the one that they may relieve themselves of the other ? Charles had 
 stood at the head of Christendom for forty years : at such a height 
 above all other princes, both in power and fortune and character, 
 that nothing but national vanity can account for the comparison 
 between him and Henry VIII. or between him and Francis I. He 
 was a pious man, according to his light, and recognised a responsi- 
 bility to God, which after the darkness of his heart he had tried to 
 fulfil by persecuting where he could persecute, and humiliating 
 whenever it was possible, the enemies of the faith. He was respon- 
 sible to man in a sort of way ; to keep up the high name that he had 
 inherited, that through him the estate which he had tried to govern 
 should take no damage. He felt himself weak and breaking : 
 perfect rest did not restore him, although it may well have belonged
 
 THE CHARACTER OF CHARLES V. 143 
 
 his life for a year or so. He was bound, we may believe that he 
 believed, both to God and to his own fame, to resign a kingdom 
 which he was losing the power to manage. I dare say that dis- 
 appointment mingled with the thought, but I can well believe that 
 he spoke the truth when he declared his weariness, and his longing 
 for rest, and that this was a long-looked-for and welcome end of his 
 labours. 
 
 In what I have said as to the second question I have answered 
 the third. If Charles did not consciously conceive and elaborate a 
 plan of despotic government, he left an inheritance of it to his 
 successor in Spain and in the Netherlands. But can it be said that 
 this was an innovation in the policy of Europe ? Lewis XL had 
 reduced the constitutional government of France to absolutism. 
 Henry VIII. through his parliament governed his people as absolutely 
 as Francis did his without one. The social liberty may have been 
 greater, but the political liberty was quite on a par. Henry forced 
 on England, not indeed Protestantism, but a renunciation of the ^ 
 
 Papal supremacy, which must end in Protestantism, and a destruction * 
 
 of the monasteries, which had been for nearly a thousand years the 
 pride and glory of England. Edward VI. advanced in the same 
 direction, forced absolute Protestantism on the people, made their 
 old religious rites penal, destroyed learning in the universities, 
 prepared the way for an abject submission of Parliament to the • 
 royal power, not the less abject that Philip and Mary found means | 
 to turn it in a diametrically opposite direction, whilst Elizabeth I 
 changed the direction again and by tact and endurance brought 
 some good at least out of the wretched state of things she suc- 
 ceeded to. 
 
 Charles was not the inventor or the successful organiser of 
 ' paternal government : ' the merit of it or the guilt of it does not 
 lie at his door. The general result of the reign, however, means not 
 only what he succeeded in doing, but what ho failed in preventing. 
 He failed in preventing the Reformation and he failed in circum- 
 scribing the pernicious influence of France. He succeeded in 
 impressing upon Spain and on certain parts of the Netherlands, and 
 possibly of Germany, and of Italy too, a decided hostility to the 
 Reformation ; giving the Jesuits a standing-ground from which 
 working they recovered within a century after his death a very 
 large portion of what had seemed lost for ever to the Church of 
 Rome. The result of his reign includes, further, the unintentional 
 issue of the means he took to promote his views ; in Germany, the 
 determinate change of the whole of the North with respect to the 
 Papacy, a result which a more temperate support of the unreformed 
 doctrine would not have risked; for North Germany had always
 
 144 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1048 
 
 been papal, and anti-imperial ; it continued anti-imperial, and now 
 ceased to be papal. The feeling was intensified which opposed the 
 North to the South, and although for a time and at times the 
 princes of North and South have worked together, there has been 
 no love lost between the people, least of all when the old schism was 
 widened by the difference of religion. 
 
 Although within Germany this was the case, it can hardly be 
 denied that Charles greatly magnified the imperial office and the 
 position of the Emperors of the Austrian house in Europe. The 
 very fact that so great a sovereign had worn the imperial crown 
 added importance to that crown, the real power of which depended 
 so very much upon prestige. The permanent acquisition by Fer- 
 dinand of the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia was also a result of 
 Charles's greatness ; and that acquisition formed from the time of 
 his death, and does still, the great support of the very existence of 
 the house of Austria ; it formed, until the final stoppage of Turkish 
 aggression, its great plea for the respect of Europe, and the respect 
 of Europe was a necessary ingredient of the imperial influence. 
 There is not one of his dominions that is not greater and richer and 
 stronger at his death than at the beginning of his reign, however that 
 advance may have been made, through him or in opposition to him. 
 He leaves, then, a very great mark, and a great many Very definite 
 marks, in Europe. His empire across the Atlantic we have had 
 barely time to glance at, but I conceive there also he made a mark 
 for ever. We part with him, then, with some little liking, and some 
 considerable respect, and a great deal of pity ; and we cannot spare 
 him from very deep blame ; we cannot shut our eyes to very great 
 guilt. But we cannot doubt his greatness, his force and tenacity of 
 mind, his great ability in war and government ; his earnest faith in 
 the religion he had been educated in ; we cannot but think that he 
 might have been a better man, if he had not been so great a prince, 
 with so much power for good and evil.
 
 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE FROM 
 THE RESIGNATION OF CHARLES V. 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 EUKOPE AT THE RESIGNATION OF CHAKLES V. 
 
 The reign of the Emperor Charles V. is not a, mere period of 
 eventful years. Its history is the history of a series of causes and 
 consequences, of designs and evolutions and disappointments, that 
 have a dramatic and historic unity of the highest interest. Wide as 
 were his dominions, and various as Avere his titles to the ohedience 
 of his subjects ; infinitely diversified as were the border nations 
 with whose hostility he had to struggle all his life ; very various as 
 were the interests Avhich he had to consult in the Netherlands and 
 Germany and Italy ; the persistence of his policy, the uniform 
 character of his proceedings, and especially the precedent and 
 following history of the house of Austria, which he consolidated in 
 power and in a manner for the time impersonated, gave his reign 
 this unity. The continuous struggle with the French, wherever the 
 dominions of Francis touched or the claims of Francis could be 
 asserted against his own ; the perpetual crusade against the Turks, 
 in Hungary, in the Mediterranean, and on the exposed coasts of 
 Spain, Italy, and Africa ; the as constant rivalry of the Popes, some- 
 times inspired by Italian patriotism, more frequently by personal 
 or family ambition ; and the equally perplexing difficulties that 
 attended the rise of Protestantism in Germany : these four threads 
 weave in and out, and form the web, whilst they give the colour, of 
 the whole of the history of the reign. Throughout the greatest part 
 of it also the actors are the same : Charles and Francis and Henry 
 VIII. and Solyman and Luther begin their active careers together. 
 Charles does indeed survive his enemies, excepting Solyman, by a 
 dozen years ; but as long as he lives and reigns the policy of those 
 enemies is maintained by their successors ; and, curiously enough, 
 the deaths of these successors, of Mary of England, of Henry II. of 
 France, and Paul IV., synchronise within a few mouths with his 
 
 L
 
 146 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, loin-)G48 
 
 own, so that the field is left open to new <actors when he, the great 
 figure of the earlier drama, is withdrawn. 
 
 How great he was and how great the effect of his policy, mainly 
 defensive as it was, must appear from the events that followed. 
 The coincidence may be mainly accidental, but it is marked. How 
 different might have been the success of the Keformation in 
 England and the Netherlands, and the combinations of parties in 
 France, if he had lived and reigned twelve years longer, we can only 
 conjecture ; but we do know that the collapse of the Roman reaction 
 in England, and the outbreak of revolt in the Netherlands, and the 
 wars of religion in France, followed speedily upon his death. In all 
 those things Philip played a conspicuous part : the part which 
 would have fallen to the lot of Charles, and which Charles would 
 doubtless have played differently from the way in which Philip 
 played it. But, for all that, the results might have been the same ; 
 we can only reckon safely on the probability that the means and 
 workers would have been different. 
 
 The dramatic unity of the reign of Charles may thus be regarded 
 as a different thing from the historical or political completeness of the 
 period embraced by his reign. Tlie former will mean the series of cam- 
 paigns against the French and of struggles with the reformers which 
 succeeded one another from the year 1520 to the year 1552 : they end 
 in the peace of Passau and the discomfiture of Metz — two events that 
 end the personal interest of Charles's reign, although some few years 
 still intervene before his abdication. Those two events are the 
 climax of the series that has given the personal interest to the pre- 
 ceding thirty years. Charles quits the stage, and he quits it in a 
 great measure disappointed. But the struggles which have caused 
 or have been caused by that series of designs do not cease yet ; the 
 peace of Passau and the retreat from Metz are not the closing 
 events of either series considered in itself. It is a coincidence worth 
 remarking, how, although neither the retirement from Germany 
 nor the subsequent resignation of the Emperor ends those two 
 series, they are brought to an end at his death. The recess of 
 Augsburg is nearly contemporaneous with his resignation of the 
 Netherlands ; the peace of Cateau-Cambresis is an almost imme- 
 diate consequence of his death. 
 
 I propose in this lecture to complete our sketch of the period 
 covered by Charles's life. The last term's lectures brought us down 
 to the resignation ; but the view I shall now take will involve some 
 little recurrence to earlier events of importance which led to his 
 resignation. 
 
 The two strings of events which hang loose at the pacification 
 of Passau and the retreat from Metz are, of course, the proceedings
 
 EUEOPE AT THE RESIGNATION OF CHARLES V. 147 
 
 with the Protestants in Germany and the war with France. We 
 must trace the sequel of these struggles. The peace of Passau 
 provided for the settlement of all disputes touching religion in a Diet 
 to be held as soon as circumstances would permit. That Diet was 
 not held until the year 1555. It was delayed partly by the war 
 with the Turks, for which Maurice of Saxony was detached almost 
 directly after the pacification ; by the struggles of Albert Alcibiades 
 and the death of Maurice, and by the still continued attempts of 
 Charles to procure the election to the imperial throne for Phihp to 
 the detriment of Ferdinand, who had been since 1531 King of the 
 Eomans. This unhappy project of Charles, which unquestionably 
 paved the way for his great humiliation in 1552, although it never 
 alienated from him the personal attachment and even veneration of 
 Ferdinand, had the effect of placing their political interests in 
 decided opposition. Ferdinand and his son Maximilian, who was 
 now able to take an important share in politics, were never 
 treacherous to Charles, but they saw no harm in counteracting a 
 project which was in itself perhaps impracticable, but which was 
 certainly detestable to the whole German people. Even the princes 
 who were most hostile to the Reformation were enemies to the design 
 of any further union between Germany and Spain, many of them 
 personally hostile to Philip. But the great result of it was the identi- 
 fying of Ferdinand and Maximilian with the interests of Germany, 
 and the preparation that it gave them for ruling the Empire with 
 a view to true German objects. And the first and most pressing 
 of these objects in the minds of all Germans was peace and the 
 compromise of the religious struggle. The religious struggle in 
 Germany, the Germans had always insisted, should be put an end to 
 by Germans, on German soil, and on national principles. Various 
 as were the degrees of enthusiasm in the religious champions on 
 each side, early as the struggle had begun, and rapidly as the events 
 had succeeded one another, neither of the two parties was hardened 
 so far as to suppose that its own safety depended on the extinc- 
 tion of the other. The Council of Trent had not yet quenched the 
 hopes of reform within the Catholic Church itself, nor the machina- 
 tions of the Jesuits set the moral instincts of the Protestants in array 
 against the system which they so unscrupulously and so successfully 
 supported. 
 
 The ecclesiastical party, then, v/hich was constitutionally so strong 
 in Germany, was at this moment not politically strong nor religiously 
 very much in earnest. If it was ecclesiastical it was still German ; and 
 the retrospect of the struggle of the preceding thirty-five years was 
 such as to render the most enthusiastic likely to be content with a 
 safe tenure of their own dominions, with a liberty of persecuting their 
 
 l2
 
 148 LEGTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTOKY, 1519-1648 
 
 own subjects, but without any idea of forcing unmitigated Romanism 
 upon the states which had now renounced it. A Protestant, even a 
 divided, Germany seemed to them, moreover, better than a perpetual 
 union with Spain, involving the constant participation by Germany 
 in wars in which she had no interest, and the constant humilia- 
 tion of her independence before Spanish soldiers or by Spanish gold. 
 
 We are not to suppose that either Catholics or Protestants 
 intended to fulfil the pacification of Passau, otherwise than by getting 
 their own way. The Emperor knew that the gain of time by delay 
 was always a benefit to him ; the ecclesiastical princes felt that their 
 power in the Diet was constitutionally supreme if they were united ; 
 the Protestant princes were determined that no constitutional rights 
 should stand in the way of their obtaining fresh territory or securing 
 religious toleration for their own views. But when they were brought 
 together, as always is the case, they saw that compromise, hateful as 
 it might be, was yet necessary ; that they must at all events be 
 content to waive some of their demands in order to secure the others ; 
 and that those others might, if they temporised wisely, be easily 
 erected into a platform from which those now waived might be 
 successfully revindicated. They must have peace, that Ferdinand 
 and Maximilian saw, and the Protestants saw it likewise. 
 
 On February 5, 1555, Ferdinand, having got a few members of the 
 Diet together at Augsburg for the purpose of arranging a permanent 
 peace, addressed them in a sort of opening speech. In this, although 
 he professed an earnest desire of peace, and acknowledged the 
 difficulty of supposing that it could come from Trent, he did not 
 abate any of the Roman claims ; and his only substantive proposition 
 was that the system of disputations, under which the first struggles 
 of the Reformation had been conducted, should be renewed. It was 
 well known that the only result of the former disputations had been 
 to strengthen both sides in their first opinions, and to leave the 
 Emperor and ecclesiastical princes self -justified in their opposition 
 to change ; but the Protestants were alarmed by the proposition, more 
 especially as it showed no sign of change in the imperial policy, and 
 it coincided in time with the reconciliation of England to the 
 Papacy, and the growth of the Jesuits. The Protestants had lost 
 their great and irrefragable champions ; Rome had trained new 
 athletes, and the prestige of success was now with her. Although 
 the result of disputations might not then change the faith of any, it 
 might be such as to seem to justify the other party in their pertinacity. 
 Cardinal Morone was coming to Augsburg to conduct the proceedings 
 against the Protestants, and Cardinal Morone was not likely to fail 
 either from want of ability or from superabundance of scruples. 
 Accordingly they took measures for mutual defence, and in a con-
 
 EUROPE AT THE EESTGNATION OF CHARLES V. 149 
 
 ference at Naumburg, held on March 6, the Electors of Saxony and 
 Brandenburg and the Landgrave of Hesse, renewed their close 
 alliance of ' Erbverbriiderung,' binding themselves to maintain the 
 Confession of Augsburg in their own dominions. 
 
 The Diet met at Augsburg formally on March 7, and its deUbera- 
 tions terminated in the publication of a recess on September 25. 
 External events doubtless contributed as much to the actual result as 
 internal intrigue, much more than the plan of disputation, of which 
 in point of fact we hear no more. The death of Julius III. and the 
 recall of Morone a few days after his arrival, and the election, after 
 the three weeks' reign of Marcellus, of Cardinal Carafta as Paul IV,, 
 Inust have affected the proceedings as they affected everything else that 
 was going on in Europe, I shall speak of this directly. The two 
 great points on which the pacification in religion turned were, first, 
 whether the ecclesiastical princes should be at liberty to accept 
 the Confession of Augsburg, and so alienate their dominions in 
 perpetuity from the Roman Church ; and secondly, whether the 
 princes that remained Catholic should be allowed to compel their 
 subjects to renounce Protestantism, The Protestants insisted that 
 the Reformation should be allowed to extend itself by the adhesion 
 of the ecclesiastical states ; the Catholics that they should be 
 allowed to enforce their own religion within their own states. On 
 some points there was no difference of opinion, because a change was 
 hopeless ; the states that had embraced the Reformation might be 
 allowed, because they could not be hindered, to retain it. And no 
 interference by one state with the religion of another was likely to be 
 tolerated, so far had matters gone since even the days of the Interim. 
 
 But here were two strong and real points in question, and on 
 these the compromise turns. As to the first, the Protestants, we 
 are told, did not wish to secularise the spiritual principalities, but 
 merely to have the right of being elected to them. The point was 
 vigorously contested ; in the end the Protestants had to yield. 
 They would not enact their own discomfiture, but left the 
 decision to Ferdinand : he decided that a spiritual prince embracing 
 Protestantism should forfeit his dominions. This is the Eccle- 
 siastical Reservation of which we shall hear so much. As to the 
 second, were the spiritual princes to be allowed to persecute the 
 Protestants? For that they as sturdily held out, and were by 
 the same means obliged to yield ; they also agreed to leave the 
 settlement to be made by a declaration of Ferdinand that they 
 would not force the Catholic religion on their subjects. So the 
 peace of Augsburg was secured, which kept Germany in some sort of 
 internal harmony for thirty years. The recess which embodied it 
 was published on September 25, exactly a month before Charles's
 
 150 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 resignation at Brussels. With it ends the relioious histoi'y of the 
 reign and life of Charles so far as they aflect Germany. 
 
 What little remains to be said of the intervening events may be 
 as -well said when we discuss the character and reign of Ferdinand. 
 Charles's reign over Germany continued for nearly a year after his 
 resignation at Brussels ; and during that time he seems to have 
 intrigued again for the succession of Philip, this time negotiating 
 with Ferdinand himself, whom he hoped to persuade by offering him 
 some fresh provision in Italy or the Netherlands. But Ferdinand, 
 for the first time in his life perhaps, was feeling his strength, 
 realising how greatly he had served Germany and attached the 
 Germans to himself. He rejected the proposal, and Charles, anxious 
 to leave for Spain, at last executed his act of resignation, August 27, 
 1556. The unprecedented nature of this act occasioned some delay 
 in the completion of Ferdinand's title ; but all difficulties were 
 eventually got over, and on February 24, 1558, the day of St. 
 ]\Iatthias, the birthday and lucky day of Charles V., the claims of 
 his successor were at last admitted ; and he was recognised at Frank- 
 fort as Emperor on March 12, 1558. 
 
 Here, then, we close the German history of Charles. He did 
 not continue here, as in his hereditary dominions, to exercise direct 
 or indirect supervision ; or to fan the flames of religious persecution 
 as long as he lived. We might almost date his abdication from the 
 peace of Passau. 
 
 We turn now to the French war, the other series of events the 
 interest of which is conterminous with Charles's life. The discom- 
 fiture at Metz, in 1552 and 1553, broke the spirit and heart of 
 Charles, but they did not destroy his power, and he was able to make 
 still some brave strokes for victory. The campaigns on the Nether- 
 lands border in 1553 in which Terouanne and Hesdin were taken ; 
 the failure of Henry to revenge the injury or to recover the 
 towns ; and the marriage of Philip with Mary of England, did much 
 to restore the power and rehabilitate the prestige of Charles ; in an 
 especial degree the English marriage, for it placed at his disposal 
 an influence of very considerable importance, which had been often 
 used against him and never heartily exerted on his side, and the forces 
 of a country still in a flourishing condition, notwithstanding the 
 anarchy and extravagance of the reign of Edward VI. This is worth 
 observing. Charles had, since the death of Henry VIII., meddled 
 but little -vnth England ; under the profligate statesmen of the 
 Reformation her hostility was as little to be feared as her friend- 
 ship was to be desired. There had been negotiations from time to 
 time ; Edward had been commended by his father to the imperial 
 patronage, and negotiations respecting the Reformation and toleration
 
 EUROPE AT THE RESIGNATION OF CHARLES V. 151 
 
 in the Netherlands had been carried on with more or less of sincerity 
 on either side ; but the position and treatment of Mary, and the aid 
 afforded in money to the German Protestants by England, were 
 enough to prevent cordiality, and Charles waited patiently for the 
 exhaustion of the country under its scandalous administration, 
 thinking that the hostility of Scotland was the safest guarantee of 
 at least the negative aid of England in any dispute between himself 
 and France. But now all this was altered. England was recovering 
 herself under the prudent management of the old ministers of 
 Henry VIII. and by the successful mediation of Pole was being 
 brought to renounce the new doctrines. The marriage of Philip and 
 Mary took place on July 25, and the English nation was absolved, 
 in the person of its parliament, by Cardinal Pole on November 30, 
 1554. 
 
 The next year Pole tried his hand at making peace between 
 Charles and Henry and spent some time in Flanders in nego- 
 tiating ; but he was unsuccessful, and all existing arrangements were 
 broken up by the death of Julius III. and of his successor Pope 
 Marcellus. The new Pope, Paul IV., whose curious career and very 
 extraordinary character are so well drawn out by Ranke, lost no 
 time in showing which side he intended to take in the great struggle. 
 He was a Neapolitan, of a house hereditarily attached to the French, 
 and hating the Spanish rule ; he was an Italian, and detested the 
 Empire ; he was an old man and could remember the days when Italy 
 was free from a foreign yoke, free to prey upon her own vitals as ever. 
 He was, moreover, at this time under the influence of his ambitious and 
 unprincipled nephews, who were bent not more on driving the 
 Spaniards out of Italy than on making for themselves a territorial 
 principality on the pattern set by the Farnesi and the Medici. Urged 
 by such motives he lost no time in drawing near to Henry II. 
 
 The war languished during the early part of 1555, and the 
 autumn witnessed the resignation of Charles : a measure which, 
 although it had been long determined on, may not improbably have 
 been hastened by the Emperor's knowledge of the designs of Carafia. 
 The time Avas spent by Paul and Henry in negotiation. They 
 agreed to form a new alliance ; the object was to be the conquest of 
 Naples and the expulsion of the Spaniards from Italy. The Guises, 
 who were Henry's chief advisers in this negotiation, had some pre- 
 tensions to the Neapolitan throne, and one of them, the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine, had a design on the Papacy. The Duke of Montmorency, 
 who, as usual, was opposed to a war mth Charles, took the other 
 side, but the pertinacity of Paul overbore all opposition, and the 
 league was signed on December 15, 1555. It seems strange to 
 learn that, during this negotiation with Paul IV., Henry was also
 
 152 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 ne.iTotiating a peace, or valher a truce, with Charles and Philip. So 
 it was, however ; both parties were exhausted and tired of war, as 
 the dilatory character of the campaigns of the year had shown ; both 
 were disinclined to give way. The simple expedient was a truce of 
 years, during which each of the contracting powers should continue 
 to hold such of the disputed territories as he was in possession of at 
 the moment. And such a truce was made to last for five years : a 
 truce manifestly advantageous to Henry, who thus retained his 
 conquests in Savoy, and the three bishopries ; but, as it seems to us, 
 diametrically opposed to the obligations he had just incurred to the 
 Pope. 
 
 The truce of Vaucelles was concluded on February 5, 1556. The 
 Pope, although thunderstruck, as he well might be, at this deliberate 
 perfidy, was equal to the occasion. He immediately opened negotia- 
 tions, of which both parties were glad to take temporary advantage, 
 for the recalling of the Council of Trent and putting down of heresy ; 
 underhand, he urged Henry to fulfil his obligations to him against 
 Philip, whilst his nephews mustered allies all through Europe, nego- 
 tiating, as Francis I. had done, at the same time with the Turks and 
 with the Protestants. The underhand negotiations were those which 
 ultimately prevailed, the public ones serving to gain time. Yet 
 even for this purpose the impetuous nature of the old Pope refused 
 to be patient. He could not help throwing off the mask ; before the 
 middle of the year he had begun to talve open measures, displaced 
 all the Spanish partisans in Eome, deprived the Colonnas of their 
 duchy of Palliano, seized and imprisoned the Spanish envoy. Next 
 he instituted a fiscal process against Charles and Philip as having 
 forfeited the kingdom of Naples, and threatened them ^^^th excom- 
 munication and the absolution of their subjects from allegiance. And 
 this was the overt beginning of war. 
 
 Provoked beyond endurance by the insults heaped on his master, 
 and alarmed by the machinations of the French party mthin the 
 kingdom of Naples, the Duke of Alva, the viceroy of the kingdom, 
 took advantage of this last measure and marched into the States of 
 the Church. He might have found them an easy conquest ; but 
 neither he nor Philip was disposed as yet for extreme measures. Both 
 were superstitious if not religious. Philip would endure a good 
 deal rather than risk the temporal and spiritual penalties of a 
 permanent breach with the Pope. Alva remembered that the con- 
 quest of Rome had been, as a rule, fatal to the conquerors. It was 
 in September that he entered the Papal States. His success, 
 moderate as he made it, was sufficient to compel the Pope to terms 
 and a succession of truces postponed the outbreak of the realities of 
 war until the January of the following year, 1557.
 
 EUROPE AT THE EESIGNATION OF CHARLES V. 153 
 
 By this time Henry had made up his mind to fulfil his engage- 
 ments, and the Duke of Guise appeared in Italy as the ally of Paul 
 with 20,000 men. He advanced to Eome, Philip still persevering in 
 the policy of conciliation towards the Pope. In April the Duke of 
 Guise entered the kingdom of Naples. In Passion week he pillaged 
 Compli and advanced to Civitella. But it was one thing to adopt a 
 conciliatory line of policy and another to endure invasion. When 
 the Neapolitan frontier was crossed, the war became one between 
 Henry and Phihp. The Duke of Alva, strengthened by the almost 
 unanimous assistance of the inhabitants, presented an insurmountable 
 obstacle to the further progress of the Duke of Guise. The Colonnas, 
 in another quarter, beat the Orsini and entirely destroyed the Pope's 
 auxiliary force of Swiss and German mercenaries. The distress of 
 the Duke of Guise began to be pressing : his good fortune seemed for 
 once to have forsaken him, when the necessity of peace and an 
 excuse for returning home were afforded by the news of the battle of 
 St. Quentin. 
 
 The battle of St. Quentin was the first great result of the 
 marriage of Philip and Mary. He had at last persuaded her and the 
 English people to declare war against France, a measure never very 
 unpopular here, although now perhaps more so than usual ; and at 
 this time scarcely needing the excuse which was found in an invasion 
 of Yorkshire by some English exiles, who had taken refuge in France. 
 , England declared war against France on June 7, 1557. This 
 alliance determined Philip to open his attack on France on the side 
 of the Netherlands. Henry had exhausted himself by sending the 
 Duke of Guise and his army to Naples ; here then his frontier would 
 be hardest to defend, and the English succour most readily and 
 economically available. 
 
 Mary did not find it an easy task to raise an army ; the persecu- 
 tions had not propitiated the people towards Philip, although he 
 publicly and ostentatiously urged his wife to tolerance ; nor was the 
 parliament likely to supply funds. The Queen appropriated to the 
 expedition the sum of 140,000/. which had been granted to pay the 
 debts of the crown, and sent the Earl of Pembroke with 7,000 men 
 into the Netherlands. 
 
 Philip's army already amounted to 50,000 men ; his general was 
 Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Siivoy. Philip himself took up his 
 quaHers at Cambray. The Duke, without waiting for his English 
 contingent, ha^"ing first given an alarm on the side of Champagne, 
 turned aside into Picardy and besieged St. Quentin. St. Quentin was 
 a strong post, but its fortifications were out of repair and its 
 garrison had been detached for the expected attack on Champagne. 
 It must have been taken directly had not the famous Gaspard
 
 154 LECTURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 Coligni, Admiral of Franco, thrown himself with a small force into 
 the town, and summoned the Constable Duke of Montmorency to its 
 relief. The attempt to reach St. Quentin involved the Constable in a 
 general engagement with the army of Philip. The Duke of Savoy 
 and the Count Egmont won a splendid victory on August 10. 
 
 The army of Montmorency included a great part of the nobility 
 of France, and the result of the struggle w^as, as Mr. Froude observes, 
 not unlike that of Agincourt, where the array was similarly consti- 
 tuted. Montmorency and a vast number of princes and nobles 
 were taken prisoners ; the defence of the place was rendered hope- 
 less, and seventeen days after the battle it was taken by storm, 
 Coligni himself being among the captives. The English force was 
 present at the sack, although it had not arrived in time to take part 
 in the battle of St. Quentin. It was in honour of this great victory, 
 won on St. Laurence's day, August 10, that Philip built his great 
 church, monastery, and palace of the Escurial, in the shape of a grid- 
 iron. 
 
 The seventeen days spent in the siege of St. Quentin lost France 
 to Philip. The defence by Coligni saved it. Had the Duke of Savoy 
 marched immediately on Paris after the battle, he must have taken 
 it : the time was lost ; and although the ultimate event was perhaps as 
 fortunate, the splendour of the achievement was so far forth wasted. 
 The news of the battle caused a cessation of hostilities in Italy and 
 brought the Duke of Guise back to France. In Italy, as we have 
 seen, the Duke had no real success. He was himself in such distress 
 that he had to entreat the Papal succours ; the news of St. Quentin 
 was a ready excuse for bis return to France. He left Pope Paul IV. 
 in the lurch. 
 
 Paul was still breathing forth threatening and slaughter. The 
 news of the part taken by Mary in the war with France set loose 
 his old antipathy to Pole ; and in depri^dng him of the legation, not- 
 withstanding his brilliant services to the Papacy, he satisfied himself 
 for the injury done to his cause by the altered policy of the Queen. 
 Even when he knew that he was to be deserted by Guise," he 
 maintained the same attitude of inflexible hostility until he saw the 
 Duke of Alva at the gates of Eome the second time. Then 
 suddenly he yielded and made peace. Alva visited him as a sup- 
 pliant rather than as a conqueror, and received the boon which he 
 could have extorted, and indeed was extorting, as a favour. 
 
 On September 17th, Paul made his peace with Philip, and on the 
 most advantageous terms. Alva restored all the acquisitions he had 
 made in the States of the Church. Paul had to turn his energies in 
 a new direction ; h6 had been utterly beaten by his enemy, who yet 
 left him no pretext for renewing the strife. Guise left Rome the
 
 EUEOPE AT THE RESIGNATION OF CHAELES V. 155 
 
 day that Alva entered it. Philip, by giving up the city of Piacenza 
 to the Duke of Parma and Siena to the Duke of Florence, gained two 
 important friends in the north and centre of Italy, and, having 
 disabled the Pope, left the peninsula at peace. 
 
 Thus ends the chief share of Italy in the complications of 
 European politics for some centuries. Naples continued in the 
 closest connexion Spanish until the extinction of the Spanish 
 Hapsburgs. The Popes continued powerless against Spanish influ- 
 ences ; Italy ceased to be the battlefield of France, Germany, and 
 Spain. 
 
 The power of Prance in Italy came to an end at the peace of 
 Cambrai in 1529 ; this pacification by Philip prevented its ever being 
 revived. 
 
 Such was the result of the battle of St. Quentin in the remoter 
 field of action. At home its effe^cts could not be expected to end 
 here. Yet they might, so far as Philip was concerned ; instead of 
 pressing on Henry at the moment of success, he waited until he saw 
 the next move. He busied himself during the autumn -with making 
 himself master of the fortresses of Ham and Catelet, and let the 
 next stroke come from the Duke of Guise. 
 
 The Duke, ready to avenge the honour of his country against her 
 ancient foe, surprised and seized Calais on January 8, 1558 ; and 
 the capture of Guines and Hammes speedily followed. In May he 
 took Thionville, the most important post on the side of Luxem- 
 bourg that remained after the capture of Metz : he then ordered 
 Marshal de Termes to invade Flanders, intending to join him before 
 he could be met by the Duke of Savoy or Count Egmont. De Termes 
 took Dunkirk, but here the successes of the French ended ; the 
 Marshal was met by Egmont, and completely routed at Gravelines 
 on July 13. This altered the Duke's scheme of aggression ; he had 
 to bring up all possible resources to save Picardy, and so far he 
 succeeded ; but the battle of Gravelines was the last important action 
 of the war. Two great armies continued opposed to one another on 
 the frontier, about twelve miles apart, and there were occasional 
 skirmishes, but nothing to be called a battle. 
 
 With the autumn negotiations succeeded ; and within a month 
 of the death of the Emperor Charles, which occurred on Sep- 
 tember 21, 1558, proposals of peace were entertained in earnest. 
 These were transacted at Cercamps, beginning on October 15, and 
 terminated by the peace or treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, on April 3, 
 1559. One great alteration of circumstances that contributed to 
 this Peace was doubtless the death of the Emperor ; another, scarcely 
 less efficacious, was the death of Queen Mary, which occurred on 
 November 16. Her successor, Elizabeth, must, as Philip well knew,
 
 156 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1648 
 
 be treated with quite a different regimen from Mary, if the union in 
 politics between England and Spain was to continue. . 
 
 With these two great personages, very much of the prescriptive 
 system of politics in Europe died out. The Eeformation was 
 triumphant in England, and all but triumphant in Germany. The 
 two Catholic countries, the most Christian King and the most 
 Catholic King, could scarcely afford to destroy one another's influence 
 in the face of an enemy, the religious movement against Home, 
 which was liecoming so very formidable. Henceforth we have to 
 regard complications of a new character, and influences of a nature 
 alien to earlier history, alternately bringing near and driving apart 
 the interests of the great Powers. These we shall have to study in 
 our later lectures. For the present it is enough to say that the 
 peace of Cateau-Cambresis was brought about by the management 
 of Antony Perrenot, aftervrards better known as the great Cardinal 
 Granvelle, assisted by the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Alva on 
 the part of Philip, and by the Constable Montmorency on behalf of 
 France. England and France made peace at the same time. By 
 the peace with Spain, France gave up her hold on Savoy and 
 Montferrat, and quitted Italy altogether. By the peace with 
 England she recovered Calais for eight years certain, and in 
 perpetuity in case the terms of the treaty should in any point be 
 infringed by Elizabeth. 
 
 With this treaty we may consider that the period of Charles V. 
 ends. In the next lecture, I shall take a sort of %'iew of the 
 period after Charles. Then we must attempt a new field, and 
 devote ourselves to the politics of an entirely new school and set of 
 actors. 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OP THE PERIOD 15o8-1618 
 
 The period that now lies before us is one of great interest, 
 although not of that concentrated interest that belongs to the reign 
 of Charles Y. If we were to look for a single string on which the 
 largest number of significant events should be arranged, we should 
 probably describe it as the period of reaction against the reformation ; 
 the period of the great preparation by the Catholic sovereigns for 
 the struggle which culminated in the Thirty Years' War : the period 
 of the Counter-Reformation as Ranke describes a part of it. But to 
 regard it so would not be quite fair either to the aspect of the 
 religions during a great part of it, or to the many other scarcely less
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 1558-1618 157 
 
 important issues that were worked out during the sixty years. The 
 wars of religion in France and the vindication of liberty in the 
 Netherlands are really rather the working out than the preparation 
 for the struggle with Eonian influences : and the designs and 
 disappointments of Philip II., of Henry IV., and Elizabeth had 
 many other sorts of interests and influences gathered up in them, 
 over and above those of religion. 
 
 And as with the current of events, so with the characters of the 
 actors. Three stand out in bold relief, three of whom opinions are 
 very much diversified and about whom many books have been 
 written : Philip II. of Spain, Elizabeth of England, and Henry IV. 
 of France ; and yet it would be unfair to regard them as the only, 
 though they may be the most prominent, workers. A set of actors 
 of lower power has in all except power quite as great interest. 
 Maximilian II. of Germany is, to a careful student of men, a far 
 more interesting person than Henry IV. Mary Stuart is at least 
 as curious and well-worn a subject as Elizabeth Tudor. No doubt 
 in this aspect the interest clusters round the policy of Philip II. He 
 pulls the strings of political history in France and England as Avell 
 as in Spain and the Netherlands during the forty years of his reign, 
 and after him to a certain extent we regard Henry IV. as the great 
 politician ; but attention must not be given to these two to the 
 neglect of others. This makes it somewhat difficult to allot our 
 several lectures beforehand to several particular periods or national 
 histories. Yet the period does contain several well-defined sub- 
 periods : the wars of rehgion in France, 1559 to 1589 ; the struggle 
 of the Netherlands for independence, covering nearly the same 
 period (1559-1609). So long continued the unsettled state of 
 English politics occasioned by the existence of Mary Queen of 
 Scots. 
 
 The year 1588 may be regarded as marking the collapse of the 
 whole of Philip's designs in Northern Europe, and forms in many 
 respects a useful and convenient landmark. But we shall not be 
 able, I fear, to bind ourselves to such landmarks. It will perhaps 
 be the best plan to begin with a survey of each of the principal 
 countries, and, having taken in outline all that is peculiar in the history 
 of each, to proceed to consider separately the events in which they 
 have a common interest, and so complete our view by tracing the 
 general current of political events. In this way we shall be able to 
 give a certain number of lectures to Germany, and a certain number 
 to France ; to group around Philip II. most of the events of 
 Spanish, Italian, and Netherland history, and whilst avoiding any 
 minute inquiries into English history — and indeed we shall not be 
 able to go into any minute questions of history at all — see the part
 
 158 LECTURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1648 
 
 actually played in Europe by Elizabeth, and attempted by James I. 
 On the death of Philip we can take Henry IV. for our chief, 
 because he was the most prominent actor. The first 'thirty years of 
 the sixty have a wider and more eventful interest, however, and to 
 them we shall have to give the larger share of attention. With 
 Phihp IL, Spain and the Netherlands lose much of their importance, 
 and France and Germany accumulate new sources of interest. 
 
 We may begin with a glance at the personnel of the new period, 
 merely naming, however, the great names, leaving their characters 
 and history to be later developed : simply the names and dates. The 
 years 1558 and 1559, as I have several times observed, cleared the board. 
 Charles V. died in September, Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole in 
 November 1558 ; Pope Paul IV. in August, and Henry II. of France in 
 July 1559. They were succeeded by a set of princes whose recognised 
 policy was, as their predecessors' policy should have been, peace and 
 the development, the restoration, of the exhausted resources of their 
 dominions. The period, then, does not contain great wars, but mainly 
 civil wars ; mainly religious wars ; the strings often piilled from with- 
 out, but not much overt hostility between princes and nations. 
 
 In personal character there are great changes. Philip, a thorough 
 Spaniard and a religious bigot, takes the place of Charles, a cosmo- 
 politan statesman, and if a persecutor, a persecutor only where 
 persecution is politically safe. The strong and concentrated authority 
 of Francis I. and Henry II. in France comes to an end ; the reins of 
 government fall to women and children or to the divided and hostile 
 factions of Guise and Bourbon. In England the Eeformation is 
 supreme, the Catholic reaction is nowhere. In Germany Ferdinand 
 and Maximilian initiate a policy as much in advance of that of 
 Charles V. as that of Philip was behind it. 
 
 Well, the reign of PhiHp lasts until 1598 ; that of Elizabeth to 
 1603 ; the sons of Henry and Catherine de Medicis rule or misrule 
 France to 1589 ; Francis II., 1559 to December 1560 ; Charles IX. 
 from 1560 to 1574; Henry III., 1574 to 1589. Then follows 
 Henry IV., 1589 to 1610 ; then Louis XIII., a minor, during the 
 remainder of the period to which we arc now looking, under the 
 influence for the greater part of" the period of his mother, Marie de 
 Medicis. Philip III. succeeds Philip II. in 1598 and reigns until 
 1621. James I., succeeding Elizabeth, reigns until 1625. In the 
 Empire we have four reigns : Ferdinand I., 1559 tol564 ; Maximilian 
 II., 1564 to 1576 ; Kudolf II., 1576 to 1612 ; Matthias, 1612 to 1619 ; 
 then Ferdinand II. 
 
 A large number of Popes, ten in fact, some of them of very small 
 importance, fills the space between Paul IV. and Gregory XV. Of 
 these,, those to be remembered are Piut:; IV. (John de' Medici),
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 1558-1618 159 
 
 1569 to 1566 ; Pius V. (Michael Ghislieri), 1566 to 1572 ; Gregory XIII. 
 (Hugo Buoncompagno), 1572 to 1585 ; Sixtus V, (Felix Peretti), 
 1585 to 1590 ; Urban VII., 1590 ; Gregory XIV., 1590 ; Innocent IX., 
 
 1591 ; Clement VIII. (HippoUto Aldobrandini), 1592 to 1605 ; Leo 
 XI. (Alexander de' Medici), 1605 ; Paul V. (Camillo Borghese), 
 1605 to 1621. 
 
 Two Kings of Denmark filled the throne during the whole period : 
 Frederick II., 1559 to 1588 ; Christian IV., 1588 to 1648. Sweden was 
 governed during it by Eric XIV., 1560 to 1568 ; John III., 1568 to 
 
 1592 ; Sigismund, 1592 to 1604 ; Charles IX., 1604 to 1611 ; Gustavus 
 Adolphus, 1611 to 1633. 
 
 Many of these names have their own significance ; but as regards 
 personal and political interest they come far below the Guises and 
 Condes in France, and the several electors and other princes of 
 Germany, whose dates may be given now. The Dukes of Guise 
 who successively headed the Catholic party in France are Francis, 
 the defender of Metz and conqueror of Calais, who was shot in 1563 
 at the siege of Orleans. His son Henry, the captain of the League, 
 was assassinated by Henry III. in 1588. The Guises were a branch 
 of the house of Lorraine : Claude, the father of Duke Francis, being 
 the son of Duke Bene II., the grandson by his mother Yolanthe 
 of King Rene, and nephew of our Queen Margaret of Anjou. This 
 Claude, besides Duke Francis, had a son of his own name who 
 became Duke of Aumale and died in 1573 : — Francis's second son 
 was Charles, Duke of Mayenne, another hero of the League, who 
 survived until 1611. The Duchy of Lorraine Vv^as feudally subject to 
 the Empire ; but the estates of the Guise branches lay within the 
 borders of France, and, whilst the main stock remained princes of 
 the Empire, the Guises were thoroughly French. Mary of Guise, 
 mother of Mary Queen of Scots, was a sister of Duke Francis, and 
 this alliance gave him an influence over Francis II. which he was 
 careful not to lose : but the position of the Guises was owing at 
 least as much to their ability as generals and politicians as to their 
 wealth and connexions. 
 
 The Bourbon princes, who with Henry, King of Navarre, headed 
 the Protestant party, were the descendants of Charles, Duke of 
 Vendome, brother of Antony, King of Navarre, the father of Henry. 
 The first Prince of Conde was Louis, son of Duke Charles ; he 
 became a Protestant from hatred of the Guises in 1560, and was 
 killed at Jarnac in 1569. His eldest son, Henry, bore the title from 
 1569 to 1588, when he was poisoned. His son Henry IL, was a 
 posthumous child ; his history belongs to the reign of Louis XIII. 
 Francis, Prince of Conti, was a younger son of Louis of Conde ; he 
 died in 1614. The Cardinal of Bourbon, Charles, the prime minister
 
 160 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-164S 
 
 of Henry III. and the head of the royalist Catholics, was also a 
 
 son of Louis, and brother of Henry and Francis of Conti ; he died 
 
 in 1594. 
 
 $ This little pedigree will, I hope, be of some use in enabling you 
 
 j' to distinguish between persons who, bearing the same titles and sup- 
 
 * porting for the most part the same principles, are still of very distinct 
 
 character, and should not by any means be confounded. Especially a 
 
 close succession of Cardinals of Bourbon and Cardinals of Lorraine, 
 
 ■ besides other Cardinals of the same houses but with different titles, 
 
 J is extremely likely to lead to confusion. These, however, as they 
 
 have no particular dates to distinguish them, we must learn to 
 
 identify, if it be necessary, as we proceed. 
 
 Turning next to Spain. Philip II. was, as we know, the only 
 legitimate son of Charles V. He was married four times : first, to 
 his cousin, Maria of Portugal, the mother of the unlucky Infante 
 Carlos ; secondly, to his cousin, Queen Mary of England ; thirdly, to 
 Elizabeth of France, daughter of Henry II., whom he married in 
 accordance with the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559, and who 
 left him two daughters ; fourthly to his own niece, Anna Maria, the 
 daughter of Maximilian II., in 1570, by whom he had Philip III., his 
 successor. — -.~-..-~~~~~-.,-..,......^--. 
 
 -Philip, like his father, administered both the Netherlands and 
 Naples by viceroys, retaining Spain only under his immediate direc- 
 tion. In Naples his viceroys were (1) Don Parafan de Eivera, Duke 
 of Alcala, who ruled from 1559 to 1571 ; (2) Antony Perrenot, 
 Cardinal Granvelle, 1571 to 1575 ; (3) Ifiigo Lopez de Mendoza, 
 Marquis of Mondejar, 1575 to 1579 ; (4) Juan de Zuiiiga, 1579 to 
 1582 ; (5) Pedro Giron, Duke of Ossuna, 1582 to 1586 ; (6) Don 
 Juan de Zuiiiga, Count of Miranda, 1586 to 1595 ; (7) Don Henriquez 
 Guzman, Count of Olivarez, 1595 to 1599. None of these, except 
 Cardinal Granvelle, had more than a local reputation. King Philip, 
 being an excellent man of business, directed their proceedings, from 
 Spain, with the assistance of his Council of Italy, resident in Spain, 
 and by the advice of his confidential favourites. 
 
 The Netherlands were a more difficult post and required the 
 f exercise of an authority more nearly approaching the character of 
 I irresponsibility. Hence they had been governed under Charles V. 
 \ first by his aunt and afterwards by his sister. Queen Mary of 
 ' Hungary resigned her office when the Emperor resigned his ; and 
 Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, the general of the Spanish 
 forces at St. Quentin, was for a short time governor or Stadtholder ; 
 but Philip was resident more or less continuously in the Netherlands 
 during Emmanuel's tenure of office ; and, as by the treaty of Cateau- 
 Cambresis he recovered the duchy of Savoy, Philip, on hu final
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 1558-1618 161 
 
 departure to Spain, placed his half-sister, Margaret of Parma, wife of I 
 Octavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, the young lady of whom Charles 
 had made so much political capital among the small princes of Italy, 
 in the vacant seat. Margaret's mother was a Flemish lady, and her I 
 education in and acquaintance with the Netherlands made her a very 
 fit person for the office, but her life was a burden to her during the 
 eight years she exercised it. Cardinal Granvelle was left as her chief 
 minister, and, hampered by his interference, she failed, as well she 
 might, to reconcile the conflicting interests. She resigned in 1567. 
 Her successor was Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, the great Duke of 
 Alva, Philip's most able minister and the deadly enemy of William of 
 Orange. He ruled from 1567 to 1573. After him the viceroys were 
 Don Luiz de Eequesensy Cuniga, 1573 to 1576 ; Don John of Austria, 
 1576 to 1578 ; Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, 1578 to 1592 ; Peter 
 Ernest, Count of Mansfeld, 1592 to 1594 ; the Archduke Ernest, 1594.; 
 Peter Henriquez d'Azevedo, 1595 ; the Archduke Albert of Austria, 
 1596, who by the treaty of Vervins in 1598 married the Infanta Clara 
 Isabella, daughter of Philip, and by the same treaty became sovereign 
 of the Netherlands. Albert died in 1621, his wife in 1633. 
 
 The complications of government after the division of the seven 
 United Pro\dnces will come upon us later ; the dates, however, may 
 now be put down. William of Orange was elected Stadtholder after 
 the union of Utrecht in 1578 ; he was killed in 1584. His second son 
 Maurice siicceeded him and ruled until 1625. Maurice was grandson 
 of the Elector Maurice of Saxony, whose name he bore ; his mother 
 Anne, however, was no credit to him, resembling her grandfather, 
 the Landgrave Philip the Magnanimous, in her temper and morals. 
 
 The origin of the house of Nassau-Orange is this : — Paternally it 
 is descended from the Counts of Nassau whose territories lie, or did 
 until 1866, along the right bank of the Rhine from Mentz to 
 Coblenz ; but the estates and titles of the Netherlands branch came 
 on the female side. The principality of Orange lies in the Rhone 
 country, far away from either Nassau or the Netherlands, and had 
 been held by semi-independent nobles since the twelfth century. In 
 1393 it had come through an heiress to John of Chalon, from whom 
 descended Philibert of Chalon, the general who succeeded the Con- 
 stable of Bourbon after the sack of Rome in 1527. PhiUbert's sister 
 Claude married Henry of Nassau ; her son, Rene of Nassau, suc- 
 ceeded Philibert in 1530 ; and on his death in 1544 he bequeathed 
 all to his cousin, William the Great and the Silent. He was without 
 any hereditary right, and the principality was claimed by the Duke 
 of Longueville as representing the ancient princes ; but by the treaty 
 of Cateau-Cambr^sis William obtained recognition. The eldest son 
 of William, Philip William, had been brought up in Spain and as
 
 ( 
 
 162 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 a Catholic ; he accordingly, notwithstanding his father's attitude 
 towards the Spaniards, was allowed to retain the principality until his 
 death in 1618. Maurice succeeded his brother, and 'the principality 
 continued in the family until 1673, when Louis XIV. confiscated it : 
 William III., however, made his claim to it, and it was not until 
 several years after his death that it was finally and formally made 
 part of France. Louis XIV., in this proceeding, relied legally on an 
 act of homage done by the Prince of Orange to the crown of France 
 in 1475 ; otherwise there was no question but that the homage 
 belonged to the kingdom of Aries : and Louis XII. had in fact 
 recognised the prince as an independent sovereign. So much for 
 Orange. 
 
 William's importance in the Netherlands depended territorially 
 on the fact of his being lord of Breda, in Brabant — inherited from a 
 marriage early in the thirteenth century which had first brought the 
 house of Nassau into the Low Countries. I may as well mention 
 here that the title Stadtholder, by which the chief magistrates of the 
 house of Orange in Holland were generally known, merely means 
 lieutenant, in German Statthalter, and has nothing to do with the 
 German Stadt, a city. As the person whose place he was supposed 
 to fill was the ancient * Count,' the name answers exactly to the title 
 Viscount, or Vicecount, Vicecomes, the Latin word for the English 
 ' sheriff.' 
 
 We will now go to Germany, in which country the personnel of 
 the period before us demands strict and exact attention, alike from 
 the eminence of the persons, their number, and the intricacy of their 
 mutual connexions. The Emperor Ferdinand I. was the only 
 brother of Charles V. ; his marriage with the heiress of Bohemia and 
 Hungary gave him a portion of his title to both those kingdoms, 
 a portion that had, however, to be supplemented by the acceptance 
 of one people and by the maintenance with the strong hand of his 
 hold upon the other. Ferdinand by this marriage was father of 
 fifteen children, from whom all the later Hapsburg princes spring. 
 Maximilian, his eldest son, was Emperor after him. Charles, 
 another of his sons, was father of the Emperor Ferdinand II., who 
 succeeded in 1619 on the extinction of the direct line of Maximilian. 
 His daughters were all put out at interest by Charles among the 
 North German and Italian princes ; one of them married Duke 
 Albert of Bavaria, and another William of Cleves, the dangerous 
 adversary of Charles, who was brought into order by this alliance 
 in 1546. 
 
 Maximilian, who succeeded his father in 1564, married his 
 cousin Mary, daughter of the Emperor Charles, who brought him 
 fifteen children also. Of these Rudolf II. and Matthias were Emperors
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 1558-1618 163 
 
 after him ; Albert and Ernest were successively governors of the 
 Netherlands. Anne was married to her uncle Philip ; and set the 
 first example of the incestuous marriages which have been, down to 
 the present day, one of the moral banes of the royal families of 
 Spain and Naples. Elizabeth, another daughter, was married to 
 Charles IX. of France. Neither Kudolf II. nor Matthias left any 
 children ; the close intermarriages, prolific enough in the first 
 generation, seen to have been barren in the second, Philip III. 
 is the only grandson of Maximilian II., and that in the female line. 
 The imperial crown falls, on the death of Matthias, to Ferdinand of 
 Carinthia ; and the struggle for that of Bohemia brings about the 
 Thirty Years' War. 
 
 Descending in the scale of nobility to the electoral houses : 
 Maurice, Elector of Saxony, fell at Sievershausen in 1553, His only 
 child was a daughter, who married William of Orange ; the electorate 
 fell to his brother, Augustus the Pious, who reigned from 1553 to 
 1586. His son Christian I., who forsook Lutheranism for Calvinism, 
 died in 1591. Christian II., his eldest son, returned to Lutheranism ; 
 he died in 1611 ; and his brother John George I. ruled from that 
 year to 1656. Of these the Elector Augustus, brother of Maurice, 
 makes far the greatest figure in the history of our period. 
 
 In the Palatinate we have Frederick III., elector from 1559 to 
 1576, the first Calvinist prince in Germany. His son Lewis VI., 
 1576 to 1583, became a Lutheran ; his son Frederick IV., 1583 to 
 1610, returned to Calvinism, his son Frederick V., the husband 
 of Elizabeth Stewart, the Winter King of Bohemia and ancestor of 
 our own royal family, reigned from 1610 to 1632. The electorate of 
 Brandenburg was held by Joachim II., 1535 to 1571 ; John George, 
 1571 to 1598 ; Joachim Frederick, 1598 to 1608 ; John Sigismund, 
 1608 to 1619 ; son succeeding father, John Sigismund in 1614 
 deserted Lutheranism to become a Calvinist ; and the royal house 
 of Prussia continued Calvinist until the project of union was carried 
 out by Frederick William III. in 1817. The importance of these 
 religious changes we shall see exemplified as we proceed. 
 
 The fourth lay electorate was the kingdom of Bohemia. Of the 
 other princes who in dignity came nearest to the electors, the most 
 memorable are those of Bavaria, Brunswick, and Wiirtemberg. In 
 Bavaria three dukes rule during the whole period : Albert III. the 
 Magnanimous, son-in-law of the Emperor Ferdinand, 1550 to 
 1579. William II., his eldest son, succeeded him, 1579 to 1596. 
 Ernest, the third son, was Archbishop of Cologne and Bishop of 
 Miinster and Hildesheim, 1583 to 1612. MaximiHan in 1596 
 succeeded his father William as Duke of Bavaria and reigned until 
 1651 ; he obtained the electorate, which the Winter King Frederick 
 
 u 2
 
 164 
 
 LECTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 had forfeited, in 1623. His younger brother Ferdinand was Arch- 
 bishop of Cologne from 1612 to 1650. 
 
 The house of Bavaria was consistently and faithfully Catholic ; 
 and the retention of the electorate of Cologne, with other enormous 
 episcopal commendams, by the younger sons of the dukes was no 
 doubt one of the great influences of the Counter-Reformation in 
 Northern Germany. I have just mentioned their tenure of that 
 great see from 1583 ; they kept it until 1761. The only elector 
 before 1583 whom we need notice is Gebhard Truchsess, who was 
 chosen in 1577, and married Agnes"of Mansfeld in 1581, becoming a 
 Protestant the same year, and, according to the recess of Augsburg> 
 forfeiting his principality by that act. He fell into obscurity after 
 his expulsion, and the year of his death is uncertain. The Electors 
 of Mentz are not men of much note in history and it will be enough 
 to name them as we have occasion ; and the same must be said 
 of the Archbishops of Treves and the Dukes of Wiirtemberg and 
 Bruns^^^ck. 
 
 I need hardly repeat that the knowledge of dates is in one sense 
 an absolute requisite to the knowledge of history. It is of course 
 impossible to retain in the memory more than the main landmarks 
 of time permanently ; the process of cause and consequence is far 
 more easy to be remembered, and when that current of events has 
 been well impressed on the mind, it is useless to attempt, as it is 
 impossible to succeed in the attempt, to retain all the minutiae of 
 the chronology in the memory. To know how and why Fer- 
 dinand I. succeeded Charles V. is more important than to know 
 that he succeeded him on a particular day of the month. But 
 although history once learned may be remembered withoiit a great 
 array of dates and pedigrees, it cannot be learned "udthout them ; nor 
 can the student succeed in getting general impressions correctly, 
 without the line-upon-line process of chronological training. I give 
 you these dates *"that you may know whether, when I speak of an 
 Elector of Saxony in 1610, I speak of father or son, of a young man 
 or an old, of a Lutheran or of a Calvinist, of an imperialist or an 
 opponent of Austria. You cannot learn the current of history 
 without identifying the actors, and you cannot identify the actors 
 without dates and pedigrees. I give you in this lecture the dates and 
 pedigrees for the course that we may not have to interrupt the thread 
 of events to discuss them, and it will be as well if you can so write 
 them out as to keep them before you during the later lectures. 
 
 I do not know that of the Italian princes any are of sufficient 
 note in the history to make it necessary to call especial attention to 
 their dates, except perhaps those of Savoy and Tuscany. In Savoy 
 Emmanuel Philibert reigned from 155'3 to 1580 ; his son Charles
 
 GENEEAL SURVEY OF THE PERIOD 1558-1618 165 
 
 Emmanuel, son-in-law of Philip II., reigned from 1580 to 1630. In 
 Tuscany, Cosmo, the first Grand Duke, known as Duke of Florence 
 from 1537 to 1569, was declared Grand Duke by Pius V. in 1569 ; 
 he lived until 1574. His son Francesco Maria, son-in-law of the » 
 Emperor Ferdinand, 1574-1587, was followed by his brother I 
 Ferdinand, 1587-1609 ; Cosmo II., 1609 to 1621, was son of ? 
 Ferdinand. The branch of the Medicean house from which ! 
 Catherine sprang was considerably remote from this of Cosmo, whose | 
 line" only came into the front rank on the extinction of the 
 more brilliant but less fortunate branches. One of the other Italian 
 principalities was Urbino, held by the house of De la Rovere from 
 the time of Julius II. to its extinction in 1631. Parma was 
 governed by Octavio Farnese, the husband of Margaret, vice-queen of 
 the Netherlands, 1547-1586 ; Alessandro, their son, himself viceroy ^ 
 of the Netherlands, 1586-1592 ; and Eanuzzo, his son, 1592-1622. 
 If we come across any Dukes of Ferrara, or Mantua, we can name 
 them as they occur. 
 
 Having devoted so much time to figures, we may as well proceed 
 now to the apportionment of the nine lectures that are before us to 
 their proper subjects ; and it may perhaps be the simplest plan to 
 give two to Germany, three to France, and four to Spain, that is, the 
 dominions of Philip II,, for, of the actual drama of the history of 
 Philip, little except the mre-pulling lies within the peninsula itself ; 
 far more in the Netherlands, and no small portion outside the limit 
 of his proper dominions. In the first of these I propose to discuss 
 the reigns of Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II., to examine the 
 religious condition of Germany for the twenty years that succeeded 
 the Augsburg Recess and the Peace of Religion, and to form some 
 estimate of the character and policy of those two sovereigns, who 
 seem to me to be amongst the most German of all the German 
 Emperors. We shall see in that lecture how the obligations of the 
 great religious compromise were observed on both sides and how the 
 Catholic reaction had the Avay made for it partly by the unprincipled 
 conduct of the Protestant princes, partly by the divisions among the 
 Protestant theologians : two influences which the systematic tolera- 
 tion of Maximilian II. suffered to develop far more than was 
 consistent with right and which were only partly counterbalanced by 
 corresponding failures from honest policy on the side of the Cathohcs. 
 We shall thus see our way to the approaching reconquest of great 
 part of the Empire by the Roman Church, hardened and sharpened 
 by the definitions of the Tridentine Council. 
 
 In the second lecture we shall sketch the history of the civil wars 
 of religion in France from the death of Henry II. to the accession of 
 Henry III. ; and trace the different principles which actuated the
 
 166 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Guises, the Bourbons, Catherine de Medicis, and the fourth party, 
 which may be regarded as represented by the Montmorencys and as 
 originating what afterwards became the party of the Pohtiques. We 
 shall see how Catherine, a woman without principle, and with only 
 that sort of governmental skill that depends on the power of creating 
 and using intrigue, passed through the phases of tolerating, of 
 patronising, and of persecuting the Protestants ; how the rivalry of 
 the Guises made her tolerant, and jealousy of the Bourbons intolerant ; 
 how, on the death of Guise, she took up his programme, and even 
 succeeded to his relations with Philip II., but how throughout the 
 period the action is determined by two independent currents of 
 influence : the balance of intrigue at home and the varying rela- 
 tions of Spain and England, Scotland and the Netherlands. The 
 campaigns of the struggle are four : the first in 1562 and 1563, 
 which ends with the convention of Amboise ; the second in 1567, 
 ending in'the peace of Longjumeau ; the third in 1569, ending in the 
 Edict of St. Germain ; and the fourth in 1572, ending at the election 
 of Henry of Anjou as King of Poland. 
 
 The next three lectures I shall give to Philip II. of Spain ; and 
 as the history of the Netherlands is almost the entire history of his 
 reign, we shall dwell most at length on the history of the Netherlands. 
 The first of these will embrace the story of the struggle from the 
 commencement of Philip's reign to the outbreak of the war of 
 liberation produced by the proceedings of the Duke of Alva. We shall 
 have occasion to remark the persistency of Philip's policy, and the 
 invariable singleness of his aim ; a policy and aim from which he is 
 not for a moment diverted, although he sometimes consents to tack, 
 and has no great objection to a change of servants. The extent of 
 Charles's influence in the Low Countries may be estimated by the 
 fact that it takes twelve years of misgovernment to provoke the 
 Netherlanders into open war and revolution. The fundamental 
 error of his policy is shown hy the fact that Philip's was but the 
 natural development of it, although modified doubtless by the 
 character and principles of those who had to carry it out. If Charles 
 had lived, the result might have been very different ; we cannot forget 
 that Orange, Egmont, and Hoorn, the great enemies of Philip, had 
 been the great friends and pupils of his father. But the truth is the 
 same : the loss of the Netherlands resulted from the policy which 
 Charles initiated ; which Philip entered into with enthusiasm and 
 determination ; which Granvelle enforced as an obedient servant and 
 adroit administrator, which Margaret strove as a woman and as a 
 Netherlander to temper, which Alva carried to its worst as a cruel 
 persecutor, a ruthless judge, and a valiant soldier. 
 
 In the next lecture, the seventh, we shall take the war in the
 
 GENERAL SUEVEY OF THE PERIOD 1558-1618 167 
 
 Netherlands down to the time of William the Silent in 1584 ; and, 
 in connection with it, have to remark how gradually it assumes the 
 dimensions of a European interest : how it affects the relations of 
 Spain, France, and England ; and how the balance of difficulties throws 
 the Prince of Orange now into the hands of one, now into the arms 
 of the other, of the two hereditary foes. I shall not anticipate if I 
 remark now, how, although this war had its motive cause in religious 
 questions and was by foreign nations viewed very much as a religious 
 war, it was, to those who fought through it, very much more decidedly 
 a constitutional war. The Spaniards doubtless fought it as a religious 
 one, but by adding to the religious pressure every sort of uncon- 
 stitutional pressure also ; by the institution of new tribunals, by the 
 imposition of new and impossible taxes, by breaking down old 
 customs and privileges, they had arrayed in defence against them- 
 selves every element of national life. This is apparent in the long 
 continuance of the influence of William of Orange even in those states 
 which did not put themselves directly under his authority : by the 
 extent of the insurrection ; by the fact that Catholics as well as Pro- 
 testants combined in it ; and that the restoration of Spanish dominion 
 in the portions which it did eventually recover was nothing less than 
 a reconquest. In William of Orange the Netherlands lost their tie of 
 unity, they lost the one Protestant who had any idea of the meaning 
 of toleration and the one adviser who might, with time to help him, 
 have ousted Philip and the Spaniards altogether. 
 
 Another lecture must serve to complete the reign of Philip, and 
 to take in such particulars of the Netherlands history after the death 
 of the Prince of Orange as are politically important ; the few other 
 interesting circumstances of Philip's history, a summary estimate of 
 his character and of the political life of Spain under his rule. This 
 will be the eighth lecture. 
 
 We shall then have to turn back to France and bring up the 
 details from the beginning of Henry III.'s reign to the end of that of 
 Henry IV., dividing the period into two lectures : the ninth from 
 1573 to 1598 when Philip and Henry made peace with one another, 
 and the tenth the remainder of the reign of Henry. In these two 
 lectures I shall have to apologise again for the number of dates and 
 divisions. In truth the French wars are capable of much more 
 definite treatment in this respect than the long Netherlands struggle, 
 in which year after year you have the same string of battles, 
 intrigues, and sieges, without any formal or real break. In the 
 second of the two lectures we shall be able to point out the tendency 
 of Henry's characteristic policy and to attempt some estimate of his 
 character, if not of his place in European history. Philip II., 
 Henry IV., and William of Orange are indeed a trio of characters
 
 168 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1G48 
 
 ■well worth an amount of study far greater than we can bestow on 
 them in this course. Two lectures will remain. In one I shall take 
 the history of Germany under Rudolf II. and Matthias, more 
 especially with a view to the religious complications that produced 
 the Thirty Years' War. In the other the continuation of the history 
 of Spain after the death of Philip II. down to the same period ; and 
 a slight sketch of the early years of Lewis XIII. The Thirty Years' 
 War is the natural terminus to a course beginning with the resig- 
 nation of Charles V. ; and without going into the actual circumstances 
 that produced the war, we shall be able, I trust, to view the causes 
 that were at work, and that had been working during the sixty years 
 that preceded it, to bring war out of those circumstances. Such 
 a course lies through some of the most promising fields of modern 
 study ; if I can but trace a line by following which you may watch 
 the developments of the history, I shall be glad and you ought to be 
 satisfied. 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE EEIGNS OF FEEDINAND I. AND MAXIMILIAN II. 1558-1576 
 
 Febdinand I. had gone through a long and arduous apprentice- 
 ship, before he arrived at the united form and substance of imperial 
 power. His hold on Bohemia and Hungary had brought him face 
 to face with an amount of religious and political discontent, which, 
 at that time, was without parallel in Europe, and had, at the same 
 time, thrown him on his own resources and on the support of the 
 princes of Germany. As his brother Charles was neither able nor 
 perhaps especially anxious to make sacrifices to strengthen him — a 
 fact which comes out strongly when we consider how much might 
 have been done for Hungary, and against the infidel who supported 
 rebellion and division there, by the treasures and forces that were 
 wasted in the Tunisian and Algerine expeditions — he was obliged to 
 make for himself friends of the German princes, in a way in which 
 Charles in his later years refused or neglected to do. 
 
 The design of Charles to obtain the imperial succession for 
 Philip worked in the same direction. Ferdinand's interest was 
 obviously to counteract such a design ; and that of the whole body 
 of the princes, Catholic as well as Protestant, was the same. They 
 had a common interest in thwarting this particular plan. Ferdinand 
 was sincerely attached to his brother personally ; so long as Charles 
 was Emperor, Ferdinand's power and influence in Germany were at 
 his brother's service : his power of management did much to defeat
 
 THE REIGNS OF FERDINAND I. AND MAXIMILIAN II. 169 
 
 tiae Smalkaldic League, and it was attachment to him that drew off 
 the Protestant leaders, whose desertion left John Frederick and 
 Philip of Hesse to fight the battle alone. It is true that the events 
 of 1552 placed him on the opposite side to his friend Maurice ; but 
 his whole conduct seems to point to the fact that he tacitly connived 
 at what he might with a little exertion have prevented : and regarded 
 the threatened seizure of Charles at Innsbruck as a feint intended to 
 teach the Emperor a lesson of moderation. I dare not say that he 
 was a confederate with Maurice on the occasion, but the result 
 showed that his own position in Germany was improved rather than 
 depreciated by the ignominious humiliation of his brother : a humilia- 
 tion, you may remember, which did him, and was perhaps intended 
 to do him, no great harm. 
 
 The conference at Passau and the deliberations at Augsburg 
 show us Ferdinand as a mediator : a mediator in a contest in which 
 his German instincts had to be balanced with his Catholic principles, 
 and in Vv'hich it may be fairly said of him that his conclusion Avas 
 not an unsound one. It was a compromise, but it was a com- 
 promise which maintained the peace of Germany for thirty years. 
 As he grew more and more German as years advanced, showing 
 more and more tact in his dealings with the Germans, and identifying 
 the interests of Germany ^vith his own, in a way in which they had 
 not been identified by any sovereign for many centuries — as, we may 
 add, he grew more and more accustomed to act on the advice of his 
 son Maximilian and less and less on that of Charles, his nominal 
 superior — it is no wonder that he gained the affections of the people 
 and the confidence of the princes. Nor can it be said that this 
 confidence and affection were altogether undeserved. Towards the 
 Germans at least he was blameless. The cruel restrictive measures 
 used against the Protestants in Bohemia and Hungary did not affect 
 the body of the Empire : nor did his unconstitutional conduct in 
 those countries tend to make him unpopular outside of them. To 
 himself, and to the statesmen of his day, heresy and rebellion would 
 appear excuse enough for severity, and even for political bad faith 
 within his own dominions. Outside of his own dominions he kept 
 faith, and recognised the necessity of a toleration which, no doubt, 
 he detested. 
 
 The one great sin of his career is his permission of the assassina- 
 tion of Martinuzrzi: an act which it is vain to excuse, but the 
 relative enormity of which ought to be settled by a comparison with 
 the similar assassinations in France under the rule of the house of 
 Angouleme. Take him altogether, he was a very good specimen of 
 a king, and the Germans had come to regard him as for them a very 
 good one. All of them, Avhether or not they liked his religion and
 
 170 LECTUEESjON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 * his way of maintiiining it, were ready to accept him as Charles's 
 successor ; not merely as an escape from Philip, but on his own 
 merits. They had had him for twenty-six years as King of the 
 Romans; they were glad enough to have him as Emperor. His 
 maintenance of his hold on his right was very determined : not even 
 in Italy would he yield to Philip an inch of ground that was not his 
 own : Charles's last project, of placing Philip as Imperial Vicar at 
 the head of Italy, was rejected with calm decision, and Ferdinand 
 entered on all that remained of the imperial dignity in its integrity. 
 We have traced the history of the transaction up to the date of 
 Charles's resignation, September 7, 1556. But two years nearly 
 intervened before Ferdinand became full Emperor elect. We might 
 have expected that the elected King of the Romans, as in both 
 earlier and later times, would have succeeded at once without more 
 than an honorary ceremonial ; but the resignation of an emperor was 
 a proceeding on which the notaries had not counted, and a new 
 process had to be arranged and carried out : perhaps the electors 
 were willing to make it an occasion of securing the peace of the 
 Church ; at all events a new capitulation, or settlement of rights, 
 was exacted from Ferdinand in which the peace of religion was 
 included. The Pope, indeed, refused to recognise him, to receive his 
 ambassador, or to crown him ; but the Germans determined that all 
 this might be easily dispensed with. Although he did not reconcile 
 himself with Paul IV., he allowed a verbal victory to Pius IV., his 
 successor, professing the ancient obedience of the Emperor to the 
 Pope : but even this was retrenched by Maximilian, who substituted 
 obsequium for obcdicntia. On the whole the conduct of Paul IV. 
 may be regarded as loosening the hold of the Papacy on the 
 Emperors, who never afterwards sought coronation at Rome. In the 
 Electoral College itself the delay was a matter of form rather than 
 of reluctance : the title of Ferdinand was recognised on the 15th, and 
 himself acknowledged as Emperor on February 24, 1558. 
 
 The transactions of the intervening year and a half were not 
 important ; they consist mainly of negotiations for the maintenance 
 of the religious peace settled at Augsburg, and of the obtaining of 
 subsidies for the Hungarian war. The year 1557 was marked by 
 a religious conference held at Worms to determine the differences 
 amongst the Protestants. The great quarrels were touching Justifi- 
 cation and the Holy Eucharist. On the former the opinions of 
 Osiander, of Melanchthon and Flacius Illyricus were opposed, in 
 points too minute and abstruse for us now to enter on, but not the 
 less vehemently contested. On the latter the opinions of Luther 
 and Zwingli were in hopeless opposition. The conference came to 
 nothing, owing to the obstinate intolerance of the party of Flacius,
 
 THE REIGNS OF FERDINAND I. AND MAXIMILIAN II. 171 
 
 supported by the Dukes of Saxony of the Ernestine branch. The 
 recognition of any schools of Protestantism other than those which 
 acknowledged the Confession of Augsburg as entitled to the benefits 
 of the religious peace was thus hindered, and the force of the tide of 
 reformation broken. Philip saw in the result of this conference the 
 turn of the tide. ' Their strife,' he said, * is our peace.' The wiser 
 heads among the Protestants knew this : the princes of South 
 Germany, under the Count Palatine and Duke of Wiirtemberg, in a 
 meeting at Frankfort this same year, had recommended the divines 
 to agree among themselves before they engaged with the Papal 
 champions : and again in 1558, a similar assembly at the same 
 place contented itself with adhesion to the Confession of Augsburg, 
 without condemning the non-Lutheran views on the Eucharist. 
 But the evil was too deeply rooted. 
 
 It may be said that most of the interest of Ferdinand's reign is 
 ecclesiastical. Such was the business of the Diet of Augsburg in 
 1559, where the Emperor, having laid before the princes the failure 
 of the conference at Worms, pressed them to give their aid towards 
 the reassembling of the Council of Trent, and received the usual 
 demand in answer, for a fair, German, impartial, and non-pontifical 
 council. The rest of the business consisted of mutual recriminations 
 as to the maintenance of the peace ; and the only result was the 
 imperial confirmation of the Recess of Augsburg. Again, in 1561 
 (January 10) the Protestant princes held a great conference at 
 Naumburg, which lasted for three weeks ; in which the various 
 Protestant differences were discussed with much tolerance, and the 
 Papal invitation to Trent respectfully shirked, by a reference to the 
 Emperor as already in possession of the views of the princes. The 
 council was itself revived the following year and sat until December 
 1563 ; but it produced no more eft'ect in Germany than in England ; 
 the generation that might have been impressed by it had passed 
 away. 
 
 This short resume includes nearly all the acts of Ferdinand's 
 reign that historians have cared to dwell vipon. Two others are 
 worth notice. The first is the election of Maximilian as King of the 
 Romans, November 24, 1562, unanimously agreed on, and followed 
 by his coronation on the 30th. He had been two months before 
 accepted as King in Bohemia, and in September 1563 was crowned 
 King of Hungary. The other is the disturbance produced by the 
 conduct of William Grumbach, a Franconian knight, who, having in 
 1558 procured the assassination of the Bishop of Wiirzburg, in 
 1563 attempted to seize and massacre the chapter of the cathedral. 
 The quarrel seems to have originated in some of the plundering 
 raids of Albert Alcibiades. The canons paid Grumbach a ransom
 
 172 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 and undertook to stop legal proceedings against hira, Ferdinand 
 quashed the agreement, but the matter did not end unjiil 1568, when, 
 after provoking a more serious conflict, the culprit was punished. 
 
 With these exceptions, the secular history of the reign contains 
 little that is of importance. There is no war ; there is no great 
 intermixture of European politics in the German ones. The 
 country, wanting only peace and national principles of government 
 for its development, grows with extreme rapidity in wealth and 
 commercial enterprise. The government is economical, and the 
 people, except on religious matters, are united. The growth of 
 Protestant opinions is rapid in the South as Avell as in the North of 
 Germany, and not only Bavaria, but Austria also seems to be accept- 
 ing, so far as the cities and people are concerned, the doctrines of the 
 Reformation. The Catholic reaction has not yet set in, and the 
 existing Catholic powers are lukewarm in their adhesion to the 
 Italian Popes. The current, then, would have been too strong for 
 Ferdinand had he chosen to stem it ; as it was, he was during the 
 last year of his life negotiating with Pius IV. for permission to the 
 Austrian clergy to marry and to administer the communion in both 
 kinds. He died at Vienna on July 25, 1564, regretted by the whole 
 of Germany. 
 
 Maximilian II. succeeded without opposition or delay. No prince 
 ever as'cended the imperial throne of whom more was hoped than of 
 Maximilian. He was known to be accomplished, eloquent, and an 
 able politician ; his tolerance was so great that it was believed that 
 he was at heart a Lutheran ; his policy was thoroughly German ; he 
 had been indeed his father's principal adviser for years ; and his 
 sympathy with Germany was strengthened and equalled by his 
 antipathy to Spain. He was ostentatiously anti- Spanish : he 
 would have no Spaniard about his court or household whilst King of 
 the Romans : and his relations with the Protestant princes were of 
 the closest and most friendly sort. 
 
 It is difficult to read the character of Maximilian as written by 
 Ranke, or even as caricatured by the Prusso-German historians, 
 without seeing that he wanted but two things in order to be a 
 perfect sovereign. If his toleration had been more certainly than it 
 was based on conviction — if it were quite clear that he believed 
 toleration to be right and wise, because no man has the right to 
 constrain another's opinions, and because conversions proceeding 
 from such restraint are absolutely bad and injurious to the cause 
 that uses them — we might have beheld in him a man far in advance 
 of his age. I cannot say that it strikes me that such was his view ; 
 I rather think that he regarded Lutheranism as more likely to be 
 true than Romanism, but did not regard the religious question
 
 THE REIGNS OF FERDINAND I. AND MAXIMILIAN II. 173 
 
 religiously. He refused to persecute the Protestants because he did 
 not believe in the Roman system which they renounced, but he con- 
 tinued a Romanist because he did not believe in the Protestant dogmas 
 which were set before him as substitutes for the Roman creed. 
 
 If this be so, much as we may admire his sound sense and wise 
 impartiality, we cannot give him the first rank of praise, which 
 belongs to a man of strong faith and calm sense of justice. Be it 
 remembered, however, that he was the first European prince of any 
 religion who refused to persecute ; who declined the invitation of 
 Pope Pius to attack the Protestants, and declined the request of the 
 Protestant princes that he would expel the Jesuits. And he was an 
 Austrian prince. Truly the Prussian advocate has to go far to look 
 for arguments when he charges it as a fault on Maximilian that he 
 allowed the growth in Austria of a Protestantism which exposed his 
 subjects to cruel persecution under his successor. 
 
 The other fault, which 1 fear was fatal to Maximilian's greatness, 
 was the inability to carry into effect what he saw to be wise, right, 
 and necessary — a weakness which was less apparent before he came 
 to the throne and during the first years of his reign, but which 
 appears prominently after his reapproachment to Philip, and is 
 exemplified in other points, especially by his way of carrying on the 
 Turkish war, and by his failure to compel the observance of the 
 Ecclesiastical Reservation in the first half, and of the Declaration of 
 Toleration in the second half, of his reign. The reign divides in 
 half at 1570, when he gave his daughter Anna to Philip as his fourth 
 wife, and when the Catholic reaction or Counter-Reformation in 
 Germany began to set in. 
 
 The history of Maximilian's reign, like that of his father's, is 
 chiefly internal and religious. There is no great war or even 
 rebellion ; and a singular abstinence from interference in France or 
 Italy : the religious wars in France, in which Philip was so deeply 
 interested, did not stir the atmosphere of Maximilian. He has to 
 watch against the Turks and to put down Grumbach. Perhaps no 
 ruler could come up to the expectations entertained of Maximilian : 
 certainly it cannot be right to regard him as a failure because he 
 disappointed them. Compared with what he was himself, his 
 career was less brilliant than it might have been ; but compared 
 with the sovereigns of his time he is to a certain point truly great. 
 
 The three events of Maximilian's reign which are not directly 
 connected with religion are (1) the Turkish war, (2) the war of 
 Gotha, and (3) the election to the kingdom of Poland, about which 
 he was preparing to go to war during the last year of his life. With 
 the Turks, I need hardly say, the war was chronic : even if settled 
 for a time by an occasional truce, it was kept up, under false names
 
 174 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 on the Hungarian and Transylvanian frontier, and whenever it lulled 
 it was liable to be revived by the old Transylvanian quarrel, which 
 had been the bane of the earlier days of Ferdinand. John Sigismund 
 Zapolski, prince of Transylvania, son of that John Zapolski who 
 had been elected King of Hungary in opposition to Ferdinand, was 
 still alive and flourishing under the protection of Solyman. From 
 the year 1563, when Maximilian was elected King of Hungary, John 
 Sigismund set himself up as his rival, and was only saved from 
 summary humiliation by the intervention of the Sultan Solyman, 
 with whom the Emperor was negotiating for peace. From 1568 to 
 1570 an intermittent struggle between Maximilian and the Transyl- 
 vanian prince continued. In this the Turkish intervention was the 
 most powerful ingredient. Maximilian made himself ready for a 
 war, and in a Diet at Augsburg in March 1566 obtained a subsidy 
 for the purpose, greater than had ever been granted to any Emperor 
 before. Unfortunately, the religious disputes, and particularly the 
 protection of Grumbach by John Frederick of Gotha, indisposed the 
 princes to join him ; but the Italian princes joined in it as a crusade, 
 and French and English volunteered to assist. 
 
 Solyman had taken the initative and in person arrived in 
 Hungary. In the month of May he was besieging Szigeth, which 
 was defended by Count Nicolas Zriny, Maximilian's chief Hungarian 
 counsellor. Maximilian himself was in command of three several 
 armies and encamped at Raab. Whilst there, he was secretly in- 
 formed of the death of Solyman (August 30, 1566). Unfortunately, 
 he refused to credit the story, which was one of a sort by which 
 both early and late the crusaders had been deceived and drawn out 
 of strong positions to fall %ictims to a crafty foe. Had he advanced 
 on Szigeth he might have overwhelmed the whole Ottoman force. 
 The Turkish generals, by concealing the death of the Emperor from 
 their own army, maintained their order, and confirmed the doubts 
 of Maximilian. Sziget was taken without an attempt at rescue ; 
 Zriny fell in the defence, the Turks retreated victorious : Maximilian 
 retired inglorious. The next year he had to condescend to purchase 
 peace, to give up his claims to the towns taken by Solyman and his 
 army after his death, and to pay the tribute of 30,000 ducats. He 
 quailed before the long successes of this pertinacious enemy. In 
 1570 he made peace with the prince of Transylvania. The truce 
 with the Turks, which was for eight years, had the effect of pre- 
 venting him from joining the league between Philip, the Pope, and 
 Venice, which won in 1571 the great battle of Lepanto. 
 
 The war of Gotha fell out in the year 1567. The wretched Grum- 
 bach, under the ban of the Empire, a robber and a murderer, was 
 defended by the Ernestine dukes, who were suspected by the rival
 
 THE REIG2JS OF FEEDINAND I. AND MAXIMILIAN II. 175 
 
 princes, both Protestant and Catholic, of a design to make use of him 
 as a pretext for war in which they might recover the electorate their 
 father had lost. In the Diet of 1566 it had been determined that 
 they should be compelled to surrender Grumbach : the army was 
 placed under the command of Augustus, the elector whose dignity 
 and whose life were supposed to be threatened, and he besieged 
 Gotha on Christmas Eve 1566. The struggle terminated on April 13, 
 when Gotha was taken, and John Frederick surrendered himself a 
 prisoner. Grumbach was also given up and put to death shortly 
 after. John Frederick expiated his obstinacy by twenty-eight years 
 of imprisonment. He died in 1595. This little struggle may be 
 regarded as the wind-up of the business which Albert Alcibiades had 
 started, or taken in connexion with the quarrel between the elder 
 John Frederick and Maurice. It was no doubt affected by religious 
 feelings and animosities as w^ell as by personal antipathies, but it 
 cannot be regarded as a breach of the religious peace, the questions of 
 which did not enter into it. In this matter Maximihan himself 
 scarcely appears at all ; but the result was the confirmation of per- 
 manent peace, which was further strengthened by the truce made 
 with the Turks in 1568 and with Transylvania in 1570. The prince 
 of Transylvania died in 1571. I 
 
 Maximilian was by this time able to look about him. In 1570 I 
 he had got over his dislike to Philip, and given him his daughter, ; 
 Philip's own niece, as a wife. He begins from this moment to con- 
 template a return to the hereditary policy of his family. Having ^ 
 obtained for his son Rudolf the election to Hungary in 1572, 
 he looked about for a provision for his other sons. The same 
 year the throne of Poland became vacant and there was no candidate 
 with paramount claims to election. Maximilian determined to put 
 forward his son the Archduke Ernest. After several months of 
 negotiation, the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III. of France, 
 was chosen (April 1573) and crowned in February 1574. But he 
 held the crown only a few months. The death of his brother 
 Charles IX. brought him back to France in June 1574 ; and the Polish 
 throne was declared vacant. 
 
 Thirteen months of intrigue followed, and Maximilian was again 
 disappointed by seeing preferred to his own son Stephen Bathory, 
 voivode of Transylvania, the successor of John Sigismund Zapolski, 
 who had been his prisoner and was now his vassal. Maximilian had, 
 however, a strong party in Poland, and considered the effort worth 
 making. He accordingly obtained the election to Bohemia, 
 and that of King of the Romans for Rudolf (October 27, 1575), 
 and then prepared for war. Thus employed he was seized by the 
 fatal attack of which he died. In this attempt on Poland there can
 
 17G LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 be little doubt that Maximilian acted on the advice of Philip or of the 
 Papal legate Commendone. 
 
 Far more interesting than these scraps of secular' history are the 
 religious politics of Germany, of which the reign of Maximilian may 
 be regarded as the turning point. We have seen the rapid and steady 
 progress of Lutheranism during the last reign ; the other forms of 
 heresy now forced their way up to toleration. The Elector Palatine 
 vindicated the position of Calvinism in the Diet of 1566. Although 
 the Ecclesiastical Reservation and Declaration of Toleration were not 
 verbally renounced, they were observed only as it was convenient to 
 observe them. During the first six years of Maximilian's reign the 
 Ecclesiastical Reservation was constantly tampered with ; during the 
 last six the Declaration of Toleration was continually infringed and 
 the efforts of the Jesuits encouraged. From 1561 onwards Protes- 
 tants and married men were elected constantly to the bishoprics of 
 the North. They were not yet secularised. Neither party was quite 
 ready for that, but the Protestants claimed a right to be elected to 
 them and interpreted the Ecclesiastical Reservation as applying only 
 to cases of conversion. 
 
 When such a Protestant candidate was elected he had recourse to 
 an evasion of the law of the Church provided by the avarice and 
 ambition of the elder prelates. The confirmation of the title by the 
 Holy See was requisite to the completeness of his position, and this 
 he could never obtain : it was not likely that the Pope would regard 
 such a pretender as anything but a pretender. But the Emperor 
 could bestow the regalia ; and it had been usual, on the ground of the 
 expensive character of a journey to Rome, and the taxes of the Papal 
 chancery, for the Emperor to grant an indult, by which the bishop 
 elect could receive his revenues and delay his pilgrimage for 
 confirmation. This plan was easily adapted to the change of 
 circumstances. If the Protestant claimant could obtain an indult 
 — and, the elective process being complete, it was no part of the 
 imperial business to inquire into the orthodoxy of the candidate — the 
 indult was capable of indefinite extension, and the journey to Rome 
 was not taken ; the revenues were constantly received, as long as the 
 elect continued to be elect : that is, as long as he lived. 
 
 In this way several of the great prelacies became permanently 
 detached from the Church. The archbishopric of Magdeburg was 
 continuously held by Protestant margraves of Brandenburg. Sigis- 
 mund of Brandenburg had become a Protestant when archbishop, 
 and was not removed. His successor, Joachim Frederick, who had 
 been elected Bishop of Havelberg at the age of seven, and was chosen 
 to IMagdeburg in 1566, when he was twenty, in 1570 determined to 
 efface the last vestiges of Catholicism in the diocese. Yet he claimed
 
 THE EEIGNS OF FERDINAND I. AND MAXIMILIAN II. 177 
 
 the spiritual primacy among the princes of the Empire, being a 
 married man into the bargain. Pius V. urged his deposition, but 
 Maximilian did not see his way to it. It is observable that, on his 
 accession to the electorate of Brandenburg in 1598, his son Christian 
 William was chosen to succeed him at Magdeburg ; nor did the house 
 of Hohenzollern ever relax their hold on the see, which was ultimately 
 secured to them by the treaty of Westphalia. 
 
 Much the same was done in Bremen. Duke Henry of Saxe- 
 Lauenburg, a Lutheran of seventeen, became archbishop in 1567 and 
 added Osnabriick in 1574 and Paderborn in 1577. Eberhard of Liibeck 
 was confirmed by both Pope and Emperor and attended the Diets 
 without opposition from 1561 to 1586. Hermann of Minden did 
 the same ; Julius of Brunswick was Bishop of Halberstadt ; and at 
 Osnabriick the canons, being divided, elected a Protestant and 
 Catholic bishop alternately without any fault being found other than 
 that the Protestant was suspected of being a Catholic and vice versa. 
 
 The natural conclusion to be drawn from this state of affairs is 
 that the zeal for religion in the Catholic powers was subordinate to 
 their political principles, and that the Protestant morality which 
 gained such ends by such subterfuges can be defended only by 
 alleging the supineness of their adversaries. Perhaps it is the safest 
 to argue that really the Eoman Church was paralysed in North 
 Germany : nine-tenths of the people were Protestant, and there was 
 no champion for the Ecclesiastical Eeservation to be found. The acts 
 were done, however, and the faith, in which they were defended, was 
 bad faith : the laxity of the Emperor cannot excuse the dishonesty of 
 the princes. If the Protestants ignored the Ecclesiastical Reserva- 
 tion wherever they could, we cannot wonder that the Catholics ignored 
 the Declaration of Toleration when and where they had the power to 
 persecute ; or that Maximilian, after the year 1570, when his reaction 
 towards Spain succeeded to his former jealousy, thought it as 
 allowable to connive at the breach of the one obligation as at the 
 breach of the other. 
 
 Such things provoked and made possible the Counter-Refor- 
 mation, the Catholic reaction. This Catholic reaction dates in its 
 earliest form from the conclusion of the Council of Trent in 1563, 
 the accession of Pius V. in 1566, and from the reconciliation of 
 Maximilian with Philip in 1570. Pius IV., through Cardinal 
 Morone, had at once gained the Papal ends in the Council and cut 
 off all hope of healing the schism in the Church. Ferdinand had 
 agreed to the resummoning of the Council with the idea of reforming 
 the Papacy and of extending the powers of councils, and at the same 
 time the liberty of the clergy. Pius IV. had mastered the intelligence 
 of the Emperor and brought him to conclusions diametrically opposed 
 
 N
 
 178 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 to those which he had derived from Maximilian, and which were in 
 fact the hereditary views of the German Caesars. But he,was not a Pope 
 zealous for religion, nor likely to gain much hold on Maximilian. The 
 attitude of calm aversion, in which the Empire and the Papacy stood 
 at the beginning of the reign, continued. Paul IV. could canvass the 
 Protestant princes against Charles : neither Ferdinand nor Maximilian 
 cared for the Papal interests as Papal : the latter saw clearly the 
 difference between the Papal and the Catholic Church. 
 
 But Pius IV. had his eyes open, and he saw that the Catholic 
 princes might be induced to adopt measures which Maximilian could 
 not be tempted to. In particular the Bavarian house, although 
 liberal, was faithfully Catholic. Albert V., Duke of Bavaria, began 
 the Catholic reaction in Germany. And he was aided by circum- 
 stances. You will remember how large was the class of noble vassals 
 feudally subject to the princes. These nobles had very largely taken 
 up Protestantism : so largely in the spiritual electorates that their 
 rulers found it impossible to persecute in the teeth of the imperial 
 declaration ; and very largely in Bavaria, where they were jealous of 
 the superiority of the Duke. The Duke was poor ; they insisted on 
 the grant of religious privileges in exchange for the subsidies he 
 required. He was stern ; they were pertinacious : he chose to regard 
 their organised opposition as a conspiracy, and degraded, and deprived 
 of their seats in the states, all nobles who were compromised. Once 
 the master, he maintained his position : he would not admit the Papal 
 grant of the cup to the laity for which he had petitioned ; he forced 
 the confession of Trent on the professors of his University, and 
 turned the Jesuit missionaries loose upon his subjects ; those who 
 would not comply were banished, and Maximilian declined to 
 interfere. 
 
 Under the brisk pressure of Pius V. (1566-1572) the work went 
 on apace. One remarkable phase "of it we see at Treves, where the 
 elector was able to force Catholicism and dependence at once upon 
 his people. There was a revival also at Mentz and in the obedience 
 of Fulda ; all Protestants were turned out of office, and their 
 preachers were expelled the state. Everywhere the Catholic rulers 
 persecuted ; everyw'here the Protestant rulers plundered. The 
 Catholics evicted the contumacious ; the Protestants confiscated 
 Church property and secularised the monastic estates. But war did 
 not break out. Maximilian was content to let things take their course. 
 
 I have several times mentioned the year 1570 as the date at which 
 Maximilian's relations to Philip on the one side, and to the 
 Protestants on the other, began to change. Philip had no son, and 
 Maximilian was not mthout hopes that the inheritance might be 
 reunited in him or one of his children. At the same time the
 
 THE EEIGNS OF FERDINAND I. AND MAXIMILIAN II. 179 
 
 change in the Emperor's mind cannot be ascribed altogether to 
 policy. He was converted from Lutheranism, it is said : but it 
 seems to me, as I have said, that his Lutheran proclivities were 
 never the result of conviction ; and it would be truer to say that he 
 was brought, as he grew older, to see the fairer side of Romanism and 
 the worst features of the Lutheran plunderers, who, without the 
 convictions or the provocations of their fathers, thought of nothing 
 but dividing the spoil. The divisions of the Protestant teachers 
 were also repulsive to him, and the influence of his own family was 
 decidedly towards the old religion. He retained his love of toleration 
 and stood alone between the two parties. Thus he was situated, 
 when Philip made his overtures to him, and they were at once 
 accepted. Philip's influence henceforth affected Maximilian perni- 
 ciously. His policy became less German, his action less impartial. 
 He made no attempt, as indeed it was hardly to be expected that he 
 should, to modify Philip's policy in the Netherlands. Now he ceased 
 even to remonstrate.^ He allowed his daughter to contract a mar- 
 riage which was incestuous, notwithstanding the Papal absolutions. 
 From this date, then, the Catholic princes acted in disregard of the 
 imperial declaration, as complete as that of theProtestants had been 
 to their rights. 
 
 The state of things was already crying when in 1575 Maxi- 
 milian applied to the electoral college for the election of his son 
 Rudolf as King of the Romans. The three spiritual electors were 
 Catholic, the three temporal ones were Protestant. The latter pro- 
 posed that in the ' Wahlcapitulation ' to be exacted from Rudolf he 
 should be required to observe not merely the religious peace which 
 his father had promised at his election but the Declaration of 
 Toleration also. The spiritual ones demurred : they would have no 
 new capitulation insisted on without the consent of a Diet ; they 
 denied the very existence of the imperial declaration. On both points 
 they were silenced. But the Protestant electors were divided. The 
 Palatine was hampered with foreign alliances, the Duke of Saxony 
 was persuaded by Maximilian to give up the point, and nothing was 
 done. 
 
 The next year, when the Elector Palatine in a Diet at Ratisbon 
 made a like proposal, the jealousy of the Elector of Saxony caused 
 it to fall through. On this occasion the question arose of getting rid 
 of the Ecclesiastical Reservation and opening the bishoprics to both 
 religions. It was proposed that they should be made subservient to 
 the war against the Turks, and that Protestants in possession of 
 them should be obliged to do military service in the Emperor's 
 armies. This proposal was defeated by the opposition of the counts, 
 
 ' 1568. Prescott, Philip II. ii. 122. 
 
 n2
 
 180 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1 G48 
 
 who had begun to see, in the extinction or secularisation of the 
 ecclesiastical principalities, the aggrandisement of the temporal 
 princes and the loss of their own position of comparative indepen- 
 dence. 
 
 The four colleges of counts, being consulted, unanimously 
 refused to join in the proposition. They would, Protestant as most 
 of them still were, rather see the ecclesiastical principalities con- 
 tinue in the hands of the Catholics exclusively, and maintain the 
 Ecclesiastical Eeservation, than risk their falling into the hands of 
 the princes. They were divided against the princes on political 
 grounds, and amongst themselves on religious ones. There was no 
 unity in Protestantism, to meet the unity of the Catholic body now 
 recovering its strength. 
 
 Maximilian died, happily for himself, before the evil reached the 
 climax. His successor was a man of very different views and of a 
 very different mould. He was bound by no promise to observe the 
 declaration, he had no scruples about the legality of the Catholic 
 reaction. Maximilian died on October 12, 1576. He did not do 
 all that he might have done : he did somewhat and suffered to be 
 done much that had better not have been done ; but, take him 
 altogether, there have been in any age few princes nearly so great 
 and good. 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 THE FEENCH CIVIL WARS OF KELIGION FROM THE DEATH OP 
 HENRY II. TO THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III. 
 
 The portion of French history which corresponds with the period 
 embraced in the last lecture is of a very different character from that 
 of Germany. Instead of being governed by the best of her kings, 
 instead of taking breath after the great labours and exhaustion of the 
 two preceding reigns, instead of enjoying a peace which the rest of 
 Europe was content with and glad to use as a period of development 
 and as a period of forbearance, France had one continuous term of 
 discord ; a term which lasts nearly twenty years longer than the 
 space which we can hope to discuss in this lecture. These years 
 were filled with political intrigue and civil war. They were restless, 
 miserable years, of spasmodic torture to the people. The rulers were 
 of the most selfish and abandoned of mankind ; the misgovernment, 
 extravagance, and tyranny of the most heartless sort. 
 
 It is hopeless to attempt to carry in the memory more than a 
 general outhne of the course of events : as for the minutia, it may
 
 THE FEENCH CIVIL WARS OF RELIGION 181 
 
 be enough for an ordinary memory to confess that it has known 
 them, and not to pretend to be able to rearrange them at any 
 distance of time, from the first reading. I should call the period 
 dreary, were it not that it is lighted up from time to time by the 
 brilliant exploits, or rather the brilliant qualities, of some of the 
 actors in it, and has been illustrated by historians, and obfuscated by 
 writers of romance, in a way that makes the persons at least familiar 
 to most who have any knowledge of light literature. It is, moreover, 
 at certain points, closely connected with the history of Mary Stuart 
 and Elizabeth, and their history lends to this something of the 
 interest which our own domestic quarrels and national sympathies 
 have given to theirs. I shall attempt some sort of a survey of it on 
 the following plan. 
 
 The period of the reigns of Francis II. and Charles IX. does not 
 reach quite to the origin of the league which was formed in 1577. 
 This period divides into two: from 1559 to 1570 is the period of in- 
 trigue, chiefly political, and of war, in which the religious interest is 
 very much leavened with the political. The period from 1570 to 1577 
 is of a character in which the religious questions take precedence of 
 the political. The first half, then, contains a reign and a half, and 
 three religious wars ; the second, the remainder of Charles IX. and 
 the beginning of Henry III. and a period of religious discord the 
 limits of which are not easy chronologically to define. Look first for 
 a moment at the political source of grievance. Francis I. left two 
 millions of francs in his treasury ; the debts of the crown amounted 
 at the death of Henry II. to forty-two millions with an annual deficit 
 of two millions and a half. To meet this there was no legal or 
 constitutional system of finance. The taxes were not granted in a 
 constitutional assembly, nor was the imposition of them regulated 
 by any idea of public economy or national usefulness. For a century 
 the kings had been accustomed to impose taxes by ordinance, or in 
 an occasional assembly of notables : and the royal power was so great 
 that they were able to do it with hardly a remonstrance from the 
 suffering people. They used every possible shift for raising money : 
 the increase of the customs imposts and the sale of the royal domain 
 were plans which any financier of the age would have regarded as 
 justifiable ; but the creation of loans and the invention of new offices 
 of judicature and tribunals, by the sale of the appointments of which 
 the King could make money out of his people, was a stroke of 
 financial skill, borrowed probably from the Court of Rome, where the 
 art had been long studied and its rules elaborated. 
 
 What Francis I. did on a small scale Henry II. did on a large one. 
 He doubled at one stroke the prices of all offices and extended the 
 system of loans and lotteries. There was none to interfere. Francis I.
 
 182 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 had bidden the Parliament of Paris to cease to trouble itself with 
 politics, and besides its strength was broken for all purposes by the 
 institution of provincial parliaments by Lewis XI. Matters were 
 ripe, it might seem, for revolution. Yet what followed was not what 
 we should call revolution. There was no rising of class against 
 class ; the religious movement gave the struggle a character quite 
 different from political revolution. The divisions were headed, if 
 even they were not as a matter of fact originated, by princes, rival 
 members of the royal family or their closest connexions. Personal 
 intrigue thus comes in as well as religious to modify the political 
 crisis ; and in such quarrels the forces are consumed which might 
 in a clearer atmosphere have produced a general disruption of 
 . society. 
 
 ••j The death of Henry II. left the kingdom in this state, and the 
 
 ^ supreme power a bone of contention to three or four parties of 
 •' intriguers. Francis II., who succeeded him, was of age to govern, 
 and therefore the actual miseries of a disputed regency were for the 
 time avoided ; but he was incapable of ruling, and the management 
 of the King rather than that of the kingdom became the stake. The 
 parties which might play for it were (1) Catherine de Medicis, the 
 Queen mother, whose objects were chiefly personal, and secondly the 
 benefit of her other children, and revenge on those who had wronged 
 or slighted her during her husband's reign ; (2) the Bourbon princes, 
 Antony, King of Navarre, and Louis, prince of Conde, the first princes 
 of the blood royal, who were firstly Protestants and secondly am- 
 bitious of exercising the power which the princes of the blood had 
 usually exercised under weak sovereigns. These were supported by 
 a strong party among the nobles, of which the Chatillons, the 
 Admiral Coligny, and Dandelot, were the heads ; (3) the Guises, 
 Francis, the Duke, the defender of Metz and captor of Calais, the 
 most accomplished and popular man in France, and his brother 
 Charles of Lorraine, the Cardinal Archbishop of Eheims : both of 
 them princes of a sovereign house and uncles of the young Queen 
 Mary of Scotland whose influence over her husband was supposed 
 to be unbounded. Of these the Duke of Guise was involved in the 
 religious designs of Philip II. ; and the Cardinal also, although, in 
 order to govern the French Church independently of the Pope, he 
 would probably have accepted Protestantism had he seen his way to 
 it. The Cardinal was a very able minister and took great part in the 
 negotiations of 1556. (4) A fourth party may be regarded as com- 
 posed of the Constable of Montmorency and other faithful servants 
 of Francis and Henry, who had not the personal objects of Catherine 
 de M6dicis and were personally obnoxious to her, nor the Spanish 
 engagements of the Guises, and were opposed religiously to the
 
 THE FRENCH CIVIL WARS OF RELIGION 183 
 
 Bourbons and Chatillons, with the latter of whom they were, however, 
 closely connected by marriage. 
 
 The ascendency of Mary Stuart over her husband Francis II. 
 determined the struggle for power during the eighteen months of the 
 reign in favour of the Guises : the Queen Mother, seeing no help for 
 it, threw herself on the same side. But the Bourbons were not to 
 be brought over. Submission in their case meant no doubt extinction 
 of both family and religion, and neither they themselves nor the 
 French people, who were to a large extent Protestant, were prepared 
 to suffer this. But the Guises had to walk warily at first. They 
 attempted to reconcile the chiefs of the rival parties. Catherine was 
 brought into alliance by the disgrace of the Constable Montmorency 
 and of the Duchess of Valentinois, Diana of Poictiers, who had been 
 the chief advisers of her husband. The King of Navarre was pro- 
 pitiated with compliments and left to manage his less manageable 
 brother Conde. The Duke and Cardinal were free to try their hand 
 at administration, and they fell into difficulties which would perhaps 
 have been too much for even more experienced heads. Amongst 
 their measures of finance the resumption of the alienated lands of 
 the crown was not likely to make them popular ; they were obliged, 
 moreover, to give up the tax instituted by Francis I. for the support 
 of his army of 50,000 infantry ; they forbade the carrying of fire- 
 arms : they bid for the support of the nobles by increasing the 
 number of Knights of St. Michael ; they instituted some law reforms ; 
 and this is all that is said of their administration ; so little of history 
 of a constitutional kind is contributed by an arbitrary government 
 such as that of France had now become. 
 
 But the uneventfulness of such periods is delusive : the great 
 springs of action are covered, but when a little accident opens them 
 they burst out in a flood. The incident that in a constitutional 
 state would create but a nine days' wonder, in an absolute one is the 
 cause or the vent of a revolution. The murder of the President 
 Minard, a sound Catholic, by a Scottish madman, had the effect of 
 hastening the condemnation to death of Anne du Bourg, a lawyer 
 convicted of Calvinism : and the execution of du Bourg produced a 
 conspiracy among the Protestants which ended in war. Of the two 
 former events I need not speak, except perhaps to remark that the 
 execution of du Bourg, when so many more important persons were 
 allowed with impunity to support Calvinism, and so large a portion 
 of the people were infected by it, probably shows that the govern- 
 ment were feeling their way towards a general persecution. Anyhow, 
 so the Protestants understood it. They formed a secret confederacy 
 under the supposed presidency of Conde, but really under an 
 adventurer named Renaudie, with the object of seizing the King and
 
 184 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1619-1648 
 
 the Guises when at Amboise on March 15, 1560, and of compelling 
 the King to appoint Conde lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The 
 conspiracy was betrayed. The minor confederates were punished. 
 Conde cleared himself, and the Duke did not find himself strong 
 enough to use violence. The insurgents who, with help from 
 England and Navarre, had risen ^. were put down with great ease 
 and punished with terrible severity. Olivier, the Chancellor, died of 
 grief at the cruelty of the executions, and Hopital, his successor, 
 was made to seal an edict by which the bishops were authorised 
 to decide on and declare heresies and power was given to the sub- 
 ordinate judges to punish without appeal. 
 
 The conspiracy of Amboise had strengthened the Guises and 
 prepared the way for more stringent persecutions. They seem to 
 have conceived the idea of bringing all the heads of the Huguenot 
 faction together and overwhelming them, as was later done in the 
 St. Bartholomew massacre. After an assembly of notables, in 
 which Coligny and his friends pleaded earnestly for tolerance, a 
 meetinc: of the estates was called at Orleans in October : thither the 
 King was brought, and the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde 
 summoned. Against the wishes of their friends, they obeyed : as 
 soon as they reached Orleans Conde was arrested and the King put 
 under guard. A hurried trial of the Prince followed, and he was 
 condemned to death. A plan was said to have been laid for 
 implicating and even assassinating his brother. What might have 
 been done we cannot say, the illness and death of Francis producing 
 a total change of circumstances ; but when the King's state was 
 hopeless the Guises tried to persuade Catherine to assent to the 
 execution of Cond6. She, on consideration, saw that the death of 
 Conde would leave the King of Navarre untouched, and that the 
 King's death would make him the chief man in the kingdom; know- 
 ing, moreover, that the Guises had no love of her and were but trying 
 to use her, whereas her policy was to save the Bourbons to be a 
 counterbalance to the Guises, on the advice of Hopital, the 
 Chancellor, she refused to agree. But she made her capital out of it ; 
 by threats of the execution of Conde she prevailed on King Antony 
 to give up his claims to the regency on Francis's death ; and the 
 dying King prevailed on him to be reconciled with the Guises. 
 It was his last act ; he died on December 5, 1560. His reign saw 
 the outbreak of the troubles and jealousies which created the 
 miseries of the next two reigns ; but, as I have said, they were only 
 the vents for the powerful forces that were at work through the 
 land : that misgovernment and religious persecution and discord had 
 arrayed against one another and against all authority. 
 
 The death of Francis produced, as had been foreseen, an entire
 
 THE FRENCH CIVIL WARS OF RELIGION 185 
 
 change of relations. The hold of the Guises on the government 
 determined at once. Catherine became regent, Antony of Navarre 
 received the reward of his compliance, the lieutenant-generalship of 
 the kingdom. The boy king Charles IX. remained under his mother's 
 care. An immediate change of policy followed the change of 
 government. The estates, meeting at Orleans a few days after the 
 King's death, passed an edict more favourable to the Protestants, and 
 to meet this reaction the Duke of Guise, the Constable, and the 
 Marshal St. Andre formed themselves into a little political alliance 
 which was called the New Triumvirate. The release of Conde took 
 place in March 1561. ,In May the estates, under the pressure of the 
 triumvirate, renewed the severe edict against the Huguenots ; the 
 Queen answered with an ordinance of toleration, or at least of a more 
 tolerant character. In September, in consequenpA of the petition of 
 the Protestants, a reUgious disputation was held ai Poissy, the only 
 results of which were the conversion of the King of Navarre to the 
 Roman Church, and the provocation of the Calvinists to open 
 resistance to the government. 
 
 Catherine was evidently incompetent to govern. As the trium- 
 virate increased in strength, she drew towards Conde and the Pro- 
 testants, but she failed to prevent the outbreak at last of civil war. 
 The massacre by the Duke of Guise's retinue of some Protestants 
 at Vassy- on March 1, 1562, although unpremeditated, served as 
 a watchword of insurrection. The triumvirs got possession of the 
 King and Queen ; Conde had no other resource than to put himself at 
 the head of the rebels. 
 
 The details of the war I shall not attempt. Suffice it to say that 
 the Huguenots obtained nearly all the strongholds of Western 
 France ; that the King of Navarre, being sent to besiege Rouen for 
 the King, was killed there on October 15, 1562 ; and that in the 
 battle of Dreux, on December 19, Conde was defeated and taken 
 prisoner by the Duke of Guise : Marshal St. Andre being killed in 
 the same engagement. Guise, in his haste to finish the war, 
 besieged Orleans in the February of the next year, and was there 
 killed, February 18, 1563. His death ended the war. 
 
 The Constable and Conde made peace in March, and the Edict of 
 Amboise, which was issued the same month, was most favourable to 
 the Huguenots. The possession of Havre by the English induced 
 the Queen to grant whatever was asked. On condition of laying 
 down their arms, the Huguenots have liberty of conscience fully 
 granted ; and to the Prince of Conde is further promised the same 
 position in the royal councils that the King of Navarre had enjoyed. 
 The force of the kingdom thus united was devoted to the recovery of 
 Havre, which was taken July 18, 1563. Queen Catherine was now
 
 186 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 supreme, having got rid of her enemies and the most dangerous 
 of her friends ; she declared King Charles IX. of age, and henceforth 
 enjoyed, without a rival, complete supremacy over him and his 
 kingdom. ,,.*—.- 
 
 The state of peace lasted for four years, from 1563 to 1567. 
 Catherine's diplomatic skill was tasked to the utmost to preserve it 
 so long. Her political ability was that of the old school of Italian 
 politics ; powerful in intrigue and in the creation of entanglements 
 and combinations of party against party, clique against clique : 
 powerless against the strong convictions, and pertinacious action on 
 high principle, which marked the leaders of the Huguenot party and 
 their rising opponents. Her court was the most immoral and 
 unprincipled assembly of profligates that ever disgraced Christendom. 
 Her sons were allowed to become early initiated in every sort of 
 licentiousness and iniquity. She continued to rule through their 
 weakness. 
 
 The four years of peace — for with England also peace was 
 concluded in 1564— were chiefly employed in a progress of the King 
 and his mother through the various provinces. The year 1564 is 
 marked by the edict of Roussillon, which prohibits meetings of the 
 Protestants within ten leagues of the court ; by increased financial 
 difficulty ; and by the commencement of the building of the 
 Tuileries. 
 
 Catherine's personal disHke to the Prince of Cond6 was driving 
 her further from the policy of toleration which she had adopted, out 
 of political craft only, whilst the Guises were dangerous. Philip II. 
 had not yet meddled with France ; once only, in 1562, he had 
 attempted to succour the Catholics in the civil war, on the side of 
 the Netherlands, but the Flemish nobles had declined the expedition, 
 and, instead of an army, the Duchess of Parma, the governante, 
 raised and remitted to Catherine a sum of 50,000 crowns. Now, 
 however, we begin to trace the combined working of the Catholic 
 powers towards the extinction of the new religion. 
 
 The royal progress brought the court, in May 1565, to Bayonne, 
 where a solemn interview was held between Catherine, her daughter 
 the Queen of Spain, Charles IX., the Queen of Navarre, and her son 
 Henry. In the train of Queen Elizabeth, the Duke of Alva was 
 present. He held frequent conversations with Catherine, and argued 
 out with her the question of the policy of tolerance. He seems to 
 have overcome her scruples or to have refuted her arguments : the 
 tendency that she had already shown to abandon the defence of the 
 Huguenots was strengthened, and, although there is no reason to 
 believe that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was, as afterwards was 
 said, contrived on this occasion, there is no doubt that a design was
 
 THE FEENCH CIVIL WARS OF EELIGION 187 
 
 formed by which the French government was to co-operate with 
 Philip for the destruction of heresy in the Netherlands. 
 
 It was these negotiations with Alva that led ultimately to the 
 second civil war which broke out two years later. The Queen's 
 toleration of the Huguenots produced the first of these wars ; 
 her capricious treatment of them, and her generally threatening 
 attitude towards them, produced the second. Her quarrel with 
 Conde was not reconciled, and he with his friends began to make 
 arrangements for mutual defence. The Catholics of Guienne and 
 Languedoc, on the other hand, formed a confederation for religion 
 in 1563, renewed in 1568 ; a crusade authorised by the parliament 
 of Toulouse ; but no overt action of hostility took place as yet. 
 
 In 1566, at MouUns, Charles issued an ordinance of 86 articles 
 for the reform of the law, and confirmed the restrictive edict of 
 Roussillon. At this meeting of the states the Queen attempted a 
 reconciliation between the Constable and the Cardinal of Lorraine, 
 and also between the Gmses and Coligny. She partially succeeded, 
 and also made Conde the confidant of her pretended jealousy of 
 Spanish interference. Her idea was to raise a force to guard against 
 the Duke of Alva, and, when raised, to turn it against the Protestants. 
 Her policy, however, was not equal to the occasion. The Prince and 
 Admiral, finding that they were being cajoled, formed a design to 
 seize the King at Monceaux, and the failure of this project almost 
 compelled them to take up arms. It is impossible to do more than 
 note the main string of the story. The plots of the Guises against 
 Coligny, the plan of surrendering the Queen of Navarre and her 
 son to Philip, and the countless intrigues that arose on the extra- 
 ordinary complication of personal and political and religious partisan- 
 ship, interesting as they are as matters of detail, are out of place in 
 an attempt to summarise the politics of Europe. 
 
 The failure of the plot of Monceaux occurred in September 1567. 
 Alva's proceedings in the Low Countries, the arrest of Counts 
 Egmont and Horn, the same month, showed that there must be 
 no delay and that there would be no sparing. Succours from the 
 Palatinate arrived, and Conde went to war. On September 28, the 
 Huguenots surprised and ruined Orleans ; in October the prince 
 marched on Paris. The Constable of Montmorency was sent out 
 against him and in the battle of St. Denis on November 10, stopped 
 his progress, but was himself mortally wounded. Conde, finding 
 Paris on its guard, marched into Lorraine to meet a second body of 
 German auxiliaries, and on his return besieged Chartres. Before he 
 had taken it, however, he concluded the peace of Longjumeau, 
 against the advice of Coligny. This peace ended the second civil 
 war, but it was itself of short duration ; it lasted six months, and
 
 188 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 was called ' la petite paix,' or ' la paix fourree,' the forced peace. It 
 simply confirmed the convention of Amboise, which. had concluded 
 the first war, provided for the restoration of the places captured, 
 and threw the expense of the war on the government. It was satis- 
 factory to neither party. 
 
 The six months were used by both as a time of preparation for 
 renewed hostilities. The court determined this time not to be 
 surprised. The Huguenots had promises of help from England : 
 Catherine was more assured of the goodwill of the Duke of Alva. 
 She determined to seize the Prince of Conde and Coligny, and make 
 short work of them. Marshal Tavannes had orders to arrest them 
 at Nojars, in Burgundy, in September 1568. As usual the plan got 
 wind, and Conde hastened to La Eochelle, where he was joined by 
 the Queen of Navarre ; then the third war may be said to begin. 
 The whole force of the Protestant confederacy met there, and wdth it 
 the Prince marched on Soissons. The winter was lost in pretended 
 negotiations. In March 1569 the Duke of Anjou, under the tutelage 
 of Marshal Tavannes, led the royal army against Cond6. On 
 March 13, the battle of Jarnac was fought ; the Huguenots were 
 beaten ; Conde was wounded and directly after assassinated. CoUgny 
 remained at the head of the Protestant party, he and the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine being the only survivors of the great band of rival statesmen 
 who had competed for influence under Henry II. and Francis II. 
 
 Ordinarily the death of Cond6 might have been expected to end 
 the war : but the spirit of Coligny, the fervent support of the Queen 
 of Navarre, and the arrival of Wolfgang, Duke of Zweibriicken, 
 with the German helpers on the south of the Loire, kept up the 
 contest. The young Prince of Conde, now seventeen, and the 
 young prince of B6arn, afterwards Henry IV., who was a year his 
 junior, were accepted as heads of the party. The latter fought his 
 first battle under Coligny at Roche- Abeille, in Limousin, in June. 
 In July, Coligny, at the head of the whole Protestant force, besieged 
 Poictiers. Poictiers was defended by the young Duke of Guise, 
 Henry, who at the age of nineteen comes on the stage at the same 
 time -svith the other three Henries with whose lot his own fate was 
 so deeply involved. Henry of Guise was successful against Coligny, 
 as his father had been at Metz against Charles V. He compelled 
 him to withdraw his forces in September after great loss ; and 
 the downfall of the Protestant cause seemed to be sealed by the 
 defeat at Moncontour, October 3. The Admiral was again beaten by 
 the Duke of Anjou and Tavannes, and with a loss of 12,000 men. 
 The war did not end here. The Duke of Anjou lost the benefit of 
 his victory by staying to besiege St.-Jean-d'Ang61y. Then came 
 winter. Coligny made great exertions, and in the early part of 1570
 
 THE FRENCH CIVIL WARS OF RELIGION 189 
 
 appeared with an army in Burgundy, whither he had gone to meet 
 the German auxiliaries, leaving the Princes of B6arn and Cond6 to 
 do what they could in Gascony and Languedoc. At Arnay-le-Duc, 
 Coligny was met by Marshal Coss6 with a royalist army thrice as 
 great as his own ; but he first beat him and then outmanoeuvred him 
 and made good his retreat. 
 
 There was no great battle this year ; peace was come to, owing 
 apparently to the exhaustion of the parties. Catherine was deserted 
 by her Italian and Spanish allies : the Germans would not serve the 
 Huguenots without pay. The peace of St. Germain, called the paix 
 boiteuse (Biron) or Malassise (de Mesme), from the personal defect 
 of one, and the name of the estate of another of the negotiators, was 
 arranged on August 8. This was very favourable to the Huguenots. 
 Their chiefs were restored to their places ; four strongholds were 
 left in their hands for two years : La Rochelle, the port for England ; 
 La Charit6, the passage of the Loire ; Montauban, commanding the 
 frontier of Languedoc and Quercy ; and Coignac, that of the 
 Angoumois. The preaching of Calvinism was sanctioned in two 
 towns of each province. Coligny was persuaded that he was to 
 command a French army to be sent to relieve the Protestants in the 
 Netherlands. As usual no one was satisfied ; but Charles got time 
 by the peace to conclude his own marriage with EUzabeth of 
 Austria, the daughter of Maximilian II., and to arrange for a similar 
 alliance between his sister Margaret and Henry of Navarre. 
 
 The peace of St. Germain ends the first phase of the religious f 
 wars. During this the Huguenots had lost four battles : Dreux, 
 Jarnac, St. Denis, and Moncontour. The Duke of Guise, the King 
 of Navarre, the Constable of Montmorency, and the Prince of Cond6 
 had fallen in battle or by assassination. A new race of heroes was 
 springing up, even less amenable to the policy of Catherine than 
 their fathers. But the marriage of Charles was what seemed for the 
 time the most threatening influence to her continuance in power. 
 The King was beginning to find that he had a will of his own ; that 
 this will delighted in thwarting or complicating his mother's schemes ; 
 and that in his young wife he had a prudent, an honest, and a 
 virtuous adviser. But the mother was not to be shaken off : for the 
 remainder of Charles's reign his own line alternates between com- 
 pliance and opposition ; compliance induced perhaps by his dread of 
 poison, his knowledge of his mother's unscrupulous character, and 
 of her devotion to the interests of her favourite son, the heir 
 presumptive ; and opposition weakened by his own ill-health and 
 his distrust of all around him. 
 
 One of the changes in the royal mind was manifested in a dis- 
 position to draw nearer to the Protestants. Charles was jealous of 
 
 I
 
 190 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 his brother Henry of Anjou and of the glory he had acquired by his 
 share in the battle of Moncontour. He took into his head, therefore, 
 to favour Coligny ; and the Admiral, whose vanity throughout his 
 career was the point on which the court played in order to deceive 
 him, pleased with the idea of gaining influence over the King, hstened 
 to his overtures. It is not impossible that Charles was sincere in 
 this but Coligny should have remembered the power which Catherine 
 had so often exercised over her children ; and the unforgetting, 
 unrelenting hatred of the Guises. Under this temporary influence 
 Charles thought of undertaking the patronage of the Flemish 
 Protestants, who had just driven Philip to extremities by their 
 iconoclastic outbreak, and made a peace with England that rejoiced 
 the hearts of the Huguenots. Even the Queen of Navarre, under 
 this phase of circumstances, was prevailed on to consent to the 
 marriage of her son with the Princess Marguerite, and to attend 
 the court at Blois (April 11, 1571). The marriage of the Duke of 
 Anjou with Elizabeth of England was supposed to be seriously 
 entertained, and war against Philip was regarded as a certainty. So 
 the year 1571 passed away, and in 1572 the marriage of Henry and 
 Mar<^aret was to settle all disputes in the royal house, and to be the 
 surest gage of religious toleration and safety to the Protestants. 
 
 The Queen of Navarre came in June to Paris to be present on the 
 
 occasion, and whilst there died (June 10), with the usual suspicion 
 
 of poison. Her son thus became King of Navarre. Her death did 
 
 not prevent, or much delay, the marriage, which took place on 
 
 August 18. During the week of festivities that followed, the great 
 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew took place, about which so much that 
 
 is contradictory has been written. This massacre was— I can only 
 
 now allege facts of which there is no dispute — devised by the Guises, 
 
 and assented to by the court, probably thoroughly approved by 
 
 Catherine, and under her influence actually participated in by 
 
 Charles. There is no doubt that the Guises took the opportunity 
 
 of the festivities to compass the murder of Coligny and his chief 
 
 adherents : there is grave suspicion that the King of Navarre, whose 
 
 ■wife's lover the Duke of Guise was, was destined by both the Guises 
 
 and Catherine to the same fate, from which, indeed, he was saved 
 
 only by the personal interference of King Charles himself. It is less 
 
 certain that the massacre was intended, either by Catherine or by 
 
 the Guises, to overwhelm the crowds of inferior Protestants, who 
 
 really fell, as victims to the hatred of the citizens of Paris and the 
 
 towns which imitated their zeal, to the number of 50,000. The part 
 
 that Charles played in it, revolting as it is, may very well be ascribed 
 
 to excitement purposely encouraged by his mother, and to a revulsion 
 
 of feeUng against Coligny. If he consented to his death, pressed
 
 THE FRENCH CIVIL WARS OF RELIGION 191 
 
 upon him by Catherine as a religious and political necessity, he 
 showed by the effort he made to save Henry that he was not lost to 
 all right feeling ; what followed resulted from a panic of orthodoxy, 
 hereditary cruelty, and a mind overborne with diseased imaginations. 
 The degrees of guilt may be variously estimated ; I think that the 
 first belongs to the Guises, the second to Catherine ; the third to 
 the Parisian mob, which since 1563 had become violently Catholic ; 
 the next to Charles, and last, though scarcely least, to those 
 European powers that approved and applauded the crime. We can 
 hardly accuse the Pope or PhiUp of contriving it, but both may be 
 well regarded as accomplices after the act. 
 
 The massacre of St. Bartholomew was the first act of the fourth 
 civil war. One of the strongholds of the Protestants, La Charite, 
 was surprised during the excitement that folloAved ; the King of 
 Navarre was prevailed on to abjure Protestantism ; the chiefs of the 
 party who survived were panic-stricken. The young Prince of Conde 
 was the only one who retained his head, and maintained the spirits 
 of the Huguenots. Some of the most faithful even countenanced 
 submission. But La Rochelle held out and became a city of refuge 
 to the whole party, the object of attack to the whole military force 
 at the disposal of the court. For eight months it was besieged by 
 Henry of Anjou, and its siege is the fourth civil war. It was ended on 
 June 24, 1573 : the Duke was formally admitted into the town, but 
 the terms of the surrender left it in the hands of its brave defenders. 
 A peace followed immediately, by which the edicts of pacification were 
 renewed and all things remained as they were before the massacre. 
 
 Henry of Anjou had been elected King of Poland, and one of the 
 great influences that never wavered against the Protestants was thus 
 diverted for a time. He started in September 1573 to take posses- 
 sion of his throne ; and intrigue for a short period takes the place of 
 violence. His departure was followed by the formation of a new 
 party called that of the Politiqtces, headed by the Montmorencys 
 and the Duke of Alen9on, the younger of the King's brothers. The 
 Duke was an ill-conditioned and ambitious fool. The principles of 
 the party were moderate : it was a coalition, on the basis earlier 
 adopted by Catherine during the rivalry of the Guises and Bourbons ; 
 but the object of the Duke probably was to supplant his brother 
 Henry in the succession. The machinations of these politicians, and 
 the prospect of favour that they seemed to be showing to Huguenots, 
 produced an alarm of a renewal of war, and of reprisals on the part 
 of the Protestants for the St. Bartholomew cruelties. In order to 
 guard against any such outbreak, Charles and his mother arrested 
 both the Duke of Alen9on and the King of Navarre, and committed 
 them to close custody.
 
 t 
 
 192 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY. 1519-1648 
 
 Catherine prepared to take advantage of the alarm to execute 
 judicially the remaining chiefs of the Huguenots ; amongst them the 
 Count of Montgomery, the accidental murderer of Henry II., suffered 
 death. This was the last cruelty of what has been called the reign 
 of blood. Charles had been ill for a long time ; and, in his agonies 
 of pain and remorse, threw out hints of past horrors and of dis- 
 appointed good intentions, the truth of which can never now be 
 arrived at. Of him also it was suspected that he was poisoned by 
 Catherine to make way for Henry of Anjou. He died on May 30, 
 1574, having declared the King of Poland his heir, and Catherine 
 the regent until his brother should return. 
 
 We will leave to another lecture the events that follow and 
 that belong more naturally to the wars of the League than to what 
 went before. I fear that in this abstract, for it is little more, of a 
 period of great interest, I have dwelt too long on names and dates. 
 But if I have, I have tried at least to show how those names and 
 dates illustrate the history of the great parties. It is not easy either 
 to detect, or to remember when detected, all the underhand workings 
 of policy, especially when the underhand workers were such people 
 as Philip II. and Elizabeth. But we may, I think, conclude that 
 Philip's movements with regard to England, and Elizabeth's towards 
 PhiUp, depended very much on the varying state of the Netherlands : 
 and that Catherine's attitude towards the Huguenots varied accord- 
 ing to her objects of negotiation from time to time with Elizabeth 
 and Philip. Spain and England were not at war, but the French 
 politics were affected very much as they might have been if they had 
 been at war. They were known to be rivals, but rivals who were 
 kept at peace by mistrust of their power to control their own subjects 
 and by common hatred of a third party that must step in to reap 
 advantage from their open hostilities. The time was to come when 
 all this would change, and the hands of the real mre-pullers be seen. 
 But by that time the attitude of France also was to change. 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 PHILIP II. AND THE NETHERLANDS TO THE OUTBREAK OP WAR 
 
 The history of Philip II. has been written so often, on so large a 
 scale, and from so many different points, and the result has been the 
 examination of every part of it in such detail, that it would be 
 impossible in a single course of lectures even to review it with any 
 degree of fulness. It may be further said that the process of this
 
 PHILIP II. AND THE NETHEELANDS 193 
 
 examination is far from being exhausted. Every year the archives 
 of Brussels or Simancas are made to pour forth a new abundance of 
 matter respecting it, tending to perplex the memory if not to 
 confound the judgment of those who have made the period their 
 particular study. It is as well, then, that in this course what we have 
 set ourselves to do is not to give an exhaustive resuvie of the facts 
 thus multiplied upon us, but to attempt to trace such a continuous 
 series of causes and consequences as bears on the general political 
 history of Europe and illustrates this great King's part in the 
 common life of the society of Christendom. . 
 
 As for Philip himself, I believe that his character has represented f 
 itself in substantially the same features to all who have studied it. i 
 The views of opposing parties differ as to the merits of it, but not as | 
 to the quahties or actions by which both alike must estimate those 
 merits. He was a man of enormous industry and exactness ; doing 
 much work, and expecting much work from all who served him. He 
 was to the last degree bigoted as a Roman Catholic, and this bigotry 
 underlies the whole of his policy, excuses his thousand deceptions 
 and his innumerable cruelties. His morality is not above that of the 
 decent princes of the age, of any way of thinking ; he is out of the 
 region of religious controversy, impartial, severe, and fairly honest ; 
 his firmness is fully entitled to the name of obstinacy, and his 
 severity to that of cruelty ; his statecraft to that of cunning ; but it 
 is evident that according as you regard his reUgious bigotry as a 
 merit or as a fault the general estimate of his character must be 
 coloured. He was, in a word, his father over again, but without his 
 good points and with his bad points exaggerated to a great extent. 
 Although we may not regard him as successful in the main points to 
 which his policy was directed, we cannot deny him the title of an 
 able ruler. He did in fact rule his people ; and thus his reign is 
 distinctly contrasted with the corresponding periods in France and 
 Germany, where the governing power retained its place either by 
 intrigue or by carefully balancing against one another the forces 
 which singly were able to overthrow it, or where it contented itself 
 with the possession without the exercise of authority. 
 
 We may say of Catherine de Medicis that she would have ruled 
 if she could, and of Maximilian that he could if he Would. Phihp 
 both could and would and did : ruled with a single straightforward 
 dominant will, not Hke a woman, not like Elizabeth of England 
 whose success and prosperity are in so strong contrast to his 
 disappointment, but like a strong hard-headed, hard-handed man, 
 who knew the value of power, and drank the draught of what came 
 to him to the very dregs : who by his own action kept the machine 
 of state going, held the reins in his own hands, and attended himself 
 
 o
 
 iy-i LEUi'ORES ON EIJEOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 to every single, even the minutest, article of the harness. He thought 
 nothing well done in which he had not directed and seen to the 
 carrying out of the lowest details. He is not a man- to be despised. 
 
 The interest of the part of Philip's reign which corresponds with 
 the periods of French and German history discussed in the last two 
 lectures belongs, if not wholly, almost wholly to the Netherlands. I pro- 
 pose, then, to gather up first the few indications of important action in 
 European politics, and the few interesting points relating to him in 
 other fields of work, which occur during these years, and then to 
 sketch the string of events in the revolt of the Netherlands down to 
 the year 1576. In this review we are not perplexed by much personal 
 history of Philip himself, for he spent the whole of his reign in Spain 
 after his arrival there on August 29, 1559. Philip's attempt to retain 
 his hold on England by marrying Elizabeth was over by this time ; 
 the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis had engaged him to the daughter of 
 Henry II. of France, and with France he continued on peaceful if 
 not on cordial terms, until the wars of the League. He was not able 
 to interfere much except diplomatically. His influence, first with 
 the Guises, and, after the death of Duke Francis, with Catherine, 
 was used simply, it would appear, in the direction of religious perse- 
 cution. He could not help the Catholics in arms without producing 
 a union between the revolted Flemings and the Huguenots, which.he 
 wished to avoid ; nor could he conscientiously make use of the 
 Huguenots to demolish the power, if any still remained, of the house 
 of Valois. They were his father's enemies and his own. If religious 
 sympathy prevented him from taking the opportunity of over- 
 whelming them, political principle urged him to prevent their 
 aggrandisement ; and this seems to have been the key of his policy 
 towards England so long as the conduct of Elizabeth and her 
 ministers rendered it possible. 
 
 Philip supported Elizabeth as a counterbalance to the power of 
 France, but more especially because he knew that the acquisition of 
 the English crown by Mary Stuart would be to throw the kingdom 
 under the influence of the house of Valois. Strong Catholic as he 
 was, he discouraged the rising of the Irish against English rule, hia 
 remonstrances with Elizabeth as to the Keformation were dictated by 
 a sincere policy as well as by religious conviction ; and from the 
 time of the Netherlands outbreak it was most necessary to Philip 
 to prevent her from lending help to the insurgents. Again, as a 
 Catholic he was hurt by her interference with Scotland ; whilst his 
 fear of French influence prevented him from boldly interfering in 
 defence of the English Catholics. Elizabeth's conduct in the first 
 religious war in 1562-3 even did not exhaust his patience. It was 
 not until his endurance had been tried to the utmost by the
 
 PHILIP II. AND THE NETHEBLANDS 195 
 
 unwarrantable piracies of the English adventurers, and his religious 
 principles roused by the remonstrances of the Popes and the general 
 combination of the Catholic powers, that he even assumed an attitude 
 of hostility. That hostility took the form of intrigue for years before 
 it gave way to open war ; and this does not occur in the period on 
 which we are now employed. Philip's slowness of action is nowhere 
 better exemplified than in his behaviour towards England, and we 
 cannot doubt that the attempt to balance religious and political 
 considerations, as well as to avoid the expense and danger of open 
 war, made his relations with Elizabeth, and his own views regarding 
 her, unsettled and uneasy. 
 
 In Spain itself the history of these eighteen years is not a varied 
 one. Philip was at home : his domestic government was not uneasy 
 except in the department of the Inquisition and the troubles which 
 the severities of the Inquisition brought about. The revolt of the 
 Moriscoes, 1567 to 1570, was the only serious attempt to shake his 
 authority : this was produced partly by the action of the Inquisition, 
 partly by the leaven of national independence not yet extinct. It was 
 conducted with great cruelty on both sides. The persecution of the 
 Spanish Protestants by the Inquisition was not less effective ; they 
 were entirely crushed. The miseries produced by this persecution were 
 incalculable : the agency of the Holy Office being made to subserve 
 all purposes of public and private enmity. The greatest victim, 
 Bartholomew Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, was sacrificed to the 
 personal enmity of Valdes, the Archbishop of Seville and Grand 
 Inquisitor. Carranza, who had been the friend of Charles and the 
 confessor of Philip II., was arrested by the Inquisition in 1559 ; 
 sent to Rome on appeal and imprisoned there for seventeen years ; 
 condemned as a heretic by Gregory XIII. ; and after his release sank 
 a victim to the severity of his penance and the agony of his mind. 
 He was by no means a Protestant ; not a word could be said against 
 his orthodoxy ; but he was a tolerant Christian, and this tolerance 
 was handle enough for the Inquisitor who had determined to destroy 
 him. 
 
 The episode of Don Carlos, which occurs in 1568, need not be 
 more than mentioned. Philip's only son, he was a hopeless mad- 
 man ; and his death, harsh as it seems, at his father's commands, 
 was perhaps the safest both for Philip and the realms that he might 
 any day have been called upon to rule. Romance and pity are alike 
 wasted on him. 
 
 The history of Philip's Italian possessions is uneventful. They 
 enjoyed peace, in common with Italy in general, from everything but 
 the Turkish depredations. In relation to these the most important 
 matters are the raising of the siege of Malta in 1565, when Spanish 
 
 o2
 
 196 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 succours, tardily but effectively supplied, compelled Solyman to with- 
 draw his forces ; and the league between Venice, the Pope, and 
 Philip in 1571, which had its crowning success in -the battle of 
 Lepanto won by Don John of Austria. It was time something 
 should be done ; for not only were the Turks permanently encroaching 
 on Hungary, as we have seen ; but the Venetians had in 1571 lost 
 Cyprus, the last important relic of the dominion of the Crusaders : it 
 bad been held by the Latins since it was conquered by Richard I. of 
 England in 1191. 
 
 All these incidents, detached as they are, although in themselves 
 interesting enough, strike us as inferior in lasting importance to the 
 affairs of the Netherlands ; the development of whose history contains 
 60 much more of political element, and the results of which have 
 been so pregnant of consequences for all Europe. It is in the 
 Netherlands, and in his transactions with France and England in 
 connexion with the Netherlands, that Philip's policy is most con- 
 spicuously exemplified and his share in the general political system 
 of Europe most clearly seen. No doubt he had an eye on everything 
 of importance that went on in Europe ; but so much of his action 
 was secret that its effects can only be guessed at. Here he had to 
 act, and all his characteristic qualities are brought out. The Nether- 
 lands were that part of Charles V.'s dominions which were most 
 attached to him personally ; which had been most wisely adminis- 
 tered under him ; and to which his visits, although not the longest, 
 were the most numerous. Ten times he visited the Netherlands, as 
 he said in the resignation speech. The revolt and punishment of 
 Ghent in 1539 had been the only event opposed to the general tenour 
 of wise government ; and the persecution of the Protestants, carried 
 on by the machinery of the Inquisition with much cruelty, though 
 no doubt enormously exaggerated by Protestant writers, had been 
 perhaps the sole defect in his policy. The country was for the most 
 part happy and contented under him : commerce flourished largely ; 
 his favourite ministers were Netherlanders, and their influence and 
 that of their families were used consistently in favour of order. The 
 Prince of Orange, the most popular man in the Netherlands, was 
 brought up at his court, and the receptacle of as much of his 
 confidence as he gave to any man ; and Count Egmont was the 
 general of his armies. 
 
 From the time of Charles's resignation the internal condition of 
 the country began to deteriorate, and before his death the troubles 
 that were coming had given clear indications of the future. In the 
 first place Philip did not take care to make himself acceptable to the 
 Flemings ; he was a Spaniard by education and temper, just as his 
 father was a Netherlander. He was haughty and reserved ; he did
 
 PHILIP II. AND THE NETHERLANDS 197 
 
 not like the people and they did not like him. It is wonderful how 
 great influence personal dislike has in giving effect to causes that 
 might have worked on in silence and quietness without it, and 
 kindling with a little spark a great fire of consequences. The 
 provinces were predisposed to put an adverse interpretation on every 
 measure that should even seem to be originated by such a person. 
 It is a curious proof of the strength and prominence of Philip's 
 repulsive traits that this should be the feeling with regard to him 
 in both Germany and the Netherlands. The Germans, who had 
 scarcely seen him, would not have a word to say to him as Emperor ; 
 the Flemings, knowing him, and before they had real cause disliking 
 him, were ready to do everything in their power to thwart him. He 
 was unbending and they were intolerant. Can we wonder at the 
 result ? 
 
 I need not now go at any length into the inherent sources of 
 difficulty in the condition of the Netherland states. They were two- 
 fold : the political independence of the_ towns and the weak 
 organisation of the Church. The burgher spirit had grown very 
 strong under the weak and capricious rule of the native sovereigns, 
 whose poverty had sold to the cities the privileges which their weak- 
 ness forbade them to refuse, to elude, or to break through by force. 
 The Church was weak for want of a head : the provinces were under 
 three bishops owning obedience to different metropolitans, the 
 metropolitans were not subjects of the sovereign of the states ; the 
 chapters of the collegiate churches exercised most of the ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction, and the constitutions, of the states were distinctly 
 opposed to the growth of spiritual authority as weU as of ecclesiastical 
 influence in secular matters. The cohesion of the states was 
 slight : they were only united by the accident of inheritance ; each 
 had a distinct constitution and provincial assembly. The Great 
 Court of Judicature, the Great Council of Mechlin, and the Assembly 
 of the States General, which was but a congress of ambassadors from 
 the several provinces, were all the common organisation besides their 
 personal union under the Burgundian house and its successor, the 
 Austrian. Little cohesion, great individual independence ; no com- 
 plete religious organism : here was field enough for the growth 
 of political liberty and religious dissidence : the proper field for 
 Calvinism in its worst as well as in its most plausible phases. 
 
 Before PhiUp left for Spain in 1559 he had managed to rouse every 
 one of these sources of disaffection. He had kept the Spanish troops in 
 the country after the termination of the war with France, as if either 
 he did not trust his subjects, or disliked being left to their protection. 
 He had renewed the edicts against the Protestants, and there were 
 whispers that he had even concluded an agreement with Henry II.
 
 198 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1J19-1G48 
 
 for the utter destruction of Protestantism. He had given to the 
 Duchess of Parma, whom he appointed as governante, a close council 
 of three, over and above the three Councils of Finance, of Justice, 
 and of State (war and peace) to which the Flemings were accustomed ; 
 and the chief man of this council was a foreigner, Granvelle, a native 
 of Fi-anche-Comte, an ecclesiastic, bishop of Arras, and a much abler 
 man than either of his colleagues, Berlaymont and VigKus. Granvelle, 
 they suspected, was to be their real ruler. And to crown all, he had 
 obtained from the Pope, not the modest church organisation of six 
 new bishops in addition to the existing three for which his father 
 had petitioned, but one of three archbishops and fourteen bishops to 
 be provided for out of the property of the collegiate churches and 
 monasteries, which had until now been the chief organisation of the 
 kind. He thus offended the parties that were opposed to the Church 
 altogether, and alienated those churchmen and their families who 
 were in possession, very often by hereditary or family arrangement, 
 of these important positions. The bull for the new constitution 
 arrived just before he left for Spain. He had moreover shown 
 distrust and dislike of the Prince of Orange, which, however well 
 warranted, and I think that there was cause for it, he would have 
 been much wiser if he had been content to conceal. The Duchess 
 Margaret must have seen early that she had no easy task ; the more 
 clearly as she was united by long acquaintance and sympathy with 
 the people she had to rule. 
 
 Notwithstanding the representations made by the nobles to 
 Philip before his departure, the Spanish troops were retained in the 
 Netherlands until January 1561. The Prince of Orange and the 
 Count of Egmont were systematically outvoted in the Council of the 
 State, Granvelle was all-powerful and offensive to all. It was indeed 
 found impossible to carry the episcopal scheme everywhere into 
 effect, but Granvelle was made Archbishop of Mechlin and a Cardinal, 
 and a wide and deep impression went forth that this was a prelude 
 to the introduction of the whole machinery of the Spanish Inquisition. 
 In July 1561, the Prince of Orange and Egmont made a complaint 
 to Phihp of their exclusion from all important business, and from 
 this moment the murmurs of the national party are to be distinctly 
 heard. But it was not until 1562 that anything like an open 
 quarrel was thought of. In that year Philip ordered a force of 2,000 
 men to be sent into France to assist the Guises in the first civil war. 
 The nobles objected ; Granvelle insisted. Margaret, unable to decide, 
 called a chapter of the Golden Fleece, who were to be her counsellors 
 in the last resort and in the greatest emergencies. By their advice 
 Montigny, a faithful Catholic noble, was sent to lay the state of 
 affairs before Philip.
 
 PHILIP II. AND THE NETHEELANDS 199 
 
 Philip deliberated as usual a long time before he answered. In 
 the meanwhile, the Prince of Orange and Count Egmont attempted 
 to form a party against Granvelle : they failed in this, but the result 
 was an open and irreconcilable quarrel between the minister and 
 these two, the most powerful men in the country. It is to be 
 remembered that the Prince was still a Catholic, and that the 
 persecutions of the heretics, according to the edicts confirmed by 
 Philip before his departure, were still being carried on, leaving not a 
 moment for political or religious rancour to cool. 
 
 Philip's answer to Montigny's mission was a promise to visit 
 the Netherlands in person : privately he instructed the Duchess 
 to endeavour to sow discord between Orange and Egmont, which 
 might easily, it seemed, be done, Egmont being a faithful. Orange a 
 suspected. Catholic. The answer of Philip was as far as possible | 
 from being satisfactory. In March 1563, Orange, Egmont, and | 
 Count Horn, another very powerful noble who had but lately f 
 returned from the Spanish court, made in common a very strong | 
 remonstrance to Philip against Granvelle : again the answer was I 
 the promise of a visit. The three remonstrants thereon drew up a 
 third complaint and retired from the council. « 
 
 From this moment the Duchess seems to have turned against | 
 the minister. In August she wrote to entreat his removal. The b 
 King, by the advice of Alva, refused to suffer it. Again and again | 
 she implored Philip, as he desired to retain the sovereignty of the 
 Netherlands, to remove the greatest stumbling-block. At last he 
 yielded, and in April 1564 suffered Granvelle to go into Burgundy 
 on a visit to his mother, from which he never returned to the 
 Netherlands. There can be no doubt that Granvelle was an able 
 and faithful minister, and without fault towards his master, who 
 continued his confidence in him and constantly employed him in 
 matters of supreme importance, but no more in the region which, by 
 his master's orders, he had gone so far to ruin. 
 
 On the departure of Granvelle, the three nobles returned to their 
 seats in the council ; but their influence was still restricted. Viglius 
 and Barlaimont maintained the policy of Granvelle ; the executions 
 under the edicts continued ; and it must be added that the depart- 
 ments of business entrusted to the Flemish lords were so mis- 
 managed that the element of financial difficulty seemed in a fair way 
 of being added to the other troubles. It was now that Philip ordered 
 the reception of the decrees of the Council of Trent and stirred up 
 another alarm of the coming of the Inquisition. The lords now 
 saw no remedy but in a visit of Philip in person, and Egmont was 
 sent to Spain to beg him to come, as he had so often promised. 
 Egmont's mission was no more successful than Montigny's. Philip 
 
 Ml
 
 200 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 consulted his theologians and came to the conclusion that he could 
 not as a Christian relax the edicts ; and, instead of relaxing them, 
 ^\^:ote from Segovia, in October 1565, an important despatch to 
 ]\Iargaret, insisting on the rigid execution of them. This despatch 
 caused no overt act of disobedience on the part of Orange ; but it 
 did cause the formation of a league among the nobles, which ended in 
 rebellion. 
 
 It may be observed that this despatch of Sego\'ia followed 
 immediately after the interview of Catherine de Medicis with the 
 Duke of Alva at Bayonne, from the date of which the persecution of 
 the Huguenots waxed fiercer ; that in that interview it was commonly 
 suspected that an arrangement had been made for joint action 
 against the Protestants, and that the Segovia despatch no doubt 
 appeared to the Flemings to be the first-fruits of the new alliance. 
 Be this as it may, the twenty confederates formed their League in 
 November 1565 at the house of the Count of Calemburg at Brussels, 
 drew up a programme of grievances under the name of the Com- 
 promise, and bound themselves by oath to one another to resist the 
 introduction of the Inquisition. The Prince of Orange shortly after 
 announced to the Duchess that he would resign the government of 
 Holland, of which province he was Stadtholder, rather than execute 
 the edicts. A few months after this, he became a Lutheran, but he 
 did not join the league of the confederates, the chief of whom were 
 the lords of Brederode and St. Aldegonde, and Lewis of Nassau, the 
 Prince's brother. Of these Brederode was an unprincipled, versatile, 
 restless partisan ; St. Aldegonde a severe religionist ; Lewis an 
 accomplished soldier. The confederacy contained both Catholics 
 and Protestants, and was altogether an organisation of constitutional 
 rather than of religious defence. They came in a body to Brussels 
 in April 1566 and presented their petition to the Duchess. On this 
 occasion they earned the well-known sobriquet of ' les Gueux,' or ' the 
 beggars.' 
 
 For a time milder counsels began to prevail. The Duchess was 
 not inclined to severity, and Orange, Egmont, and Horn had 
 become her chief counsellors : she could not refuse to execute the 
 edicts. She even prevailed on Philip, in consideration of the 
 dangers of the times, to make some slight concessions, to promise 
 that the Inquisition should be abolished, and the persecution carried 
 on by the bishops only. But unfortunately neither party trusted 
 the other ; and the heretics, including Lutherans, Calvinists, Ana- 
 baptists, and all sorts of sectarians, took advantage of the temporary 
 relaxation of the edicts to run to excess and riot. Pubh'c preachings 
 began everywhere and could not be stopped by ordinary authority. 
 On August 14, the cathedral of Antwerp was sacked and the images
 
 PHILIP II. AND THE NETHERLANDS 201 
 
 destroyed by the heretics ; other places followed the example : a 
 religious or a fanatical revolution was imminent, and the Duchess was 
 only prevented from flight by the threats of the Prince of Orange 
 and Egmont. On August 23, she was obliged to grant the demands 
 of the confederates, and allow public preachings and freedom of 
 worship ; they in turn swearing to assist her in putting down the 
 disorders. 
 
 But the outrages at Antwerp had produced a reaction already. 
 The Catholic members retired from the confederacy, and Margaret 
 took advantage of it to prepare for defence in case of an open 
 rebellion, such as under the advice of Brederode was now imminent. 
 Just at this juncture a letter was discovered from Alava, the Spanish 
 minister at Paris, to Margaret, stating that Philip was assembling a 
 force with which he would come to take vengeance on Orange, 
 Egmont, and Hoorn. This seems to have proved to the Prince of 
 Orange that his position, careful as he had been not to entangle 
 himself, was no longer tenable. In a conference of nobles at 
 Dendermonde, he declared that the time was come for preparation : 
 if Philip should attempt to enter the Netherlands in arms, he must 
 be resisted in arms. Egmont refused to listen to this ; but the other 
 malcontents took their measures immediately. Lewis of Nassau 
 made his levies in Germany, Brederode prepared his ultimatum ; the 
 Duchess went on garrisoning the towns and increasing her force. 
 This produced the outbreak. The town of Valenciennes refused to 
 receive the garrison, and was besieged. Brederode sent in his 
 petition, and Margaret with a high hand refused it : then the 
 insurgents everywhere took arms. 
 
 I shall not, in conformity with my usual plan, go into any details 
 of this little struggle. It lasted three months (February to April 
 1567), just as long as the siege of Valenciennes, which ended as soon 
 as the Duchess had obtained leave from Philip to bombard the town. 
 During the time, Antwerp was the scene of a violent tumult, the 
 mob insisting on, and the Prince of Orange exerting the utmost 
 energy to prevent, the admission of the insurgents. The Prince 
 succeeded and saved the city from revolutionary pillage, but he had 
 implicated himself now too deeply to be forgiven. After the taking 
 of Valenciennes the Duchess proposed an oath to be taken by him 
 to serve King Philip without restriction or limitation, against every 
 one, whom he might command. Orange refused to take it, and left the 
 country, retiring to Germany. After his departure the provinces 
 one by one quietly submitted, Holland last of all, Brederode also had 
 to fly, and the great migration of the Protestants from the Netherlands, 
 which brought the wool trade to England, began. 
 
 It is impossible to say whether, supported by the Catholic
 
 202 LECTUEES ON EUEOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 reaction wliich was everywhere setting in and aided by the emigra- 
 tion, the pacification produced by the policy of Margaret might not 
 have been a lasting one. The ostensible reason why it failed was 
 the mission of the Duke of Alva, who was sent by Philip with a 
 commission of practical supremacy, although he left to Margaret the 
 title of regent, this same month of April. Alva was a brave and 
 consummate warrior, a very hard-headed, merciless man : a man of 
 high principle and great experience, the most unrelenting and th'3 
 most dangerous enemy of the new religions. He arrived at Brusse'S 
 in August 1567 ; and Margaret knew herself to be superseded. T>y 
 a deliberate act of cunning he drew Counts Egmont and Horn to 
 Brussels early in September and arrested them after sitting in 
 council with them and making a show of friendship and confidence. 
 In vain Margaret remonstrated and threatened to resign. Alva did 
 not care : he had begun his reign of terror. He instituted a fifth 
 council, the Council of Troubles, or, as it was commonly called, the 
 Council of Blood. By the end of October the whole of the Nether- 
 lands were quiet — quiet in stupefaction at the vastness of the 
 cruelties designed and begun under his orders. He summoned 
 the Prince of Orange to Brussels to share the fate of his friends. 
 Margaret would no longer witness the wretchedness of her people ; the 
 people lamented her rule, with all its severity, as mild and gentle in 
 comparison with Alva's. In October she was allowed to resign, and 
 Alva became supreme in title as well as in fact. His administration 
 lasted until 1573, and its character is uniform throughout. 
 
 The events of the year 1568 are most important. The beginning 
 of the year is marked by the horrid edict of condemnation issued 
 against the whole people on February 16, as guilty of treason and 
 under sentence of the Inquisition. Persecution had never ceased ; 
 now extermination began. The remonstrances of Maximilian were 
 answered with supreme contempt. Even Catherine stood aghast 
 and declined the assistance of Alva in the French troubles. At last 
 the Prince of Orange determined that the time was come. Under 
 Lewis of Nassau, Hoogstraten, and Cocque\'ille, three Protestant 
 armies entered the Netherlands and obtained some short successes ; 
 at Heiligerlee Lewis beat the Count of Aremberg, the Governor of 
 the province of Groningen ; but the other two were defeated. Nor 
 was Lewis able to resist the arms of Alva when he found himself at 
 liberty to march against him. This was not until he had completed 
 his proceedings against Egmont and Horn. They were tried, to the 
 disgrace of Spain and civilisation, condemned, and beheaded ; even 
 Granvelle interceded for them in vain. The sentence was carried out 
 on June 5. Then Alva marched into Friesland against Lewis and 
 utterly destroyed his army, July 21. Another army was hastily
 
 PHILIP II. AND THE NETHERLANDS 203 
 
 brought together by the Prince himself, who, having published a 
 statement of his grievances, on August 31 entered the Netherlands 
 in arms. But Alva was more than a match for him ; avoiding a 
 general engagement, he harassed him with skirmishes and constant 
 feigned attacks, until the Germans, of whom the army was composed, 
 became homesick and disappointed, and the Prince had with some 
 difficulty to retreat, with the loss of all his prestige and 8,000 
 unhappy victims. This for the time paralysed the action of the 
 liberators, and two years or three passed without anything important 
 being attempted. 
 
 From 1568 to 1572 the Netherlands were prostrate under the feet 
 of Alva. William was almost beggared by the expedition of 1568 ; 
 and the German powers were not anxious to sacrifice themselves or 
 their men for a mismanaged, helpless cause. The year 1569 is 
 marked by the quarrel of Alva with Queen Elizabeth, which pro- 
 duced a sort of state of war between the English and the Spaniards, 
 without declaration, and principally carried on in piratic naval 
 expeditions. The Prince of Orange, observing this, devoted what 
 money he could raise to the fitting out of privateers, who shortly 
 were to do good service. The same year Alva sowed the seed of 
 disaffection on quite a new ground. He summoned all the provincial 
 estates to Brussels and produced a new budget March 30 : by this 
 he imposed a tax of a hundredth penny on all property to be paid once ; 
 a twentieth on the transfer of all real property for ever ; and a tenth 
 penny on all merchandise and personal property everytime it changed 
 hands. The twentieth penny was, of course, destructive of all trade. 
 Viglius headed the opposition in council, but the measure was passed. 
 The province of Utrecht refused to pay, and was condemned to 
 forfeit all her charters, and the magistrates and inhabitants sentenced 
 to the penalties of treason. But Philip would not back his minister 
 in carrying out the sentence. 
 
 The states refused after 1569 to pay the taxes, and in the end they 
 were commuted for a payment of 2,000,000 gulden for two years. 
 Alva had overshot the mark. In 1570 he issued an amnesty, but it 
 contained so many exceptions that it failed in any degree to satisfy 
 the people. The same year Montigny, who had been in prison in 
 Spain since 1566, was assassinated in prison under a sentence of the 
 Council of Blood, under the superintendence of the King. The 
 inundations of Holland, and the attempt of De Ruyter to seize the 
 castle of Lowestein, which he blew up rather than surrender, 
 perishing himself in the ruins, complete the memorabilia of the 
 year. 
 
 1571 is marked by the negotiations of the Prince of Orange with 
 Charles IX. ; now under the influence of Coligny ; by the Ridolfi plot
 
 204 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 for the assassination of Queen Elizabeth, in which Alva did his best 
 to prevent the execution of Philip's schemes, and by the battle of 
 Lepanto. 
 
 In 1572 Alava visited Brussels and reported to Philip against 
 Alva's administration. But Alva had already resigned, and the Duke 
 of Medina-Celi received his commission as viceroy (September 1571). 
 Alva held office only until his successor should arrive. He did 
 arrive in June 1572 ; but by that time the difficulties were so great, 
 owing to the condition of war and finance, that the government 
 could not be transferred, nor was Alva willing to make way for him. 
 Their views were incompatible, and the uneasy relation between the 
 two Dukes continued until the middle of 1573, when Medina-Celi 
 retired and left Alva master of the field. But before Medina-Celi's 
 arrival the atmosphere had changed, and a brisk war was being carried 
 on which ended in the emancipation of Holland. The discussion of 
 / this war must be put off to another lecture in which I shall hope to 
 
 complete our survey, or our attempt at a chronological review, of the 
 reign of Philip II. You ^vill find in Prescott and Motley elaborate 
 details of the period which we have now run through in outhne : 
 both are learned historians, but Prescott's fairness is as much 
 superior to Motley's as the language in which he records his im- 
 pressions. Without being a philosophic historian, he is invaluable 
 as far as he goes. 
 
 f 
 
 * LECTURE VI 
 
 / THE WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS TO THE DEATH OP 
 
 ^ WILLIAM THE SILENT, 1584 
 
 We shall proceed in this lecture with the sequel of the history of the 
 Netherlands, which we left under Alva and Medina-Celi in 1572. 
 We have failed to see in the proceedings of Philip himself towards the 
 provinces any policy other than that of repression. The extinction 
 of heresy at any cost was the object which he had set before himself, 
 and which he had persuaded himself was a duty imperative upon 
 him and a justification of all the cruelties through which the end 
 was to be obtained. A failure of success in this point was enough 
 to ensure the dismissal of his most valued ministers ; he had thrown 
 over the astute and careful management of Granvelle, the com- 
 paratively mild and temporising administration of the Duchess of 
 Parma, and was now ready to recall Alva, whose measures, going 
 straight to the mark, seemed to be ensuring their own defeat.
 
 THE WAR IN THE NETHEELANDS 205 
 
 To his opponents, great as was the use made of the religious 
 grievance, it was not the whole of the grievance. The destruction 
 of the ancient guarantees of independence ; the iniquitous system 
 introduced instead of the regular process of law ; the constant 
 influence of foreign adventurers or native statesmen hardened in 
 Spanish principles ; the cruel work of destruction of trade and 
 commerce produced by the taxation of Alva ; the accumulation of 
 new expedients of tyranny upon the old ones which had banished 
 Orange and reduced the political feelings of the provinces to a 
 paralytic numbness, had proved too much even for the paralysed 
 energies of those who remained to submit to them. They brought 
 together Catholic and Protestant upon one ground, hostility inter- 
 necine and perpetual to the foreign tyrant. 
 
 I remarked, I think, that Margaret's policy might possibly have 
 succeeded ; that when Alva undertook the government the Prince of 
 Orange was not yet in arms ; that the reaction in favour of Koman 
 doctrine had set in throughout the Continent, and that in the 
 Netherlands it might have been successful if it had not been pressed 
 beyond the limits which were reached in France and Germany. A 
 very large portion of the countries in which these things were going 
 on is now the most Catholic country in Europe. The Netherlands 
 themselves were at that time not more Protestant than the Austrian 
 dominions in Germany. The Austrian dominions in Germany are 
 now nearly purely Catholic : and both might have been treated alike. 
 But Philip hated compromise, and Alva was too able a minister 
 to let well alone. His financial budget produced the storm, which 
 kindled into a great war, which lasted from 1572 to 1609 and ended 
 by making Holland Protestant and Belgium Catholic. 
 
 Very large as is the proportionate importance which we have to 
 give to this war in this course of lectures, it is not greater than the 
 subject demands. During great part of its continuance it is the only 
 war that can be said to be going on in Europe ; it is not broken by a 
 peace during the whole of the thirty-seven years, and it has connected 
 with it every great name known in Europe. Nor can its political 
 importance be less than the highest : it is the first war of liberation 
 and the pattern and precedent of all succeeding revolutions. The 
 principles on which it was worked out, and even the religious formula 
 of its chief actors, have mingled with the elements of all of those 
 revolutions. The Thirty Years' War, the war of the English 
 rebelHon, the revolution of 1688, the war of American independence, 
 everything republican, looks to this war as part of the throes of its 
 origin. And the importance of the result has shed a glory over the 
 men and a brilliancy over their exploits which are, perhaps, a little 
 out of proportion to the reality. The interest is in the principle that
 
 206 LECTURES 0N|EUR0PEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 was at stake and in the mightiness of the result, not in the details of 
 the wars, or, to some extent, in the character of the actors. It is only 
 the extravagance of partisanship that can elevate ihe Princes of 
 Orange to the rank of heroes. Egmont and Horn are victims, 
 most basely and ungratefully treated, but they are not martyrs. The 
 very length of the war at once stamps the battles and sieges of which 
 it is composed as petty and inconclusive : if they had been so great 
 as to deserve all the elaboration with which they are written, they 
 would have been decisive. As it is, they illustrate the obstinacy of 
 the parties rather than the grandeur of their achievements. We 
 cannot attempt even to detail them with the minuteness of which 
 the French civil wars are capable ; those wars are short and distinct 
 in their field and effect : this is without a break and can only be 
 divided or arranged according to the dates of the entry and exit of 
 the chief actors in it. To divide it by the death of Orange or the 
 death of Philip, or the change of governors, is not really to mark eras, 
 but to form a convenient mnemonic artifice. But the period has to 
 be read and studied, otherwise we cannot understand the play of 
 European politics. 
 
 War may be said to begin with the capture of Brill by the privateer 
 fleet which the Prince of Orange had been labouring to create, and 
 had placed under the command of William de la Marck. These 
 privateers had been sheltered in the English ports, during the time 
 that Elizabeth and Alva had been hostile : now the Duke and Queen 
 were drawing together and the Flemish privateers were ordered to 
 quit the English coast. On April 1, 1572, de la Marck took Brill ; 
 and, although the people were spared, the pirates showed their nature 
 by plundering the churches. The fleet which Alva sent to displace 
 them was repulsed ; and, by the advice of Treslong, a Flemish noble 
 and admiral, the people of Brill took an oath of allegiance to the 
 Prince of Orange as Stadtholder or lieutenant of the King. This is 
 the first step towards the vindication of political independence in the 
 country. 
 
 The capture of Brill was followed by a revolution at Flushing : 
 undeterred by the fate of Kotterdam, which had been sacked by Bossu, 
 Alva's admiral, for refusing him admission, the people of Flushing 
 received Treslong, hanged Pacheco, Alva's engineer, and accepted as 
 governor of Walcheren a nominee of the Prince. The example of 
 Brill and Flushing was followed all through Holland and Zeeland. 
 Everywhere the Prince was recognised as Stadtholder, and as 
 Stadtholder for King Philip : the states claimed only their ancient 
 rights, and it was against Alva, not against Philip, that they would 
 be understood to rebel. 
 
 In May a bold stroke was made in the south. Lewis of Nassau
 
 THE WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS 207 
 
 took Mens. Alva was overwhelmed with indignation and astonish- 
 ment. Next the insurgents captured a Spanish fleet. In June Alva 
 summoned the States of Holland, and, in hopes of gaining a subsidy, 
 offered to abolish the tenth penny : but the states would not come 
 at his call ; they met at Dordrecht, in obedience to the summons of 
 the Prince of Orange, and recognised him as the Stadtholder, 
 promising to do their utmost to procure his appointment as Protector 
 of all the Netherlands. It was now time for the Prince to come 
 forward : he entered the Netherlands July 7, with his German 
 army, and advanced to meet Alva who was besieging Mons. He had 
 hoped for aid from France, but instead of it received the news of 
 St. Bartholomew. This was a thunderbolt. He was obliged to 
 retreat, leaving Lewis to his fate. Mons was surrendered by 
 capitulation ; Lewis got off scot-free, but the people were sacrificed. 
 Alva and the Blood Council had a sweet and full revenge. The 
 Prince of Orange disbanded his army and retired into Holland. The 
 city of Mechlin shared the fate of Mons ; it had recognised the Prince 
 and, by way of example, was sacked by Alva. 
 
 The rest of the year was spent in a struggle for the places in 
 Holland which had not yet received the Stadtholder. The insurgents 
 failed to take Tergoes ; Alva's force sacked Zutphen. Treason 
 helped to complicate the disasters of the Orange party ; town after 
 town forsook the Prince after the tide turned. Don Frederick of 
 Toledo, Alva's son, outwent his father in savage cruelty. By the 
 winter matters began to look hopeless and the Prince to rise in 
 dignity to the occasion. He summoned the States of Holland to 
 Haarlem and laid before them his plans. Holland might be defended, 
 further conquest was at present not to be looked for. Alva and 
 Toledo were on their way. Haarlem was the bulwark of Holland ; 
 every nerve must be strained to save it. 
 
 The siege of Haarlem began on December 10. Every expedient 
 was used for the capture, and every expedient for the defence ; battles 
 were fought on land, on water, and on ice ; but no terms of com- 
 promise were ofiered. Expedition after expedition failed to relieve 
 the city. On July 12, 1573, Haarlem was starved into surrender. 
 Alva came in person to preside over the punishments ; 2,300 
 prisoners were executed. 
 
 The next town to be besieged was Alkmaar, which, after seven 
 week's siege, was saved by a threat of Ih'e'Prince to cut the dykes 
 and let in the sea. This was in October. The same month the 
 patriots won a naval fight near Horn, and took prisoner Admiral 
 Bossu. This is nearly the last event of Alva's command. He had 
 got rid of Medina-Celi ; in November 1573, Don Luiz de Requesens, 
 Grand Commander of St. James, arrived to supersede him, and on
 
 208 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 December 18 he departed. His administration demands no further 
 comment. He was, as a ruler, all that the revolutionists of Germany 
 and Italy have charged the Kings of Spain, the Emperors, and the 
 Popes with being. He died in 1582. He had, early in the year, 
 made close alliance with Elizabeth ; and, since the massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew, had been playing on the excited feelings of Charles IX. 
 He was as successful as he wished to be in his plans for preventing 
 any succour reaching Holland from either France or England. 
 
 The administration of Kequesens lasted from December 1573 to 
 March 1576, and was terminated by Ms death. He was a brave 
 and moderate man, but not equal to the task he had undertaken ; nor 
 was he welcome to a nation longing for peace and financially 
 beggared. But he came with promises of gentle dealing, and was an 
 angel of light after Alva. His first task was to relieve Middelburg, 
 which was besieged by Boisot ; in this he failed. Middelburg 
 capitulated to the Prince of Orange in February 1574. The next 
 was to repel Le^vis of Nassau, who was bringing the auxiliaries from 
 Germany : this was committed to Don Sancho d'Avila, and was 
 carried out successfully. Avila beat Lewis at Mook on the Meuse, 
 April 14 ; and Lewis is supposed to have perished in the battle; he 
 was never heard of again. 
 
 The history of the year is diversified by a mutiny among the 
 Spanish troops, who seized Antwerp and compelled the magistrates 
 to pay the wages due by the government, Leyden had been besieged 
 in the end of 1573, and had been left only oh the alarm of Coimt 
 Lewis's approach. The siege was renewed in 1574 and lasted until 
 October 3, when it was relieved by Admiral Boisot. The details of 
 it are a repetition of those of Haarlem ; the result happier. As in 
 that case also the history of the siege is the history of the war. 
 
 From the arrival of Kequesens we trace the revival of the third 
 party in the Netherlands, which for a long time occupies as leading 
 a place as Philip or the Prince of Orange : the national party, which 
 would gladly have seen the country governed as it had been under 
 Charles V. ; but desired toleration and the expulsion of the Spaniards 
 more than revolution or political independence. To this party 
 Orange was not a national leader, as he was to the Hollanders and 
 Zeelanders, but an able leader of opposition, to whom they might 
 incline as much as they pleased, but were nowise bound to follow. 
 This party was strong in the administration of Kequesens ; it con- 
 tained, indeed, all the native statesmen who were not yet bound 
 hand and foot by Philip or maddened by religious bigotry. To 
 humour these, Kequesens, early in 1574, made some propositions for 
 the abolition of the Council of Blood, but his proposals were con- 
 tingent on the grant of subsidies, and, this failing, were withdrawn.
 
 THE WAR IX THE NETHERLANDS 209 
 
 From this time, however, the regular sessions of the Blood Council 
 ceased, and the institution itself fell into abeyance. 
 
 Another result of the change of governor seems to have been 
 the commencement of negotiations, at first secret, but later formal and 
 recognised, between William of Orange and the governor himself. 
 These were carried on through St. Aldegonde first, afterwards through 
 Champagny, the brother of Granvelle, and Dr. Leoninus, a professor 
 of Louvain. But the points reserved by Requesens as indiscussable — 
 the King's authority and the religious toleration — made any recon- 
 ciliation on such a basis impossible. In the meantime William's 
 influence on his own government was jeopardied by the jealousies of 
 the states, and he was obliged to remonstrate against their treatment 
 so strongly that in November they vested in him, under the title of 
 regent or governor, absolute authority. This dictatorship, for such 
 it practically was, is a second decided step towards the casting off 
 the allegiance to Phihp. 
 
 One more attempt to negotiate was made by Maximilian this 
 winter, and one result of it and of the secret deliberations was a 
 conference at Breda, held in the spring of 1575, between the States 
 of Holland and Zeeland and a commission from the governor. 
 These conferences lasted from March to July. The removal of the 
 Spanish troops and the summoning of the States General were the 
 text of Orange and his supporters ; submission to the King and 
 restoration of the Catholic religion that of the commissioners. The 
 commissioners were willing to dismiss the troops ; they were willing 
 to promise that the Spanish Inquisition should not be introduced ; 
 but religious freedom was not to be heard of ; the German system of 
 repression must be adopted if the Spanish were discarded ; the 
 heretics might sell their property and emigrate. The states were 
 willing that even this compromise should be settled by the States 
 General. The final disruption took place on the question of 
 guarantees. William refused to place four strongholds of the 
 provinces in the hands of the commission as security for compliance 
 with the sentence of the States General ; the only security offered 
 by the other party being the signature of Philip and Maximilian. 
 So this attempt at peace ended. Hostilities were resumed by 
 Requesens immediately and with some success. In July Oudewater 
 was taken and sacked ; in August, Schoonhoven. In September, by 
 a very bold expedient, he marched his troops through the shallows 
 from the isle of Tholen to Duiveland and Schouwen ; took the isle 
 of Schouwen, and besieged Zierikzee. This siege lasted until June 
 1576. 
 
 One other remarkable event of the year was the marriage of the 
 Prince of Orange to Charlotte of Bourbon during the life of his 
 
 ■.". K ,"i,j.^ ■«#'.« -.if*m'^
 
 210 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 forniei* wife, Anna of Saxony, wliose tomper and bad habits had 
 driven her mad. This was in June 1575. The marriage, of course, 
 grievously offended her German relations, and injured the Protes- 
 tant cause, and when the siege of Zierikzee threatened to cut off 
 communications between the different parts of his provinces, he 
 determined to risk all : to cast away the allegiance hitherto professed 
 to Philip, and demand admission into the Empire as a German State, 
 The latter part of the project was abortive, but on October 1, 1595. 
 Holland and Zeeland renounced their allegiance. Negotiations were 
 forthwith opened with both England and France. As for England, 
 Elizabeth was willing to accept the sovereignty, but not the expense 
 of a struggle. As to France, the proposition could not be made to 
 the Duke of Alen^on at the moment, owing to his position with 
 regard to the court ; he was just now heading the Huguenots, and 
 Henry III. and Catherine could not in decency make the proposal of 
 Omnge a mere expedient for getting rid of him. Matters were in 
 this state when Requesens died suddenly, INIarch 5, 1576, and the 
 supreme government, not having been otherwise provided for, fell 
 into the hands of the Council of State, most of Avhose members 
 belonged to the national or an ti- Spanish party. The long hesitation 
 of Philip as to the appointment of a new governor had the effect of 
 prolonging their tenure, not of strengthening their hold of power. 
 
 The action of the year is rapid and important. Zierikzee, after a vain 
 attempt to relieve it, in which Admiral P)oisot perished, surrendered 
 in June and was followed by a revolt of the Spanish troops all over 
 the Netherlands. The cruelties perpetrated by these wretches were 
 very terrible ; but they had so much of a good result that a Congress 
 of the States met, and in November at Ghent made a treaty with 
 William of Orange, the fifteen Catholic States, and the two Protestant 
 ones, by which the whole body pledged themselves to the expulsion 
 of the Spaniards. The edicts against the Protestants were suspended ; 
 the prince was continued in his government, prisoners were released 
 without ransom ; and an early meeting of the old States General 
 determined on, which would settle the religious question on the basis 
 of toleration. 
 
 There are many difficulties and obscurities connected with this 
 subject, and indeed the events of the year are confusing, all real 
 authority being in abeyance ; but in particular we must guard 
 against supposing that this Congress of Ghent was a constitutional 
 assembly of the States General ; it was only the best substitute that 
 could be got. We ask in vain what had become of the renunciation 
 of allegiance by Holland and Zeeland, and what real power the 
 council had in the convention. Morally, the importance of the 
 pacification of Ghent is greater than it is legally. It expresses, no
 
 THE WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS 211 
 
 doubt, the deliberate wishes of the nation, but it has not the element 
 of permanency. The events of 1576 are certainly revolutionary. 
 
 Immediately after the pacification the arrival of Don John of 
 Austria, son of Charles V., as governor in the' place of Eequesens, 
 was made known. He arrived at Luxemburg on November 3. 
 Don John was a very able, brilliant person, with some very good, 
 some very admirable qualities ; but in many respects he was the very 
 reverse of William of Orange, and those respects were perhaps 
 of the most importance in such a matter as lay before him. He was 
 vain, impulsive, rash, and without any plan of operations, or policy 
 either of his own or marked out for him by PhiUp : he had nothing 
 but genius unassisted to oppose to the able and wary and elaborate 
 poUcy of his opponent, who had perhaps no less genius than himself , 
 of a nature far more germane to the occasion. 
 
 The Congress of Ghent, under the ad\ice of William, lost no 
 time in accosting Don John : deputies met him at Luxemburg on 
 December 6, and presented to him eight articles of demand. The 
 chief are : the removal of the Spanish force ; the release of all 
 prisoners ; the maintenance of the pacification as containing nothing 
 that did not tend to the furtherance of the Catholic religion ; an 
 amnesty ; a convocation of the States General ; and an oath to 
 maintain the liberties and privileges of the provinces. If he agreed 
 to this, they were ready to receive him as governor, to maintain the 
 religion and authority of Philip, and to renounce all foreign alliances. 
 John returned no direct answer, but fenced merely. The Spanish 
 troops might go, but they must go by sea ; he wanted them, in fact, 
 to invade England ; he would be glad of peace, but he must know 
 more about the pacification of Ghent before he signed it ; he was 
 glad to hear that the States were so well disposed to the King and 
 the faith ; he would govern as had been done under his imperial 
 father, Charles V. 
 
 To meet this undecided dealing a new expedient was devised, or 
 rather, perhaps, imitated from the other side of the frontier. The 
 year before was the year of the formation of the League in France. 
 January 1677 saw the formation of the Union of Brussels on a like 
 basis : the formation of a league to expel the Spanish soldiers and 
 to maintain the Catholic religion and constitutions of the Nether- 
 lands, a confederation of individuals of all ranks and orders, 
 membership being entered by signing of the name, and, curiously 
 enough, by men of all religions. It was on this point that, like the 
 Compromise confederacy in the days of Margaret of Parma, it was 
 destined to split. 
 
 From this time there is a sort of triangular struggle to be 
 observed : Don John the governor, without council, without troops, 
 
 p2
 
 ! 
 
 I 
 
 i' 
 
 212 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 and without policy ; the Prince of Orange ; and the States General, 
 or the national government as left by Requesens but really under 
 the influence of WilHam, ruling in their name. The States had not 
 yet accepted Don John as governor. A month's negotiations 
 satisfied Don John that it was useless to struggle : he must sur- 
 render all and hope for new chances from a new beginning. His 
 heart Avas not in the struggle ; his object was to attack and conquer 
 England, release the Queen of Scots, and share the throne with her. 
 Dut he did not mistrust Philip, and Philip's enemies thought that 
 he had sent him to the Netherlands to ruin himself. On February 17 
 1)8 yielded all, and by the Perpetual Edict accepted the pacification 
 of Ghent, conceding all the demands of the States, Philip, a few 
 weeks after, confirmed the Edict. 
 
 This measure threatened to rob William of Orange of his vantage- 
 ground. He acted as a politician, and as a crafty one. Although 
 the Perpetual Edict confirmed the pacification, wherein was his great 
 success ; although he had sunk, in the negotiations for obtaining it, 
 the renunciation of his allegiance to Philip, he saw in this a subtle 
 way of turning Don John's weapon against himself, and set himself 
 in earnest to break through the understanding between Don John 
 and the States. In vain Don John negotiated. William was, by 
 his silence or his disingenuonsness, a master at negotiation ; he had 
 been tutored by Charles V. Unfortunately for himself, Don John 
 gave occasion to the States to disown him. The troops were 
 removed ; Don John was received at Brussels as governor ; but he 
 saw himself still powerless. The Duke of Aerschot was commander- 
 in-chief of the army, and he was in constant and close communica- 
 tion with the Prince. Don John saw that he must make a stroke 
 for himself. Taking advantage of a visit of Margaret of Valois to 
 Namur, undertaken with the intention of making the way easy for 
 the Duke of Alen9on, he seized the citadel and garrisoned it with his 
 own men. A like attempt at Antwerp failed, and threw the citadel 
 there into the power of Orange's party, ostensibly the officers of the 
 government. 
 
 These acts caused a breach between Don John and the States 
 which drove them into more open co-operation with the Prince of 
 Orange. They wrote in August 1577 to Philip, begging that the 
 governor might be removed. He himself was anxious to go ; his life 
 was made a burden to him by the real or pretended plots of the 
 Orange party. So great was the change of circumstances now, that 
 Orange was invited to Brussels, and visited the States there in 
 September. He put an end to all negotiations \\ith Don John by 
 insisting on terms which he could not accept ; he Avas, in fact, 
 treated as a rebel. He retired to Luxemburg, and the States set
 
 THE WAK IN THE NETHERLANDS 213 
 
 to work to find themselves a new sovereign. Elizabeth, as usual, 
 trifled, and satisfied herself with damaging the chances of Alencon. 
 The States turned for a saviour to quite a new quarter. The Arch- 
 duke Matthias, son of Maximilian II. and brother of the Emperor, 
 jumped at the offer, ran away from Vienna, and was met by the 
 Prince of Orange at Antwerp. On December 7 the States deposed 
 Don John, and on the 10th signed a new Act of Union, ' the New or 
 Nearer Union of Brussels,' the last confederation of all the Nether- 
 lands. This constitution was accepted by the Archduke, and on 
 January 18, 1578, he was inaugurated at Brussels. Orange was 
 made lieutenant-general. 
 
 Don John prepared to assert his position in arms. At Luxem- 
 burg he collected a brave little army with which he declared his 
 purpose (January 25). He had with him Ottavio Gonzaga and 
 Alexander Farnese. The States army sent to meet him was under 
 De Goignies, a soldier of Charles V. They met at Gemblours, not far 
 from Namur, January 30, 1578, and the result of the battle was a 
 brilliant victory of the conqueror of Lepanto. It was his last 
 success. He overran Flanders afterwards, taking the cities one by 
 one ; and he at last succeeded in getting remittances from Spain ; 
 but his chances of governing the Netherlands were gone. His design 
 on England was betrayed to Philip, and his secretary, Escovedo, 
 assassinated. He saAV himself without a friend and without a 
 prospect in life. 
 
 On the other hand, the States and their supporters were for the 
 moment paralysed. The Archduke sank at once into insignificance ; 
 he was nothing by himself, and had brought nothing with him. To 
 France they must look for aid. AlenQon was ready to help them. 
 William negotiated terms with him. The armies were again col- 
 lected, but the religious difiiculty was already dividing the national 
 party, and before they could settle their quarrels Don John was dead. 
 He died on October 1, a victim, not perhaps, of poison, but" certainly 
 of Philip's heartbreaking and unscrupulous selfishness. He appointed 
 on his deathbed Alexander Farnese, the son of the Duchess Margaret 
 of Parma, as his successor. 
 
 Matters were already assuming the appearance of anarchy, and 
 the death of Don John seems to have removed the chief external 
 help to cohesion between the provinces. As might have been 
 expected, the anti- Spanish party had split on the question of 
 religion ; William of Orange, in the name of the Archduke, had 
 devised a plan of religious peace and general toleration ; the national 
 party as a body could not support it, and it met with the bitterest 
 opposition from the Catholics. And there were Protestants also, men 
 of Antwerp and Ghent, who would not be satisfied with toleration,
 
 214 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 but demanded the forcible prohibition of the ancient worship. 
 The national party, represented by Champagny, protested against the 
 peace from one side ; the demagogues of Ghent, strengthened by the 
 presence of a large force of Germans under John Casimir, from 
 the other. Alexander saw that his policy Avas to keep quiet and to 
 watch for every chance of detaching man, party, city, and province 
 from either the Prince of Orange or the States. Poor Archduke 
 Matthias no party seemed much to think of consulting at all. 
 
 In December 1578 William succeeded in forcing the religious 
 peace and the departure of Casimir and his army on Ghent. The 
 follo\Ndng month a great step was taken towards the dismemberment 
 of the Netherlands. The Walloon provinces were won over on 
 ecclesiastical grounds to desert the cause of the States, by the 
 exertions of the famous John Sarrasin, prior of St. Vaast. They 
 formed themselves into a league, standing aloof from the other 
 States, and were gradually prepared for reconciliation with the 
 Spanish Government. On the other hand, Groningen and Friesland 
 had attached themselves to the Prince of Orange, and formed, with 
 Holland, Zeeland, Overyssel, Utrecht, and Guelders, the league of 
 Utrecht, the actual foundation act of the future republic, January 23, 
 1579. It was a league to act together in all political matters, 
 offensive and defensive, to secure religious freedom by conforming to 
 the peace propounded by the Archduke ; perfect religious liberty 
 being thereby secured, and not the simple ignoring toleration that 
 was struggled for in France. The supremacy of the King was still 
 recognised ; Matthias was governor ; William Stadtholder of Holland 
 and lieutenant-general. 
 
 The warlike proceedings of the year are confined to the siege of 
 Maestricht by Alexander of Parma, from March to June, when it was 
 taken, and the capture and recapture of Mechlin, first for the 
 Spaniards, next for the States. During all the summer a conference 
 was being held at Cologne for the purpose of inventing terms of 
 peace, on which no two statesmen could be found to agree. In 
 September the Walloon league reconciled itself altogether with the 
 Spanish governor ; and the work of reaction against the government 
 of the States began. This work of reaction was continued by 
 absolute treachery. William was greater at devising constitutions 
 than at maintaining them, and at making friends than at keeping 
 them. The year 1580 saw Count Renneberg, the governor of 
 Groningen, turn against him, and endeavour to carry his province 
 with him ; and Count John of Nassau, the Prince's brother, weary of 
 his task, resign the government of Gelderland. The treason of 
 Renneberg produced an active struggle. Groningen was besieged by 
 Philip of Hohenlohe, who failed to recover it, and was beaten in the
 
 THE WAE IN THE NETHERLANDS 215 
 
 field. The Prince again came to the conclusion that France must be 
 the helper ; the negotiations begun with the Duke of AlenQon, now 
 called of Anjou, must be completed. In vain the Archduke protested 
 against the idea ; the answer was that nothing was to be expected 
 from Spain ; and the Empire, under Rudolf, would not stir a finger 
 in their favour. A treaty was accordingly made with the Duke at 
 Plessis-les-Tours in September 1580 ; and ratified by the convention 
 of Bordeaux January 23, 1581 : to this treaty, although arranged by 
 the prince, the States of Holland and Zeeland were no parties, nor of 
 course the Walloon league. 
 
 In 1580 Philip claimed Portugal on the death of the Cardinal 
 King Henry, and succeeded in making good that claim. He satisfied 
 himself, as far as concerned the Netherlands, with setting a price on 
 the head of William of Orange, 30,000 crowns to anyone who would 
 deliver him up, dead or alive. The object was only too well answered. 
 
 The Declaration of the Independence of the United Provinces was 
 made on July 26, 1581. The States of Holland and Zeeland 
 would not accept the sovereignty of Anjou ; they would no longer 
 recognise their dependence on Philip ; they renounced his allegiance, 
 and offered the sovereignty, with the dignity of Count, to the Prince. 
 He now accepted the dignity provisionally, for he had not yet given 
 up the hope of gathering in the rest of the provinces. The 
 Netherlands were thus divided into three parts : the Walloon States 
 under Philip ; the United States under William ; the Central States 
 under Anjou. Anjou had presented himself in June, but had 
 postponed his installation until the conclusion of his courtship in 
 England. The Archduke, thinking there was no more work for him, 
 took his departure in October. The Duke of Parma, who had only 
 just received the confirmation of his appointment from Philip, 
 proceeded in his gradual work by taking Tournay. 
 
 The courtship of Anjou came to an end with the year ; and early 
 in February 1582 he presented himself for installation. He was 
 received with great ceremony and went through the process of 
 election as Duke of Brabant at Antwerp, as Duke of Guelders and 
 Friesland in July, and as Count of Flanders at Bruges in August. 
 This was the theory of his sovereignty : he was to fill the place of 
 the ancient provincial rulers, to confirm and observe the privileges 
 and to govern with the aid of the States, just as had been done by 
 Philip of Burgundy and Charles the Bold. 
 
 In March the first attempt was made to assassinate the Prince of 
 Orange. He was severely wounded, but recovered rapidly. The 
 alarm cost him his wife, Charlotte of Bourbon. The excitement 
 of the event kindled the loyalty of Holland and Zeeland ; they 
 insisted on his accepting the sovereignty plenarily, and he com-
 
 216 LECTURES ON-,-;EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 plied. He, as Count, would renew the Great Privilege granted by 
 Mary of Burgundy, and rule as did the old national princes. The 
 circumstance that this arrangement was never completed by his 
 installation is perhaps one efficient cause why the government of the 
 provinces ultimately took the form of a republic. He died before the 
 installation could take place. 
 
 The military history of 1582 is languid. Parma went on taking 
 small towns, Oudenarde and others ; there was no work in the field. 
 But the lull did not last. 1583 was a very eventful year. At 
 Christmas 1582 Anjou was persuaded by his French visitors that he 
 was a puppet of Orange and a prisoner to the States. To vindicate 
 his dignity he formed a plot to seize the principal cities still garrisoned 
 by the States and hold them with French soldiery. The plot was 
 discovered, but was not wholly resultless. He disgraced himself and 
 betrayed the narrowness and wickedness of his nature, and the 
 States were anxious to have done with him and send him away. But 
 he declared himself the injured person, and procured the strong 
 intercession and vehement promises of Henry III. and Catherine. 
 More efficaciovts, however, than these was the influence of the 
 Prince of Orange, whose last hope of help from without was vested in 
 him, and who would fain' use him still, though he could not trust 
 him. By March he was reconciled, although the harm he had done 
 was never remedied. On April 12, Orange married Mrs. Teligny, 
 daughter of Coligny. -T.^-^r- 
 
 In June the Duke left for Paris and never returned. Although 
 
 he had not divested himself of the sovereignty, the States seem to 
 
 have considered themselves at liberty to seek a new master, and in 
 
 August, at Middelburg, offered the post to the Prince. Brabant also 
 
 ,, offered to elect him Duke ; but he would not accept either offer. He 
 
 S would not endure the reproach of selfish ambition ; nor could he rid 
 
 himself of his engagements to the Duke of Anjou. Nor would it 
 
 have been easy to oppose himself alone to the rising power of 
 
 Alexander of Parma, who was rapidly gathering in towns and even 
 
 pro%inces. The governor of Guelders, the Prince's brother-in-law, 
 
 *' betrayed his province to the Spaniards. The Prince of Chimay, 
 
 governor of Flanders, did the same, and Ghent was saved only by 
 
 the strong remonstrances of Orange. Bruges gave itself up in May 
 
 1584. 
 
 But the end of two chief actors was near. Anjou was still 
 
 , purposing a return, when he died, as it appeared, by poison, June 10, 
 
 I at Chateau-Thierry. William was assassinated by Balthazar Gerard 
 
 on July 10 at his own house at Delft ; and with him a great part of the 
 
 interest in the history of the Netherlands ends. I shall say little now 
 
 of his character ; something 1 may by and by ; now only this, that,
 
 THE WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS 217 
 
 taken at the lowest estimate, he was something very different from 
 ordinary men, especially politicians ; and yet he was a politician, 
 rather than a hero or a statesman. Taken at the higher estimate, he 
 was isr hero, almost a saint. He did a great work, and yet, had he 
 beefl' better or worse than he was, it might have been a greater. 
 How this was we will consider in a future lecture ; we have dwelt 
 long on these details, because they cannot well be compressed. 
 Henceforth we must content ourselves with a scantier outline and 
 from a somewhat higher standing-point. 
 
 LECTURE VIl 
 
 THK LATER YEARS OF THE REIGN OF PHILIP II., 1584-1598 
 
 It will be necessary in this lecture to complete our view of the reign 
 of Philip II., and as it, of course, contains elements of importance 
 over and above the history of the Netherlands, to draw the latter 
 into as small compass as possible. Very much of the personal and 
 particular interest ends with the life of William of Orange ; and the 
 political history, although after that date it becomes even of more 
 interest than before, does not involve us in so much minute 
 detail. 
 
 The state of affairs in the autumn of 1584 was this : death had 
 removed the Duke of Anjou and the Prince of Orange within a month 
 of one another. With the death of the Duke the interest of France 
 in the Netherlands determined ; by that of the Prince, so immediately 
 following, before he had time to provide a successor to the Duke, all 
 cohesion between the States, save and except those bound together 
 by the Union of Utrecht, appeared to be removed. Alexajider of 
 Parma, Philip's governor-general, was not slow in following up the 
 system he had begun upon : as he had brought Bruges to submission 
 in the summer he brought Ghent in the autumn (September 17), 
 and every month saw the dominion of the States' government in 
 the south seriously curtailed. The whole of Flanders, except Ostend 
 and Sluys, followed. 
 
 On this success he commenced the siege of Antwerp, which was, 
 indeed, no slight undertaking, and in which he, the greatest general 
 of the age, employed and exhausted all the expedients of the rapidly 
 developing art of war. The siege of Antwerp lasted until August 17, 
 1585. During the continuance of it, Brussels, Mechlin, and many 
 other places of importance went over to the Spaniards. 
 
 The conquest or reconciliation of Antwerp very nearly completed
 
 218 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 the subjugation of the south, and the authority of the States was 
 becoming gradually confined to the provinces united by the Union 
 of Utrecht, of which Holland and Zeeland had shown a disposition 
 to accept isolation under the sovereign rule of William of Orange. 
 The United Provinces had lost in him the great symbol of their 
 union. Holland and Zeeland had elected in his place as Stadtholder 
 his second son, Maurice ; and the other States placed a confidence 
 in him more warranted by his capacity than by his years, and 
 justified by his future exploits rather than by the apparent necessity 
 of the trust. But he simply had their confidence. Although they 
 renewed the Union of Utrecht and chose governors attached to the 
 Orange policy, they remained under their own magistrates and the 
 direction of the States. They wanted not only a successor to William, 
 but a successor to the Duke of Anjou, whose lieutenant-general 
 William had been. 
 
 Compelled to seek such a successor abroad, they betook themselves 
 again to England, and this time with apparently more success. The 
 treaty with Elizabeth was made on August 17, 1585. Elizabeth 
 promised to assist the States with men and money, and Brill, 
 Flushing, and Eammekens, were put in her hands as guarantees for 
 the payment of the debt. Sir Philip Sidney was made governor of 
 these towns ; the Earl of Leicester captain-general of the forces. 
 The States eagerly welcomed Leicester, who arrived on December 10, 
 1585. He was made governor-general by the United Provinces, at 
 the Hague, February 1, 1586, Maurice having previously been elected 
 governor, admiral, and captain -general of Holland, Zeeland, and 
 Friesland. 1 need hardly explain the causes of Leicester's failure, 
 and the actual mischief his incapacity did to the cause he was sent to 
 promote. He showed himself undeserving of the confidence of the 
 States, by aiming, as Anjou had done, at the sovereignty ; his 
 behaviour was offensive, his policy weak ; his management tyrannical, 
 extravagant, and ineffective. 
 
 Alexander of Parma continued to enlarge and consolidate his 
 acquisitions. In December 1586, Leicester quitted the country, and 
 returned to England to press the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. 
 The government he left, by one act, in the hands of the Council 
 of State, reserving to himself, by another, large portions of patronage 
 and jurisdiction. It did not require this to sicken the Netherlands 
 of the wretch. Parma was all the while gaining strength, yet 
 Leicester had attempted to undermine the authority of Maurice, who 
 was the only person exercising sound government in the whole of the 
 provinces. They complained to Elizabeth, Avho sent back her 
 favourite in June 1587. But this did not turn the luck. Alexander 
 took Sluys in August, and rested awhile from his labours. Leicester
 
 THE LATER YEARS OF THE REIGN OF PHILIP II. 219 
 
 spent the time in intrigue and conspiracy ; the States discovered his 
 treacherous designs, complained again to Elizabeth, and procured his 
 recall in December 1587. 
 
 There was now no longer any pretence of peace between England 
 and Spain. Mary Queen of Scots had been beheaded in February 
 1587, and the fleets of the two powers were burning and plundering 
 at sea. Philip's design of conquering England and bringing it back 
 by force to the Catholic religion was a part of the programme of his 
 alliance with the League now attempting revolution in France. Yet, 
 even whilst the Spanish Armada was on its way to England, 
 Elizabeth attempted to negotiate a peace for herself and her Nether- 
 land towns with the Duke of Parma, the relations of each with Spain 
 remaining unchanged. This expedient was not entirely new. The 
 governante of the Netherlands had been at war with Francis I. 
 whilst Charles V. was at peace with him ; and Alva had had relations 
 with Elizabeth herself not by any means parallel Avith those of 
 Philip. This proposal, however, considering Elizabeth's relations 
 with the States, was too absurd, and it came to nothing. During 
 the excitement about the Armada, Alexander had no time for active 
 proceedings against Maurice ; and in September 1588 Leicester's 
 death relieved all parties from apprehensions of his return. The 
 towns which he had alienated from the common interest returned 
 to allegiance, with the exception of Gertruydenberg, where the 
 garrison had been thoroughly corrupted, and, after great cruelties, 
 gave up the place to the Spanish governor. 
 
 In 1589 the health of Parma failed, and the affairs of the 
 provinces looked up. Breda was taken — a very good exchange for 
 Gertruydenberg — and Nimeguen seriously threatened. The French 
 wars, moreover, now again distracted the attention of Parma. 
 Maurice was growing in ability and in the confidence of the States ; 
 in 1591 he was elected governor of Guelderland. The north-western 
 provinces also showed signs of shaking off the Spanish yoke ; 
 Nimeguen was at last won, October 22, 1591. In May 1592 Maurice 
 pushed his conquests in Overyssel and took Steenwyck and the 
 strongly fortified town of Corwrerden. In December 1592 the Duke 
 of Parma died, and Ernest of Mansfeld, who had been long acting 
 as his lieutenant, succeeded him. His government lasted two years, 
 during which Maurice, who since the failure of Farnese had taken 
 rank as the greatest warrior of the time, took Gertruydenberg after 
 a three months' siege, and isolated Groningen by occupying and 
 fortifying the frontier. On January 30, 1594, the Archduke Ernest 
 arrived as successor to Mansfeld, but his period of rule is in itself 
 uneventful and lasted but a few months to February 1595, It 
 witnessed, however, another great triumph of Maurice, the capture of
 
 220 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Groningen, which he took on July 24, 1594. This success com- 
 pleted the territory afterwards known as the Seven Upited Provinces, 
 with the exception of a few border towns. Maurice had now 
 recovered neiirly everything that his father had lost since the Union 
 
 of Utrecht. 
 
 The next governor, Pedro Henriquez d'Azovedo, Count of 
 Fuentes, did nothing but quarrel with the Flemings. Maurice 
 strengthened his position, to some extent, by an alliance with 
 Henry IV., which, however, roused the jealousy of Queen Elizabeth, 
 who was anxious to maintain an influence on the Netherlands, 
 although she would make no sacrifice or exertion to help them. But 
 Fuentes was recalled in 1596, and Philip, , now grown old, seems to 
 have determined to submit to circumstances and endure the idea of 
 a permanent loss of the northern provinces. Not that he would 
 endure a peace or a recognition of independence : that wa? not to 
 come yet for many years ; but if by the sacrifice of a part the 
 remainder could be retained, or if, by devoting more time and pains 
 for the consolidation of the remaining portion, a standing-ground 
 could be formed from whence at some future period the other parts 
 might be reconquered, he would be content. On the recall, there- 
 fore, of Fuentes he appointed as governor the Archduke Albert of 
 Austria, Archbishop of Toledo, and lately viceroy of Portugal. He 
 arrived February 29, 1596. The French war w^as now raging, and 
 Albert had little time for anything else. He succeeded, however, in 
 taking Hulst from Maurice in 1596. Maurice, on the other hand, in 
 1597 was very successful, and threatened Brabant with conquest. 
 The alliance between England and France strengthened Maurice 
 still more. The States did their best to prevent a peace between 
 Henry and Philip in 1598, and resisted every attempt made by 
 Philip, through the Emperor and the Kings of Denmark and Poland, 
 to make some sort of terms. But they did not succeed in hindering 
 the peace of Vervins ; they consoled themselves with a close alliance 
 with Elizabeth. 
 
 Philip's last transaction with regard to the Netherlands was, 
 curiously enough, an act that might at an earlier date have kept 
 them altogether for his house. He consented to part with them. 
 He arranged a marriage between the Archduke Albert and his 
 daughter Isabella : Isabella was to have the Netherlands in full 
 sovereignty, the feudal suzerainty alone being reserved to the Kings 
 of Spain. All difficulties were got over ; the Archduke was relieved 
 from his archbishopric and all clerical obligations, and the marriage 
 contract was signed shortly before the death of Philip : it was com- 
 pleted in the spring of 1599. 
 
 Here for the present we must close our sketch of the Netherlands
 
 THE LATEE YEARS OF THE REIGN OF PHILIP II. 221 
 
 history. Henceforth the war, although continuous, is rather a war 
 of aggression than of liberation : no great changes of attitude or 
 frontier took place after the death of Philip, although Maurice went 
 on for twenty years and more startling the world with brilliant 
 exploits. Up to the year 1584, the history of the Netherlands is the 
 history of Philip II. From that date we see more clearly than 
 before the working out of the other designs over which that astute 
 and prudent, slow and sure monarch had brooded so many years. 
 
 In 1580, the King of Portugal died, and Philip found himself 
 involved in a new interest which certainly did relieve for some time 
 the pressure of his power on the Netherlands. The vacancy in the 
 Portuguese throne had been looked for with anxiety since the death 
 or disappearance of Dom Sebastian in Africa in 1578. There were 
 five candidates for the succession : Antonio, prior of Crato, son of 
 Luis, brother of Joam III., but reputed illegitimate ; .Joam, Duke 
 of Braganza ; Rainucci, Duke of Parma ; Emanuel Philibert of Savoy ; 
 and Philip, King of Spain. Philip was the son of the eldest sister 
 of Henriquez, the Duke of Savoy of a younger sister ; the other three 
 were descended maternally from a younger brother. On English 
 principles these three claims would be better than Philip's : but, 
 mere consanguinity considered, he came the nearest to the late King. 
 What advantage, however, he had in that way he lost by the opera- 
 tion of a law of Portugal, by which any princess who married a 
 foreign prince forfeited her right to the throne. In this disability 
 the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Savoy shared. The Duke of 
 Braganza's claim thus became supreme, and might fairly have been 
 admitted but for the strength and intrigue of Philip. Henriquez 
 had seen the justice of that claim, but he dared not openly oppose 
 Phihp ; he appointed three regents who were to decide. Antonio, 
 the prior of Crato, on the news of his uncle's death, betook himself 
 to Lisbon without waiting for the decision of the regents ; threw 
 himself into the arms of the deputies of the third estate, who claimed, 
 certainly without authority, the right of determining the succession, 
 and declared himself King. Philip proclaimed war forthwith and 
 sent in an army under Alva. The struggle was short. Lisbon, army, 
 and navy fell into Philip's hands, and he was proclaimed King of 
 Portugal, as Philip I. Antonio made a good fight for his crown, 
 and was supported in some measure by the intrigues of Ehzabeth, 
 as well as by a fleet under Sir Francis Drake ; he held out in the 
 Azores for some little time, but was gradually edged out by Philip, 
 who, by spending two years in Portugal, propitiated the people and 
 obtained the full allegiance of both the kingdom and the colonies. 
 On returning to Spain he left the Archduke Albert as viceroy, who 
 governed well and temperately.
 
 222 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, I.'iig-IGIS 
 
 Antonio, however, was not dead, hut likely to give further 
 trouble. He applied first to the French Court and afterwards to the 
 English. Here in England he arrived in 1589, after the event of 
 the Armada, and consequently met with a good deal of encourage- 
 ment. The Queen declined to invade Portugal on his behalf, but she 
 was persuaded by the Earl of Essex to furnish him with an arma- 
 ment : a fleet of 120 vessels and 20,000 men under Drake and 
 Norris, under the idea that on the news of his arrival the people 
 would rise and welcome him. As precisely the reverse appeared to 
 be the feelings of the natives wherever the fleet attempted to land, 
 the leaders of the expedition, with some little loss of glory and credit, 
 returned home. The whole expedition was discreditable and only to 
 be excused on the ground of the long-standing hostility of Elizabeth 
 to Philip and its similarity to some of the marauding speculations 
 he had encouraged in Ireland. This is Antonio's last stroke for the 
 crown ; but three several false Sebastians played the rule of pre- 
 tenders from time to time and gave Philip no small trouble between 
 1585 and 1594. 
 
 The relations of Spain and England during the two long reigns 
 are extremely complicated and tedious ; and, although it is neces- 
 sary to mention them again as I have done several times already, 
 they would be better studied in connexion with the domestic 
 history of our own, country. Both Elizabeth and Philip were 
 anxious throughout to avoid open war. Anything like personal 
 or national friendship was impossible. The English hated the 
 Spaniards as persecutors, and the Spaniards hated the English as 
 heretics ; nor is there any reason to believe that Elizabeth and Philip 
 personally were exempt from the feelings with which their subjects 
 respectively regarded each other. Yet both hated the French, and, as 
 the French were nearer to both than either was to the other, it was 
 by their relations to France that their public conduct, their political 
 attitude, their alliances, war and peace, had to be guided. Under the 
 guise of peace, therefore, each would do the other as much harm as 
 possible, provided it did not result to the good of the third foe. 
 
 Philip might be regarded as the natural protector of the 
 English Catholics ; as his father's son, and as the most powerful 
 Catholic sovereign, during the abeyance, for such it was, of the 
 Empire, and as having been once their King and done his best to 
 secure the restoration of their religion. Yet, in consequence of the 
 fact that the Catholic intrigues in England hinged on the fortunes of 
 Mary Queen of Scots, he stood aloof from them : contenting himself 
 with occasional remonstrance as to the heretical conduct of the 
 Queen, or her hard usage of the Catholic party, but not until late in 
 his reign intermeddling with their intrigues. This outward relation
 
 THE LATER YEARS OF THE REIGN OE PHILIP II. 223 
 
 continued even after he had allowed himself to be drawn into the 
 Ridolfi plot, in 1569, and whilst the EngUsh ships were plundering 
 his fleets in all quarters of the world. No doubt the excommunica- 
 tion of Elizabeth by Pius V. in 1570 rendered it difficult for Philip 
 to retain friendly communications with her. But in 1572 we find 
 her expelling the Netherland refugees at the request of Alva ; 
 relations were drawn closer still in 1573, after the massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew ; they languished during Elizabeth's flirtations with 
 Alen^on : it was not until 1584 that the discovery of Throgmorton's 
 plot, and the share of the Spanish ambassador in it, that Philip's 
 representative was removed from the English Court. By that time 
 Elizabeth was hand and glove with the Netherland liberators : and 
 although she did them little good, as we have seen, they certainly 
 drew on her the determined vengeance of Philip. 
 
 Since 1569 Philip had taken up, though coldly, the cause of the 
 imprisoned Queen of Scots : as his connexion with the Guises grew 
 closer, his patronage of her became more ardent ; although he would 
 not approve Don John's design of conquering England and marrying 
 her, he hoped to make of her a use that would bring England to his 
 feet. Her execution accordingly was a blow which he did not expect ; 
 as a Catholic prince, as a long-enduring friend of Elizabeth, and as 
 the ally of the League, he determined that his vengeance should be 
 signal. Hence the Armada in 1588, the result of seven or eight 
 years of preparation ; hence Elizabeth's retaliation in Galicia and 
 Portugal the following year, and a state of war almost as desultory 
 as the state of peace that preceded it, lasting to the end of Philip's 
 reign, and chiefly signalised by marauding expeditions and attacks 
 on the Spanish colonies in America. This war outlived both Philip 
 and Elizabeth ; giving the opportunity for occasional spurts of 
 hostility and causing enormous suffering and bloodshed : it was 
 terminated by James I. in 1604. 
 
 It would perhaps be wrong to omit the sad episodes of the 
 assassination of Escovedo, Don John's secretary, in 1578, which led 
 not remotely to his master's death ; and, consequent thereon, the 
 disgrace of Antonio Perez, Philip's confidential minister, and his 
 subsequent flight. The latter proves that, notwithstanding Philip's 
 rigorous government, the constitutional spirit was not yet extinct in 
 Spain. Antonio Perez was supposed by Philip to have learned too 
 many of his master's secrets, in particular to have been indiscreet as 
 to the circumstances of Escovedo's assassination. Philip was so 
 slow and cautious that it sounds most improbable that he should 
 have betrayed himself : but some reason of the sort there must have 
 been, and Antonio must be sacrificed. Or it may have been that 
 he had been the rival of Philip in the affections of the Princess of
 
 224 LECTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1G48 
 
 Eboli,' the Catholic King's mistress. Anyhow a charge of malver- 
 sation was laid against him : his conduct was made the subject of 
 legal investigation, and he was sentenced to imprisonment, exile from 
 court, and a fine. From the place of imprisonment he escaped and 
 reached the frontier of Aragon, where he appealed to the justiza. 
 This secured him by law a fair trial, but a fair trial Philip was 
 determined that he should not have : he ordered him to be arrested ; 
 and the Aragonese at Saragossa rose against the act as an infringe- 
 ment of their constitution. Philip upon this gave information to 
 the Inquisition that he was a heretic, and the Inquisition claimed 
 and secured him. The justiza appealed and the people raged : the 
 Inquisition was attacked, and Perez managed to make his escape. 
 Put the quarrel did not end there. Philip sent an armed force into 
 Aragon to punish the rioters. The justiza, Don Juan de Lanuza, 
 headed the people against the invasion ; they deserted him on the 
 approach of the soldiery, and he was seized and executed by Philip's 
 order (1591). As for Perez, we hear no more of him. 
 
 I have said, I think, enough already abont Philip's relations with 
 France, down to the death of Henry III. in 1589. And his 
 maintenance of the League in their opposition to Henry IV. belongs 
 rather to the history of France than to that of Spain. His purpose 
 was to place his daughter Isabella on the throne, to which as grand- 
 daughter of Henry II. she might, but for the established law of the 
 French succession, have had a claim ; or in default of that to 
 procure for her the duchy of Brittany, the inheritance of Anne of 
 Brittany, and heritable by his wife Elizabeth, or Isabella the 
 daughter of Henry II. But the declaration by Henry IV. of his 
 adhesion to the Eoman Church put an end to the schemes of the 
 League and to the chances of Philip and Isabella in 1594. Henry, 
 released by this act from the pressure of civil war, devoted himself 
 the next year to the humiliation of Spain : and this seems to have 
 given the deathblow to Philip's hopes of carrying out the policy for 
 which all his life he had been working and for which he had sacrificed 
 his treasures and the liberties and lives of his peoples. 
 
 As the earlier war comes chiefly into French history, so this short 
 portion of it belongs to the Netherlands. The Archduke Albert 
 was Phihp's general ; the battlefield the northern frontier. I have 
 already mentioned the alliance between France, England, and Hol- 
 land in 1596. In the year 1597 the Archduke captured Amiens, 
 but Henry recovered it soon after: and early in 1598 peace was 
 made at Vervins. By this Philip gave up, of course, all his demands 
 on France and Brittany : with the towns which the Archduke had 
 
 ' Princess Eboli, wife of Euy Gomez, Philip's confidential friend, who died 
 in 1573.
 
 THE LATER YEARS OF THE REIGN OF PHILIP II. 225 
 
 taken on the frontier during the late struggle. In return he was 
 permitted to retain the county of Charolais, a part of the Burgundian 
 heritage which was not yet quite lost sight of, subject to the 
 suzerainty of France. His last act for the disposition of the Nether- 
 lands I need not now revert to. He died on September 13, 1598, at 
 the age of seventy-one. 
 
 Few princes have ever lived for whom the voice of impartial 
 history ventures to say so little. PhiUp II. was far the richest 
 and most powerful monarch in Christendom at the beginning of 
 his reign : and his political influence, owing to his relation to 
 the imperial family and his connexion with England, gave him 
 a position of paramount importance. He was better off than his 
 father, for he was not hampered with the management of 
 Germany, an unprofitable dominion, or with the obhgations of the 
 imperial office. He had no serious difficulty with the Papacy or 
 great trouble with Italy during the whole of his reign, or at least 
 from 1559 to 1598. In Spain he had merely the Moorish war, 
 which, tedious as it was, was not dangerous or expensive. He 
 engaged in no great war, or, excepting the Armada, in any great 
 expedition. He received large revenues from America, and starved 
 the government of the Netherlands, yet he incurred no great expense 
 in any undertaking except the building of the Escurial. He was 
 not an extravagant or luxurious man. Yet he died exhausted and 
 left his dominions on the decline. He was not a negligent ruler ; 
 the King's hand was everywhere in the business of the State ; 
 his letters were innumerable ; he kept in his own hands all the strings 
 of his policy ; but no success came of all his pains. 
 
 What is the secret ? That he trusted himself too much and his 
 servants too little, was too slow and prudent and cautious ; that he 
 took so long to ripen his plans that they betrayed rottenness before he 
 executed them ; that he was a selfish ruler, ruling for himself and 
 not for his people, that he had too great power and not enough 
 mental strength ; all these may be true in a measure, but as reasons 
 for his failure they are insufficient. He found Spain great and 
 failed to keep her so ; he found the Netherlands strong and united 
 and rich and likely to be contented with very few concessions : he 
 lost half of them and beggared the other half. This was his failure. 
 Is it religious bigotry that tempts an Englishman when he lays the 
 whole failure to the charge of Philip's unbending determination to 
 force the doctrines and discipline of the Roman Church on Christen- 
 dom generally ? I confess I can see no other key to his designs ; 
 and in this design I think we cannot but see that, if he entertained 
 it, there is contained the secret of his failure. 
 
 Do not misunderstand me. I do not say that this determination 
 
 Q
 
 226 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 makes him worse than other kings. I can believe that there are 
 minds to which it seems rather to excuse his sins. The age was an 
 age of persecutors ; the Church herself, if we may judge by the acts 
 of her representatives, Protestant as well as Catholic, had not learned 
 the possibiUty or the wisdom of tolerance. If we blame Philip as a 
 persecutor, we blame him not because he persecuted, but because he 
 persecuted more relentlessly than any other prince, because, standing 
 at the head of Christendom, he did not rise superior to the vulgar 
 theory; because other princes persecuted in a moderate and more 
 effectual way and so put him to shame. The German system of 
 repression is a proof that, bad as it was, there was a better system 
 than that of the Inquisition. The existence of Maximilian and 
 William of Orange shows that the theory of persecution itself was 
 not the only theory going. 
 
 Still, I say, it is not fair to blame him for not being before or for 
 being behind his age. The moral guilt of the persecution lies 
 heavily on him, as it does on Charles V., because of the enthusiasm 
 ^vith which they pressed the edicts. But we are speaking now of 
 political folly rather than of moral guilt. It was the persecution that 
 aroused the fears of the Netherlanders about the Inquisition : it was 
 to maintain the persecution that the Spanish soldiery was kept in the 
 country; that the constitutions of the several States were broken 
 down ; that the affection of every Netherlander in the land was 
 alienated from him; that the churches he wished to protect were 
 pillaged, and the doctrines he wished to eradicate were forced into 
 premature popularity and hallowed with the devotion of countless 
 martyrs. The object he desired to secure was rendered impossible by 
 the means he used ; yet he persisted ; he directed the policy of Alva, 
 whose administration accomplished the loss of the Provinces. He 
 used then a policy that resulted in promoting the object which he 
 intended to hinder ; and he persisted in it when its actual result and 
 tendency were clear enough ; he sacrificed everything to it : and he 
 lost, comparatively speaking, everything by it. He found that nothing 
 but extermination could make an end of the heretics. So he adopted 
 the policy of extermination, but it has never been shown in history yet 
 that a king could annihilate a whole nation ; much less a creed, or 
 even a sect, that thrives on persecution and spreads the more because 
 it is obliged to spread secretly. If this was not politically folly, I do 
 not know how such a thing can be said to exist at all. 
 
 Philip's treatment of his Spanish subjects, his policy in England, 
 and his policy in France, although modified, as we have seen, by 
 other influences, were based on the same ruling desire. Next to the 
 welfare of the Church came the welfare of his own house, without 
 whose welfare the task that he had set himself could not of course
 
 THE LATER YEARS OF THE REIGN OF, PHILIP II. 227 
 
 be regarded as feasible : this principle modified his relations with 
 France and England. But only so far ; where he could persecute 
 he did ; where he could not, he urged the system on those who were 
 likely to be influenced and fomented rebellion against those who 
 would not be influenced by him. And all the while he saw the 
 enemy that he wished to humble rising stronger and stronger, saw 
 England, which he had known as a poor exhausted shattered little 
 state, taking rank as in old times with the chief powers of Europe ; 
 saw on the throne of France a prince Catholic indeed in name, but 
 so far from orthodox that his first Catholic act had been the Edict of 
 Toleration of Protestantism ; one, moreover, whose conformity was 
 clearly political, and as clearly not religious ; who further still had 
 been Protestant and Catholic already twice alternately and might be 
 again. 
 
 So I am obliged to sum up Philip's political career. It is no fancy 
 estimate : seldom in the world's history has there been so single- 
 hearted a king ; seldom one whose policy tended so persistently to 
 one manifest and invariable object. Setting this aside, Philip might 
 have been a good king : except in this direction he was not tyrannical, 
 violent, or false. In this he was all three. 
 
 We cannot help asking how his own people regarded him. There 
 can be no doubt that the Spanish people admired and loved him. He 
 spent the whole of his life in Spain, his religious instinct was one 
 with that of the great majority of his subjects. He spoke their 
 language and adopted in some respects their habits. What the 
 Netherlands were to Charles, Spain was to Philip ; and to a certain 
 degree Spain had regarded Charles as the Netherlands did Philip. 
 He drew his ministers from Spain as Charles had done from the 
 Netherlands ; it was his own country, and the people were proud of 
 their king, so rich and mighty and so faithful. 
 
 Setting aside, again, the religious question and the Inquisition as 
 a part of it, Philip was not a bad king constitutionally. He did not 
 quench the embers of national life which had been sufl'ered to survive 
 the crushing act of Charles V. in 1539. That act, as you will 
 remember, had reduced the Cortes to practical insignificance, by 
 fixing the number of towns represented in it at eighteen, and so 
 placing the disposal of the votes at the royal command. But, as I 
 have often had occasion to remark with regard to earlier history, the 
 advice and influence of a constitutional assembly do not always 
 correspond with their coercive power. A strong king will ask advice 
 and listen to remonstrances where a weak one cannot afford to do 
 either ; the king who is above the need of jealousy will be able to 
 use and wilhng to defer to national and constitutional safeguards. 
 So Philip did. He did no harm to the Spanish constitution by using 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 LECTURES OX EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1619-1648 
 
 it and leaving it as he found it. The Cortes still had certain powers 
 which, as he could manage the Cortes by fair means, he was not 
 tempted to abridge by foul. The Cortes still had the exclusive 
 right to grant supplies, and he only occasionally attempted to raise 
 supplies Avithout them. The Cortes were called very frequently 
 indeed, and what the King asked for they granted. The 
 nobles had ceased to sit in the Cortes, or at least to attend them 
 regularly. Philip made no attempt to bring them back to their 
 duty ; he knew that it would have provoked rebellion, that the 
 preservation of their immunities was a guarantee of their pacific 
 conduct. They became mere grandees, mere courtiers ; gamblers 
 and intriguers ; and as the absence of war gave them no chance of 
 developing energies in a manly direction, they lost and lowered the 
 old Spanish character by follies and extravagances that in another 
 direction made way for the rapid decline of Spain. 
 
 But the Cortes, although powerless to resist, were able to advise 
 and to remonstrate : they retained the right of granting supplies, but 
 had lost that of seeing their complaints remedied before they granted 
 them ; they retained the right of legislation, but they had lost the 
 power of preventing the King from uttering ordinances that would 
 have the force of laws. Their remonstrances remain on record to 
 show that although the King had power to take the supplies, and to 
 make the laws, he had not the will to provoke opposition by refusing 
 to hear remonstrance. The voice, it is true, is feeble and faint, 
 but still it is uttered ; the word is spoken although the King is not 
 forced to hear it. There is some moral weight in the utterances of 
 a nation so governed. 
 
 Some of these remonstrances are interesting as illustrating the final 
 struggles of the medieval ideal of administration, according to the 
 spirit of which the King should live on his own estates, not by 
 taxation, and every hardship of the people is ascribed to the extrava- 
 gances of the Court. The Cortes of Valladolid in 1558 complain of 
 the expense of the royal household ; the only matter in which Philip, 
 acting on the plan of his Burgundian ancestors, was magnificent or 
 lavish : they set before Philip both the ruinous cost and the bad 
 example of the extravagance : without effect. Again and again, too, 
 they complain of the alienation of domain lands of the crown, 
 throwing the maintenance of government more and more on the 
 contributions of the nation against the sale of titles and offices — 
 a plan in use in Spain as well as in France and Italy for the recruit- 
 ing of an exhausted exchequer ; against the imposition of taxes 
 unauthorised by the Cortes themselves, as Philip's financial 
 difficulties occasionally compelled him to do, and for which he 
 pleaded necessity as his excuse ; they urged on him the codification
 
 THE LATER YEAES OF THE IlEIGN OF PHILIP II. 229 
 
 of the municipal law of Castile, the increase of the salaries of judges, 
 the promotion according to the light they had of commerce and trade ; 
 the putting down of the luxury of coaches, and the maintenance of 
 the national amusement of bull-fighting. Their most important 
 recommendation, however, was that of forbidding the exportation of 
 gold and silver. 
 
 Philip acted on their advice in the many sumptuary laws which 
 mark his reign, running into the most minute particulars of dresb 
 and expenditure. We may laugh at such vestiges of ancient inde- 
 pendence ; but the nation that retains even these has not lost all, 
 and the sovereign who suffers them to continue to exist is so far forth 
 not quite a tyrant. Valeat quantum to redeem Philip II. 
 
 LECTURE VIII 
 
 PROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III. OP FRANCE TO THE 
 PEACE OP VERVINS, 1573-1598 
 
 By the death of Charles IX. the family of Catherine de Medicis was 
 reduced to two sons and a daughter : Henry, King of Poland ; Francis, 
 Duke of Alen9on ; and Margaret, Queen of Navarre. Outside the 
 immediate circle the King of Navarre stood next in succession, and 
 after him the Cardinal of Bourbon and the Prince of Conde. Neither 
 Henry nor Francis was married, and Charles IX. was the only one 
 of the family who had any child. The Protestant succession became 
 a long step nearer by his death : and the prospect from that time 
 constituted an element in the troublous complication of parties. 
 Philip kept his eyes open on France since the feast of St. Bartholomew, 
 1572. It was indeed a stroke of luck on which he had not counted. 
 Charles IX. and his advisers had not only rid the Catholic faith of 
 some of its most dangerous foes, but had also brought on the 
 French name an amount of odium which made it detestable through- 
 out Europe, and whitewashed the cruel persecutions of Philip him- 
 self. He seems to have felt from henceforth that France had incapaci- 
 tated herself from troubling him, and had broken decisively and 
 conclusively with Elizabeth. Accordingly he and Alva reconciled 
 themselves with the Queen of England, and watched complacently 
 to see what suicidal act the French would perpetrate next ; not yet 
 actively interfering, but ready to give a helping hand to any scheme 
 that might destroy heresy or help the self-destruction of the house 
 of Valois. 
 
 The new King hastened from Poland mth unseemly hurry ; when 
 he arrived in France he took matters much more easily. On
 
 230 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 September 5, three months after his brother's death, he met his mother, 
 the King of Navarre, and the Duke of Alencon, whom she had released 
 from confinement, at Pont Beauvoisin ; thence he proceeded to Lyons, 
 and there, in council, determined, contrary to the advice of Maxi- 
 milian and the Venetians, to prosecute the war against the Huguenots. 
 Although this struggle seems as worthy of the name of a civil war as 
 some of the others which preceded it, it is not numbered amongst 
 them : partly, I suppose, because it had no great battle, or any 
 defined beginning or ending. The government clearly was in a very 
 helpless state : the Huguenots were in arms in the north and west 
 and south, and Rochelle was the headquarters of a confederacy 
 which could hardly be regarded as compatible with the health of a 
 Catholic state. After a vain attempt to satisfy the malcontents in 
 Languedoc, Henry went to Rheims and was crowned (February 1575), 
 and immediately after married Louise of Vaudemont, to whom he was 
 as faithful as the men of his family generally were to their wives. 
 
 The party of the Politiques as such had now discovered that their 
 position was untenable. Francis of Alencon, seeing that line closed 
 to him, declared himself on the side of the Huguenots. He was a 
 prince of no principle, bad temper, and small capacity except for 
 giving trouble ; but he was heir to the throne, and chose to play the 
 not uncommon role of heirs, the head of the opposition. Matters 
 were in suspense, the Huguenots not moving except for defence, and 
 the government not attacking. On September 15 AlenQon fled from 
 court to Dreux and was there joined by many of the nobles who 
 were dissatisfied with the King or who favoured the Protestants. The 
 King, as you probably all know, gave enough reason to everyone 
 to find fault with him ; his conduct and court were abominable and 
 ignominiously licentious, and he had no principles except selfishness 
 and bigotry. 
 
 At the same time the Prince of Cond6 brought into the country 
 a body of German mercenaries whom he had hired, and prepared for 
 war. Catherine averted the immediate outbreak by prevailing on 
 the Duke of Montmorency, whom she released from the Bastile for 
 the purpose, to negotiate an interview with Alencon, after which a 
 truce for six months was made (November 22) ; but the truce lasted 
 no longer than March, In that month John Casimir, the Palatine, 
 arrived with 8,000 more Germans, and on hearing the news, Henry 
 of Navarre made his escape from Court and declared himself a 
 Calvinist. The Queen mother, seeing no chance of success in open 
 war, now negotiated for peace. Alencon was bought over by the 
 gift of Anjou, and henceforth bears the title. The Count Palatine 
 was also to receive an endowment, and the edicts in favour of the 
 Huguenots were to be confirmed for the fifth time (May 14, 1576).
 
 ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE PEACE OF VEEVINS 231 
 
 This pacification led directly to the formation of the League. 
 The Guises and their adherents were intensely disgusted by it. The 
 King, professedly the most Catholic of men, one of the contrivers 
 of the St. Bartholomew massacre, had yielded the demands of the 
 heretics without a blow. The League dates from the formation of a 
 confederation at Peronne in consequence of this disgust. The Holy 
 Union was immediately patronised, if not devised, by the Guises ; 
 the King of Spain and the Pope were made protectors of it. Its 
 purpose was declared to be the maintenance of the Catholic religion ; 
 its real object, probably even at this remote distance of time, was 
 to keep the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde out of the 
 succession. The leaguers swear to grant to the provinces the rights 
 they possessed in the time of Clovis ; to proceed against all who 
 refuse to accept the Union without acceptance of person, and to 
 render faithful service and prompt obedience to a chief to be named. 
 
 The Huguenots, alarmed at the threatening proceeding, clamoured 
 for the assembly of the States General. They met at Blois in 
 November, with a result contrary to their hopes. The pacification 
 was annulled, the League authorised, and the King made the head of 
 it. War was determined on, and the Duke of Anjou, so lately the 
 head of the Protestants, was nominated by the King to the command. 
 
 After some slight successes on the Duke's part, early in 1577, 
 Queen Catherine again set to work to make peace. She took some 
 of her young ladies to Nerac, the King of Navarre's seat, and 
 seduced him into compliance. In October peace was made at 
 Poictiers : the fifth war ended, and the sixth pacification was issued, 
 not quite so favourable as the last, in consequence of the conquests 
 of Anjou. 
 
 The history of 1578 is a record of court scandals. Towards the 
 close of it, Anjou went off to the Netherlands, where we have traced 
 his adventures already. In 1679, Queen Catherine took another 
 journey to see Henry, and anything like an open war was avoided 
 until the end of the year, when the Duke of Montmorency was 
 ordered to demand of Henry some fresh guarantees, which he 
 refused. Whether Henry was simply biding his time, or whether 
 he really did fall a victim to the snares of Catherine and her young 
 ladies, or whether he to a certain extent did both, enjoyed their 
 society and waited for his opportunity, I dare not say ; but from 
 this point he became a changed man so far as war and business were 
 concerned. He took the head of his party and welcomed the 
 summons to war. He began by taking Cahors by surprise in May 
 1580, and the surprise extended through the whole of France. His 
 promptness, bravery, and valour were at once conspicuous ; the 
 Huguenots had never had such a leader, and the Count was not.
 
 232 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 prepared to fight with him. Anjou was brought back from Brabant 
 to pacify him. 
 
 The sixth war ended in November, against the wishes of Cond6, 
 who was under engagements with the Palatine and wanted to bring 
 in a German force. This peace was favourable to the Protestants. 
 I do not think it necessary to dwell on the details of these pacifica- 
 tions : besides the confirmation of toleration, in which they agree, 
 they contain little more than arrangements as to the cautionary 
 towns, the villes de silretS, or material guarantees left in the hands 
 of each party, which arrangements differ according as fortune has 
 favoured or frowned on the respective parties during the preceding 
 campaign. From 1581 onwards, the Duke of Anjou was in the 
 Netherlands ; and thus one great hindrance to peace was removed. 
 The Huguenots continued in a condition of uneasy watching ; the 
 Court, abandoned to scandals and penances alternately or in com- 
 bination. So three years passed. 
 
 In 1584, the Duke of Anjou died (June 10), and the succession 
 at once lay open to Henry of Navarre. The true object of the 
 leaguers now was manifested. Henry must be set aside and a new 
 candidate found. Ultimately, no doubt, the succession was to come 
 to the Duke of Guise. Already the notion was being spread that 
 the whole reign of the house of Hugh Capet was a long usurpation, 
 and that the descendant of Charles the Great was the rightful 
 sovereign. The Duke of Guise was such a descendant, although 
 the directness of the descent might be questioned, as he was 
 only a cadet of the house of Lorraine ; but then primogeniture 
 was not a main feature of the system of the Karlings. Still, until 
 this could be arranged, a new candidate was found, the Cardinal 
 of Bourbon, brother of King Antony of Navarre and uncle 
 to King Henry. The Duke of Guise was declared chief of the 
 League. Henry III. took the alarm. Catherine, whose powers of 
 intrigue must now have been failing, leaned towards the Guise 
 rather than to the Bourbon. The next year the Cardinal, having 
 obtained the sanction of the Pope and Philip, pronounced himself 
 heir presumptive (March 31, 1585) and published a programme of 
 the reforms which he intended when he should be King. This 
 drew together Henry III. and the King of Navarre. But the recon- 
 ciliation was momentary. In July Henry III. pronounced against 
 the Protestants again, and revoked all the edicts in their favour. 
 And this rash act produced the eighth war : the war of the three 
 Henries. 
 
 The year 1586 was occupied with constant skirmishes, con- 
 spiracies, and new combinations of parties. The principal com- 
 bination was one called the League of the Sixteen, the sixteen
 
 ACCESSION OF HENEY III. TO THE PEACE OF VERVINS 233 
 
 quarters of Paris, composed of creatures of the Duke of Guise, 
 and sworn to the destruction of Henry III. ; but the conspiracy 
 was betrayed and its execution prevented by the Duke of Epernon, 
 one of the King's favourites. Its only result, and that not arrived 
 at until the next year, was to throw Henry into the arms of the 
 King of Navarre. In October the latter won a great victory at 
 Coutras, in Guienne, over the Duke of Joyeuse ; but the advantage 
 was more than counterbalanced by the success of Guise against the 
 German auxiliaries. 
 
 From the opening of 1588 events follow more rapidly. The 
 King was only thirty- six years old, and it might have been thought 
 that the Guises might have waited for some accident that would 
 have simplified matters, or might have determined to turn their 
 hostility against Henry of Navarre, who, indeed, was but two years 
 younger than the King, and, like him, childless. But the immense 
 popularity which the Duke of Guise had acquired in France, and 
 especially in Paris, which by the conspiracy of the Sixteen was 
 engaged altogether on the side of the League, seems to have inspired 
 him and his family with the most ambitious designs and a rage for 
 their early fulfilment. Although the war was still supposed to be 
 proceeding, Henry of Navarre had returned to his mistress, and 
 the Guises were devoting all their arts to make the King con- 
 temptible. His mind was kept in constant alarm by the threats of 
 assassination ; his feelings constantly outraged by the sermons, 
 the pamphlets, the open insults of the leaguers. The Duchess of 
 Montpensier, the Duke's sister, showed a pair of golden scissors 
 with which she intended to clip the locks of the last of the Valois. 
 
 In February 1588 the heads of the League met at Nancy, and 
 drew up a programme of eleven articles to be presented to the King. 
 Amongst these was a demand for the reception in France of the 
 decrees of Trent and the establishment of the Inquisition. This 
 measure stung Henry III. into action. He forbade the Duke of 
 Guise to come to Paris. Notwithstanding this, on May 9, he 
 presented himself there, and the King began to tremble for his 
 safety. An attempt made by him three days after to introduce a 
 royalist force into the city produced an outbreak among the 
 citizens which would, but for the presence of Guise, have ended in a 
 general massacre. This was called the Day of the Barricades. The 
 result was to throw the city at the feet of Guise, and to force Henry 
 to flight. The next day, May 13, he retired from Paris to Chartres, 
 and thence, without complying with the petitions of the Parisians 
 for his return, to Rouen, where, on July 13, he made his peace with 
 the League and issued a new edict of reunion which prohibited the 
 succession of a Huguenot prince.
 
 234 LECTURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 Henry must have been driven very hard before he consented to 
 this, for the King of Navarre's right of succession was to him an 
 assurance of life : even the Sixteen would not assassinate him to put 
 a Huguenot on the throne. But it is not clear that the edict was 
 issued in ill faith. Henry was not wanting in cunning, but it is 
 not likely that he had yet contemplated the cow^j de main which he 
 executed in December : it is more probable that he was roused to 
 extreme measures by the open contempt of Guise and the brutal 
 threats of the Duke of Mayenne. He summoned the estates to 
 Blois in September : the sittings continued until December ; and on 
 the 23rd of that month, Henry, by an organised conspiracy of 
 forty-five bravos, assassinated the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal 
 his brother, and imprisoned the Cardinal of Bourbon and other of 
 the dangerous nobles. 
 
 There is little difficulty in apportioning the guilt of this proceed- 
 ing. Guise deserved death as a traitor and revolutionist ; Henry 
 richly deserved all the evil that Guise had devised against him : the 
 revolutionary scheme of the Duke was as unlawful as the assassina- 
 tion. Both were scoundrels : Guise a plausible one, Henry a pitiful 
 one ; Guise perished plausibly, Henry conspired pitifully. 
 
 The immediate consequence of the murder was to throw France 
 into a frantic panic. The Duke was at once the favourite of the 
 people and the defender of the Church. The people rose in arms, 
 and the clergy preached excommunication and revolution. In the 
 early days of this year (January 5, 1589), Catherine de Medicis died. 
 Henry lost his most faithful counsellor in her : he had no army : 
 the whole kingdom was against him, on the one side the League 
 which he had failed to crush ; on the other the Huguenots with 
 whom he and the League were both at war. He preferred the lesser 
 evil to the greater, and threw himself on the generosity of Henry of 
 Navarre. The two Kings joined on April 30 at Tours (whither Henry 
 had retired from Blois and summoned the Parliament of Paris), and 
 marched together to besiege the capital. 
 
 In the meantime the leaguers had strengthened their position. 
 They had lost their most popular chief, but the feelings that had 
 exalted him to popularity still existed. The clergy of Paris had 
 compelled the Parliament to swear to avenge the death of Guise. 
 The oaths had been taken on compulsion, and by like compulsion 
 the Sorbonne was made to approve the revolution. But the sub- 
 mission of the Parliament was not so prompt as to deceive the 
 leaguers. On January 16, Bussy Leclerc, governor of the Bastille, 
 arrested fifty members, with the president Achille de Harlai, a just 
 and loyal man, at their head, and swore the remaining twenty-six 
 to the League, on the crucifix. On February 10, the Duke of
 
 ACCESSION OF HENEY III. TO THE PEACE OF VEEVINS 235 
 
 Mayenne arrived in Paris, and was declared lieutenant-general of the 
 royal estate and crown of France. 
 
 Both parties were now ready for war, but the places which, 
 without being for the League, had taken part with the King in the 
 war against the Huguenots, now forsook him. In the north and 
 east of France the League was all-powerful. Still the two kings 
 advanced on Paris. On the 31st Henry took up his quarters at St. 
 Cloud, on August 1 he was wounded with a poisoned dagger by 
 Jacques Clement, and on the 2nd he died. Of him, as of his brothers, 
 little need be said beyond what comes out in their history : and the 
 less the better. He was a clever, cruel, abandoned, handsome, pitiful 
 creature ; the worst, perhaps, of his house, and, if so, the worst king 
 of the worst family that ever reigned. 
 
 The death of Henry III. at once placed the kingdom in the 
 condition of revolution. Henry IV. was with the army before Paris, 
 and endeavoured to take advantage immediately of his position. He 
 offered to swear to maintain the Catholic religion, and even to extend 
 no further tolerance to the Protestants than had been secured by the 
 edicts, so often changed, repealed, and re-enacted, of Henry III. 
 The larger part of the nobles who were with the army readily 
 acknowledged him : but the minions of the late King, the Duke of 
 Epernon and others, refused and withdrew, reducing the army so 
 much that Henry was unable to press the siege of Paris at once, and 
 had to make a march into Normandy to join his English auxiliaries 
 before he could renew it. The Duke of Mayenne hastened into the 
 same province to meet him, but he was beaten at Arques, Septem- 
 ber 21. On Henry's return to the siege, however, in November, 
 Mayenne was strong enough to embarrass him for the time, and he 
 retired through a submissive country to Tours. 
 
 On November 21, Mayenne proclaimed, as King Charles X., the 
 Cardinal of Bourbon, who was still a prisoner, as he had been since 
 the assassination of Guise, and who spent the few remaining months 
 of his life (until May 9, 1590) in the same captivity. He, poor man, 
 had awakened from his dream of sovereignty, and acknowledged his 
 nephew as King. 
 
 Early in 1590 the League was strengthened by the adhesion of 
 the Papal legate. Cardinal Cajetan, who had been sent by Sixtus V. 
 in the hope of converting Henry IV., but, contrary to his instructions, 
 threw himself on to the party of Mayenne, 
 
 On March 14, Henry won the battle of Ivry and entirely 
 demolished the army of the Duke of Mayenne, strengthened by 
 auxiliaries from all the Catholic powers. In the night after this 
 triumph he again (May 7) approached Paris and began a blockade. 
 The Parisians themselves, embittered sufficiently to begin, were
 
 236 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Spirited to resistance by the Duchess of Montpensier, the Duke of 
 Nemours, the legate, and the Spanish ambassador. The siege was 
 not raised until August 30, when Henry had to go to meet the army of 
 Alexander Farnese, which was advancing from the Netherlands. 
 During these months the Parisians suffered the extremities of famine ; 
 and terrible stories are told of cannibalism and other horrors. 
 During this pressure and the ruin of the League which resulted 
 from the defeat at Ivry the leaders were di%ided. 
 
 The death of the Cardinal of Bourbon threw the title to the 
 crown again into dispute. Philip II. claimed it for his daughter 
 Isabelle, the granddaughter of Henry II. The Duke of Lorraine 
 claimed it for his son. The natural desire of the French Leaguers 
 was for the young Duke of Guise, for whom a title might be contrived 
 by a marriage with the Infanta Isabelle. This roused the jealousy 
 of the Duke of Mayenne, who regarded himself as the elected chief of 
 the kingdom and as the successor, so far as the League was 
 concerned, to the merits and claims of his elder brother. The 
 matter could not be decided whilst all parties were in arms. 
 
 Alexander of Parma, having relieved Paris, retired without a 
 battle, harassed in the rear by Henry. In the south of France 
 Lesdiguieres cleared away the Duke of Savoy and his pretensions and 
 took Grenoble. So the year 1590 ended ; the affairs of Henry 
 continuing to prosper, but neither party having yet a decided 
 preponderance over the other. The struggle continued through the 
 winter. In January Henry attempted to surprise Paris and the 
 Lorrainers to surprise St. Denis, both in vain. A declaration of 
 Gregory XIV. in March against Henry IV. was received with 
 indignation in France, and helped rather to increase the dissensions 
 in the League. 
 
 A new plan was now projected. The young Cardinal of 
 Bourbon, brother to the Prince of Conde who died in 1587, was 
 pitched on for a candidate. The Duke of Guise was the candidate 
 of the Sixteen, deserting the interests of the Duke of Mayenne, who 
 w^as conducting the struggle in the provinces. With this view they 
 wrote to Philip II. proposing the marriage between the Duke and 
 Isabelle; chance threw the letter into the hands of Henry IV., 
 who very prudently transmitted it to Mayenne and roused him to 
 action against the tyranny of the Sixteen. The King, without 
 wasting his forces, awaited his time, sure that the conflicting views 
 of the leaguers must tell in his favour, and in the meantime 
 securing the places, such as Chartres and Eouen, on which Paris 
 depended for provisions, and preparing for another siege. 
 
 In December 1591 the Duke of Mayenne returned to the capital, 
 dismissed Bussy Le Clerc from the government of the Bastille, and
 
 ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE PEACE OF VERVINS 237 
 
 hanged three of the leaders of the Sixteen. This, and the prompt 
 action of the Parliament to restore order, had the effect of placing 
 Paris, internally at least, in security for a time. 
 
 The events of the next year, 1592, were not favourable to Henry, 
 and it is marked with no great success. He had not succeeded in 
 taking Rouen, which the Marshal Biron besieged on November 11 
 in the preceding year. The siege continued until April 30, when 
 the Duke of Parma compelled the King to retire. In the summer 
 Henry took Epernay, but lost his great soldier, the Marshal Biron. 
 He gained nothing but the glory of gallant exploits. The leaguers 
 made head again in the south, in Languedoc especially, under the 
 Joyeuses, the old favourites of Henry III,, matched against Lesdi- 
 guieres, the governor of Dauphine. Both parties were exhausted, 
 however, in the centres of life ; neither being strong enough to 
 procure or enforce supplies : England only slowly remitting money 
 and men to Henry, and Philip fighting rather in his own interest 
 than on behalf of the League. The Duke of Mayenne, aware of 
 this, determined to put an end to the dissensions of the League, 
 and summoned the States General to Paris on January 5, 1593, 
 for the election of a king. They met on the 26th, and had a long 
 sitting. Instead of strengthening the League, this assembly proved 
 to be a long step towards the break-up. The Duke of Mayenne 
 was finally disappointed. 
 
 The Duke of Feria, the Spanish ambassador, on April 2, demanded 
 the abolition of the Salic law, and the crown of France for the Infanta ; 
 and, although the proposal was received with a storm of indignation, 
 Mayenne saw that his game was lost. He prevailed on the States 
 to parley with the King. Several conferences took place between 
 April 29 and May 17 : the representative of Henry being the Arch- 
 bishop of Bourges, that of the League the Archbishop of Paris : on the 
 conclusion of these Henry declared himself a Roman Catholic. Had 
 he only the League to contend with, this event might have finished 
 the war ; but the Spaniards, who wanted the crown for their Infanta, 
 and to whom Henry as a Catholic was only a more formidable 
 enemy than he had been as a Protestant, drew great part of the 
 nobles of the League into continued hostility. They now proposed 
 the marriage of the Duke of Guise \\ith the Princess, the old plan of 
 the Sixteen ; and prevented a reconciliation between the King and 
 Mayenne. 
 
 But whilst they were deliberating Henry was acting ; and, what 
 was quite as important, a reaction was setting in in Paris, now 
 relieved from the tyranny of the Sixteen. Henry, on June 18, took 
 Dreux, and so prevented the arrival of provisions at Paris from the 
 side of Normandy. On July 23, he made a solemn recantation of
 
 238 LECTURER ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 all his heresies at St. Denis, great numbers of the Parisians 
 attending on the occasion. Paris still held out, but the efforts of 
 the leaguers were becoming spasmodic and disorganis'ed. The land 
 was thoroughly weary of war ; city after city deserted the leaguers' 
 party, and the foreign allies showed clearly that their own interest stood 
 first with them. The war was still continued, however, with some 
 vigour in Languedoc and Brittany. 
 
 Matters being thus, Henry determined to wait no longer for his 
 coronation. On February 27, 1594, the ceremony took place at 
 Chartres : the policy of this was soon apparent. Within a month 
 Paris (March 22) received him as King ; Rouen followed within a 
 week ; and shortly after the Duke of Guise submitted. The Parlia- 
 ment of Paris was recalled from Tours and reinstated : the clergy 
 repented of the attitude they had taken towards Henry ; and the 
 University, freed from the fears of the Sixteen, declared its real 
 sentiments. The Jesuits, the only religious body which refused to 
 acknowledge the King, were compelled by a decree of the Parliament 
 to quit Paris ; Henry saw himself at last in undisputed possession 
 of his hardly earned royalty, although frequent attempts at assassina- 
 tion showed him that the spirit which the League had conjured up 
 was not yet exorcised. 
 
 Two difficulties, however, were yet in store for him : the hostility 
 of Spain and the financial difficulties which he had to encounter as 
 soon as the restoration of peace should make the payment of his 
 debts and those of the State incumbent on him. These, sufficiently 
 great already, were largely increased by the measures which pro- 
 cured his last successes. He had expended vast sums or vast 
 promises in order to obtain the adhesion of the cities which had 
 favoured the League : Paris itself had been, as he said, sold rather 
 than surrendered to him. The rewards of successful intriguers and 
 reconciled enemies came to an enormous sum, for the payment of 
 which he had to look to a country desolated by war and exhausted 
 by long misgovernment. Fortunately, in the year of the surrender 
 of Paris, D'O, the intendant of the finances, who had been a great 
 rascal, died, and Henry was able to take counsel with Rosny, his 
 great minister, whom I shall call henceforth by his better-known 
 name of Sully, for the restoration of the public confidence. This, 
 however, did not begin immediately. Nor was it until 1601 that 
 the real reform commenced ; but Sully had it ever in view, and only 
 waited the restoration of peace to bring matters round. During 
 these five years, unfortunately, extravagance and embezzlement, and 
 consequently oppressive taxation, continued to be the order of the 
 day. The war with Spain continued four years after the surrender 
 of Paris.
 
 ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE PEACE OF VERVJNS 239 
 
 Nothing can, I think, show nior6 clearly the exhausted condition 
 of France than the present state of affairs. Henry was in peaceable 
 possession of the central provinces, and the cities almost everywhere 
 had joined him. But the authority of the leaders of the League 
 was by no means extinct. The Duke of Mayenne was strong in 
 Burgundy, of which he had been, and perhaps was still, the governor ; 
 and in Brittany the Duke of Mercoeur, ambitious of becoming an 
 independent prince, was still, by hook or by crook, bent on carrying 
 out the plan, the hopes of whose success had first attached him to 
 the League. 
 
 With Spain the relations of Henry were curious enough. As 
 King of France he was not at war ; as King of Navarre and enemy 
 of the League he was in irreconcilable contention. Philip had no 
 idea of peace ; he gathered into one organisation the relics of the 
 League, and tried to revive the hopes of Mayenne. Henry at last, 
 tired of intrigue and pretence at negotiation, declared war against 
 Spain on February 17, 1595. The seat of the war was Burgundy. 
 Philip perhaps had some idea of re-opening the old claims of his 
 family ; on that side, moreover, the opening was ready for him 
 through Franche-Comte : in Burgundy, too, the Duke of Mayenne 
 was strong. Against Mayenne himself Henry sent Charles de 
 Biron, the young Marshal, who came to grief a few years afterwards ; 
 against the Spanish general Valesco, the Constable of Castile, he 
 entered the field himself. He won a victory at Fontaine FranQaise 
 with a very small force, and was enabled to traverse Burgundy 
 entirely, bringing the whole province into allegiance. He then 
 moved on to Lyons, where also he was received with joy. But these 
 advantages were counterbalanced by the success of the Spanish 
 general, Fuentes, on the Flemish border, where he took several 
 important posts and perpetrated great ravages. 
 
 On September 17, 1695, Henry completed his reconciliation with 
 the Church by receiving absolution from the Pope : immediately 
 after he granted the Duke of ilayenne a truce for three months, 
 which was followed in January 1596 by a peace or reconciliation, 
 Henry generously took on himself the enormous load of debt under 
 which the Duke was crushed, and exacted no other revenge from 
 him than by taking him a very long quick walk which reduced 
 the unhappy prince, who was very fat and short-winded, to a state 
 of dissolution. 
 
 Even this did not produce a complete pacification. It was not 
 until February 1596 that the King got hold of Marseilles : the Duke 
 of Epernon maintained Provence in hostility, and the Duke of 
 Mercoeur held out still in Brittany. Henry did not, moreover, gain 
 any signal advantage over the Spaniards, who went on taking town
 
 240 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 after town in Picardy. The fall of Calais in April and of Ardres in 
 May 1596 was followed but not remedied by the recovery of La 
 Fere. But in the following year Amiens was taken on March 11. 
 At last Henry roused himself to action. ' I have been playing the 
 King of France long enough ; now it is time to act King of Navarre.' 
 He marched forthwith into Picardy, and besieged Amiens. It did 
 not yield, however, until after six months' siege, when Biron took it 
 on September 25. 
 
 From this moment Henry's fortunes prospered. He found the 
 Duke of Mayenne faithful : he was able to negotiate for peace with 
 PhiUp II. One by one the elements of difficulty and disorder were 
 got rid of. The Duke of Savoy, whose constant attempts on the 
 eastern provinces were irritating if not dangerous, was thoroughly 
 humiliated by Lesdiguieres. In February 1598 the King saw him- 
 self at last at liberty to go into Brittany to bring the Duke of 
 Mercoeur to his senses. On Henry's approach the Duke prepared for 
 submission : he offered his daughter and heiress as wife to Henry's 
 elder son by Gabrielle of Estrees, and resigned the government of 
 Brittany, taking his departure to Hungary to fight against the Turks. 
 In this submission the whole machinery of the League came to an 
 end. Mercoeur, although only a leaguer for his own purposes, had 
 encouraged and fostered every remaining spark of disaffection, and 
 in his fall the League was finally extinguished. 
 
 After holding the estates of Brittany at Rennes, Henry proceeded 
 to Nantes, where he issued his famous Edict in favour of the 
 Huguenots on April 13, 1598. The Edict of Nantes not only con- 
 firmed all the edicts of toleration issued by the former kings, but 
 granted to the Protestants free admission to all places of trust, 
 honour, and profit ; the establishing of Chambers in the cities in 
 which the Catholics and Protestants should be in equal numbers, 
 and the opening of the Universities to Protestant as well as Catholic. 
 
 The treaty of Vervins, which was signed the next month, put an 
 end to the war Avith Philip without any sacrifice of the territory or 
 honour of France. The county of Charolais was secm-ed to the King 
 of Spain, but under the suzerainty of France ; all the acquisitions 
 made by the successive governors of the Netherlands in the north of 
 France were surrendered to Henry. Philip's claim to the crown and 
 to the duchy of Brittany collapsed at the same time, although his 
 rights as well as those of Henry to Spanish Navarre were formally 
 reserved. The county of Charolais remained in the hands of his 
 posterity until it was seized by Lewis, Prince of Conde, for the debt 
 due to him by Philip IV. The French historians represent the 
 peace of Vervins as the first great blow at the power of the house of 
 Hapsburg. It is perhaps the first peace in which they had resigned
 
 ACCESSION OF HENEY III. TO THE PEACE OF VEEVINS 241 
 
 every advantage and come oif content with the fact of the peace 
 itself, and it was a blow inasmuch as it set France at liberty to 
 prepare for a struggle in which the two old enemies would be more 
 fairly matched. But it was in itself no real disparagement. The 
 truer version of the matter seems to be that by the marriage of his 
 daughter Isabella to the Archduke Albert, and by the resignation in 
 their favour of all the remains of the Burgundian inheritance in the 
 Netherlands, Burgundy, and Franche-Comte, Philip seemed to be 
 consenting to the dismemberment of his patrimony. It was, indeed, 
 more in semblance than in reality, as the divided estates fell again to 
 Spain on the death of the Archduchess in 1633 ; but this was no part 
 of the treaty of Vervins. 
 
 LECTURE IX 
 
 HENRY IV.'S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OP EUROPE 
 
 The reign of Henry IV. may be divided into three portions : the first, 
 his struggle for the crown against the efforts of the League, which 
 may be regarded as practically terminated by his conforming to the 
 Roman Church in 1593 ; the second, the period of the Spanish War and 
 of the difficulties with the remainder of the influences that had been 
 the strength of the League, which may be regarded as ending at the 
 peace of Vervins in 1598 ; the third, the portion during which he 
 was able to consolidate his power, to restore the exhausted finances 
 of his kingdom, to carry out his scheme of religious toleration, and 
 to develop his political views. This reaches to the time of his death, 
 when he was busily preparing to throw Europe into a general war 
 of religion which would have antedated the Thirty Years' War and 
 might have altered the whole complexion of the history of Christen- 
 dom from that day downwards. Two of these periods we have 
 already considered so far as the chronological sequence of their 
 political history is concerned. I propose in this lecture to sketch 
 first my idea of the character of Henry IV., then to take the 
 remainder of his reign, and then very briefly to touch on the history 
 of France from the death of Henry to the close of the period that we 
 have set ourselves. 
 
 Henry IV. is, or was before the Revolution, a national hero : he 
 was a thorough Frenchman, with the good and bad qualities of the race 
 well developed ; he was a Frenchman of the old regime, without the 
 debasement and ensavagement that successive struggles of blood and 
 glory have produced in the Frenchman of the ordinary type of to-day. 
 
 R
 
 242 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Taking the disagreeable parts of the character first, we must allow that 
 there was a want of fixed principle in him : he was not the man to 
 be the martyr of any cause, and, like the statesman of the present 
 day, he had not the slightest difiiculty in training his conscience to 
 believe that the course most expedient for him at the moment was 
 the one which his higher nature recommended to him, which the 
 development of his own views showed him to be the right, nay, which, 
 under a different form, was the course which he had always intended 
 to hold. Whilst such a form of character is, as we shall, I think, all 
 allow, one that is incapable of the highest sort of greatness, in which 
 self-sacrifice is so large an element, it cannot be denied that for 
 a king it is not by any means the lowest type ; that, setting aside 
 the moral condition of him who has it, it involves many very 
 decided advantages to the nation that he governs and is not un- 
 frequently found in connexion with a genuine love of the people 
 and a purpose, mainly honest, of working for their good. Still it is 
 a lack of principle, and as such a fault. Henry most certainly had it. 
 A second most serious fault was his relations with women, his 
 utter incapacity for restraining his passions in that direction. This 
 is a difficult subject to say much about, but it is as well that some- 
 thing should be said, and the thing done with. Henry IV. was not 
 the slave of passion, but he was a thorough-going seeker of pleasure, 
 to the destruction of his own honour, the disgrace of his court, and 
 the misery of the objects of his pursuit ; and, moreover, to the 
 danger and loss of his own serious interests. I do not mean to say 
 that when he saw his passions leading him into serious difficulties 
 he could not restrain himself ; but that his passions blinded him 
 until he had got into those difficulties, and also as to the nature of 
 the means by which he extricated himself. Now, it may seem hard 
 to mention this against Henry IV., as a fault, a prince living in an 
 age and country of licence practically unbridled, and in that royal 
 position which is often regarded as an excuse for this special sort of 
 wickedness. I do not suppose that he was in this respect worse than 
 Francis I., or so bad as Henry III. wished himself to appear : 
 certainly he was not like August the Strong, the father of 392 
 children. But these princes, even Francis I., did not let their vices 
 interfere with their public interests : more at least than was common, 
 when the king's mistress was almost a minister of state, and his 
 lawful wife a nonentity. Henry IV. did let them so interfere, and 
 puts himself, therefore, out of the region of such excuses. And 
 unfortunately it must be added that the vices grew upon him as he 
 grew old, and were in their full strength at the time of his assassina- 
 tion ; so that he cannot claim the excuse of youth, if there be any 
 truth in such an excuse.
 
 HENRY IV.'S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF EUROPE 243 
 
 Of course, the original corrupting of his mind and morals is 
 ascribed to Catherine de Medicis : and it is possible that the charge 
 is a true one. But it is more likely that the poisoned atmosphere in 
 which he lived after the death of his mother, his forced inactivity and 
 want of employment, laid him open to temptation, and that Catherine, 
 seeing the weak side of him, took care that temptation should not be 
 wanting to sins which might render him unpopular, or indolent, or 
 incapable of becoming a rival to her wretched offspring. The ladies 
 of her court were skilled instruments of temptation : even those of 
 the highest rank and birth, her own daughter first, were at once 
 trained to the practice of vice, and educated in the art of political 
 intrigue. With them she entangled, and manoeuvred, and kept 
 espionage, and made a captive of a very noble prey. 
 
 Such and so great were Henry's faults, and I do not apolo- 
 gise for introducing his morality into a lecture on political history, 
 because unfortunately they are a part of his political history. He 
 was not, as the remoter Bourbons, ruled by his mistresses ; but he 
 let the pursuit of pleasure draw him away from his regal duties, 
 keep him the quiet captive of Catherine de Medicis when he should 
 have been her watchful enemy, and down to the end of his life turn 
 those into enemies who should have been his closest friends : he was 
 worse and more foolish far in this way than his grandson Charles II., 
 who in many respects strikingly resembles him, but whose lot fell on 
 widely different days, different regions, and ways of men. Now for 
 his good points. He had a true love of his people and a clear 
 perception of all their best interests. To them he was a good king : 
 the only good king since St. Louis. Good he might easily be in 
 comparison with the race of Valois ; but it was more than compara- 
 tively good : he had the wall and the power to see and determination 
 to carry out what was good for the nation. The eleven years of his 
 reign, 1598 to 1609, mainly years of peace, were also a period of 
 very hard work, and very good and sound work, of reform in every 
 department. No doubt a great deal of the good of the reign is 
 attributable to Sully. To him in most cases belonged the origination, 
 and in very many cases the carrying out, of the reforms. But Henry 
 was an active king and a clear-headed man ; he has the merit of 
 seeing without jealousy, and of carrying out with perseverance, the 
 plans of his great minister. He found France in an abyss of misery 
 and he left her capable of becoming what she became, for good or 
 for evil, under Louis XIV., the arbiter of the whole of Europe ; 
 inclined, perhaps, to be the tyrant : but, even in his perversion and 
 misapprehension of the real interests of Christendom, distinctly 
 strong and great. 
 
 As a warrior, Henry, although inferior, doubtless, to Spinola and 
 
 E 2
 
 24 t LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Maurice, and even to some of his own generals in the military art, 
 was a very able strategist, a brilliant soldier, and a brave man. If 
 we look at him as a politician, it is not quite so easy to estimate 
 him, because there is doubt as to the originality of the plan 
 attributed to him by Sully, or even of its real agreement with his 
 actual designs. The idea of reducing European Christendom to a 
 confederation of states, graduated and combined so as to prevent 
 quarrels and to secure substantial justice by arbitration without 
 recourse to war — of balancing Catholic against Protestant, German 
 against French and Italian, and remodelling the map of Europe in 
 accordance with an elaborate scheme of his own devising — may safely 
 be dismissed as being either an imagination of his biographer, or 
 more probably a fancy sketch that he may have talked over with 
 him as a thing to be desired, but never to be compassed : it contains, 
 indeed, no element of feasibility. 
 
 The scheme was to have fifteen great states : the Empire, France, 
 Spain, Hungary, Great Britain, Lombardy, Bohemia, Poland, Sweden, 
 Denmark, Venice, the Pope, Switzerland, the United Provinces, and 
 the Italian commonw^ealth. To produce equality, Bavaria was to 
 have the Empire ; the Pope, Naples ; the Venetians, Sicily ; the Duke 
 of Savoy, Milan with the title of King of Lombardy ; the whole 
 Netherlands were to be united ; Franche-Comte, Alsace, and Trent 
 to be given to the Swiss. These states were to elect a sort of 
 confederate senate to decide international quarrels, and to join in 
 the great design for extinguishing the Turks. 
 
 When I say that the plan had no element of feasibility I think I 
 am justified by the course of events. Nearly three hundred years 
 have passed away since it was broached and no approach has yet 
 been made to it. The Duke of Savoy has indeed got Lombardy and 
 much else. The experiment of uniting the whole Netherlands has 
 failed signally. The house of Bavaria has attempted the Empire and 
 failed to hold it. Bohemia has tried to set up as an independent 
 state and failed. Hungary has found it impossible to subsist as a 
 separate kingdom. Venice and Poland have ceased to exist as states, 
 the Pope very nearly so. Two new powers not even mentioned in 
 the scheme, Prussia and Russia, have overshadowed all Europe. Yet 
 the times may still change and the Slav movement may yet give a 
 separate existence to Bohemia, create an independent and a non- 
 Magyar Hungary on the Adriatic. 
 
 Viewed, however, as a scheme for the dismemberment of the 
 house of Austria, the creating an alliance of all the states of Europe 
 against her, and rewarding the confederacy out of the plunder ; the 
 grand project, whilst it loses its ideal beauty, loses also somewhat of 
 its Utopian character. Henry may have credited himself with ability
 
 HENEYglV.'S PLACE IN THE HISTOEY OF EUKOPE 245 
 
 to unite the European states against that house and manage the 
 union ; nor would he perhaps have had much difficulty in confe- 
 derating a large majority of them ; neither would the probability of 
 failure strike him as a certainty. We who have seen the wonderful 
 fight made by Austria in the last three centuries — especially in the 
 struggle of Maria Theresa in the eighteenth, and that of Francis II. 
 against Napoleon in the nineteenth — may afiirm certainly that the 
 toughness and vitality of the system, awkward and disjointed as it is, 
 would have been proof against any confederation that Henry could 
 have managed. That the destruction of the power of the Hapsburgs 
 was really his great politica,! object we cannot doubt : but I think we 
 may very well doubt whether the ideal project was not quite 
 subordinate in the King's mind to the desire of settling once for all 
 the old rivalry between France and the Hapsburgs. 
 
 We all know how difl'erent a man's ideal aspirations are from 
 his real objects in this life. We cannot afford to take a higher view 
 of Henry IV. His genius may have imagined a plan of confederated 
 Christendom as a speculation ; but we know that the word ' spe- 
 culation ' has two meanings, and that the element of imagination 
 enters into every dream of ambition. It would not be natural for a 
 Frenchman to contemplate a war that was not for the benefit of 
 France. Whether, if Henry had lived and succeeded in his plans 
 for the humiliation of Austria, it would have been for the benefit of 
 Europe, I cannot say ; but from the fact that French ambition has 
 brought infinitely more misery on Europe than all the repressive 
 policy of Austria in all the years of her influence, I should argue that 
 it was not ; and I infer from the whole consideration that neither 
 the grand project nor the instalment of it which he set himself in 
 his last years to realise bears the mark of political genius. The 
 former has not the feasibility that the true designs of genius surely 
 must possess ; it is not justified by the future, which it is the 
 privilege of true genius to penetrate. The latter cannot, on the mere 
 assertion of its planner, be judged of as actuated by higher motives, 
 or likely to be justified by better results, than have prompted and 
 followed the many attacks of France on Austria before and since. 
 
 To my mind, then, the Edict of Nantes and the administrative 
 reforms by which Henry IV. laid the foundations of government in 
 France anew are much greater proofs of genius, and much worthier 
 as speaking of his true love and clear sight of the good of his people, 
 than the entering on a general war that must have deluged Europe 
 in blood, the coming of which he might have foreseen, but should 
 have tried to avert and not to hasten. His death saved him from a 
 great sin and averted from Europe a very great calamity. 
 
 Compare Henry IV. with the only sovereigns of the age capable of
 
 246 LECTURES OX EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1G48 
 
 the comparison : Philip II., Elizabeth, and William of Orange. I place 
 him above Philip, on a par with Elizabeth, and far below William the 
 Silent. Both as a king and as a man, he comes below Maximilian 
 in power and beauty, but far higher in actual work, and in the 
 impression, and the character of the impression, he left on the world. 
 
 We must now turn to the history of 1598 to 1609. The Edict of 
 Nantes was pubUshed in April, and the peace of Vervins on May 2 
 1598. On September 18, Philip died. The first event secured to 
 Henry the affection of the Protestants, which had been endangered 
 by his conversion ; the second dispelled the CathoHcs' hopes of 
 substituting another candidate on the throne with the aid of Spain ; 
 the last secured to Henry a relief from the pertinacious hostility of 
 PhiUp, who, although recognising him as king, would not be likely, 
 should the opportunity offer, to treat him any better for that reason. 
 Becoming King of France, he took on him all the burden of Spanish 
 and Austrian rivalry. It is characteristic that the first moments of 
 peace should be devoted to the settlement of his love affairs. He 
 had long wanted a divorce from his precious wife, Margaret of 
 Valois, which she had resisted, fearing that he would marry his 
 mistress and the mother of his children, Gabrielle d'Estrees, 
 Duchess of Beaufort. In the year 1599, April 9, Gabrielle died ; 
 Margaret consented to the divorce, and it was completed in December. 
 But, within three weeks after the Duchess's death, Henry had 
 promised marriage to Mademoiselle d'Entragues. Sully tore up the 
 contract which the King had signed : he signed another. His 
 advisers saw the only thing to do was to get him a new wife ; a 
 marriage was negotiated for him, more quickly than he at all liked, 
 with Marie de Medicis, daughter of Francis, Duke of Florence, and 
 completed in December 1600. We may add that Margaret of Valois 
 retained the title of Queen after her divorce ; lived a perhaps much 
 better life ; and continued on much better terms with Henry than 
 she had been on with him as her husband. She was a very brilliant 
 and beautiful woman, the flower in every way of Catherine's family, 
 but she was early initiated into the very inmost circles of vice. For 
 her sins, if not for Henry's, Catherine is distinctly accountable. 
 
 A more memorable note of 1599 is Sully's reform in the finance. 
 He remitted the arrears of taxation, twenty millions of francs, as 
 irrecoverable, and begun on a new tack. He insisted on the King 
 taking a personal cognisance of the management of the revenue ; 
 adopted a more economical method of collecting the taxes, reduced 
 expenditure as much as possible, paid all the debts of the crown, and 
 in imposing taxes did it with careful regard to the interests of 
 commerce and the satisfaction of the payers. 
 
 The war of 1599 was with the Duke of Savoy, who had refused
 
 V. 
 
 HENEY IV/S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF EUROPE 247 
 
 to surrender the marquisate of Saluces, which he had seized in the 
 time of peace in the reign of Henry III. Henry in this war took 
 from the Duke Bresse and other little territories, which by the 
 peace of Lyons in 1601 he retained, leaving the disputed marquisate 
 to the Duke. The following year (1602) we come to a crisis 
 unexpected indeed : the conspiracy of the Marshal de Biron, one of 
 Henry's ablest generals, who had conducted for him the war of 
 Savoy. Sully had long suspected his ambition and tried by varied 
 employment to keep him out of mischief. But Biron's influence 
 and vanity were increased by the constant occupation of an ambas- 
 sador. He became one of the most popular men in Europe, and it 
 was consequently an object of distinct policy in the powers who 
 hated Henry to win Biron to their designs. 
 
 Henry chose to ascribe Biron's vagaries to his vanity, and would 
 not believe that so vain a man could be treacherous or dangerous. 
 And had Biron been alone it might have been the safest policy. 
 Had Henry been strong in the affections of his subjects, he might 
 have defied the conspiracies of Spain and Savoy. But this was not 
 so. The reforms that Sully initiated were only in their beginnings ; 
 the momentary hardships were felt, the lasting relief was a matter 
 of the future. Henry's extravagance, especially his habit of gam- 
 bling, made him always poor ; his unbridled lust alienated from 
 him every honest noble who had a wife or a daughter whom be 
 might covet. The new Queen, with her Italian retinue, was 
 unpopular among the French, and her relations with her husband, 
 such a man as he was, were not likely to make him respectable. 
 The result was that in 1602 there was certainly a great mass of 
 discontent and uneasiness in every class of society. This made the 
 King suspicious and excitable. He knew not whom to trust, and he 
 was possessed of little self-control : his most faithful advisers were 
 alienated from him, and the newly roused suspicion could not 
 distinguish between coldness and treachery. 
 
 There is no reason to doubt that the conspiracy of which 
 the Marshal de Biron was the head and the victim, was very widely 
 spread, and included some persons of the greatest rank and im- 
 portance. Outside France it was supported by Spain and Savoy, 
 the object of those powers being the actual division of Henry's 
 dominions among themselves ; Biron being promised the duchy of 
 Burgundy as his reward. Of the details of the conspiracy, or the 
 way in which it reached the ears of Henry, our information is not 
 clear. It was, however, discovered. Biron was put to death. The 
 Count of Auvergne, the natural son of Charles X., was pardoned at 
 the entreaty of his half-sister, Madame d'Entragues. The Baron 
 de Lux, the confidential friend of Biron, after the Marshal's death.
 
 248 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-16-48 
 
 laid before Henry the plan of the conspiracy and the names of the 
 malcontents. These were too many and too powerful for Sully even 
 to commit to paper ; Henry's only policy was mercy and precaution. 
 From this time he was more careful whom he trusted, and his hatred 
 of Spain and of the whole house of Hapsburg became inveterate, 
 their humiliation the great object of his life. 
 
 The year 1603 was that of Elizabeth's death ; it is marked in 
 French history as the year of the recall of the Jesuits, who, recover- 
 ing their tenure of power through the influence of the King's confessor, 
 never relaxed their hold on France to the time of their suppression 
 in France in the year 1764. The accession of James I. afforded an 
 opportunity for drawing closer the ties between the two rival nations : 
 the old connexion of France with Scotland, and the new one with 
 England on the ground of support to the Protestant interest in 
 Europe, combined into a close alliance for the time. The two powers 
 bound themselves to help the Netherlands against Spain : Henry 
 being at peace, and James hastening in the following year to make 
 peace with the common enemy. 
 
 The King's debts in 1603 amounted to 330 millions of francs, on 
 which all the financial reforms of Sully had as yet produced very 
 little impression. In the year 1604 the embers left by the conspiracy 
 of 1602 broke out again ; again the King's love affairs complicate 
 matters. The Count of Auvergne, pardoned in the former year, 
 became the spy and tool of Spain. His half-sister of whom the 
 King had grown weary, and whose claims he had bought off by 
 appointing her father Marshal of France, entered into the plot. It 
 was conducted, according to Henault, by the father Archange, a 
 bastard of Queen Margaret's and confessor to the discarded mistress : 
 a detail which, if true, is extremely curious. Henry was not extreme 
 in his dealings with the conspirators : Auvergne was imprisoned for 
 life, the lady sent to a convent. 
 
 "With this private outbreak are connected the difficulties with the 
 Duke of Bouillon, who had been deeply involved in the Biron 
 conspiracy, and the situation of whose territories made him a very 
 convenient tool both to the Spaniards and to the Germans. He was, 
 however, a Protestant and one of the leaders of the party. His 
 discontent was owing rather to Henry's treatment of his old friends 
 than to any complicity with Spain ; and his object is said to have 
 been the establishment of a Protestant republic in the south 
 of France, on the plan of the United Provinces. But this is 
 very conjectural ; it is more probable that he represented one distinct 
 line of discontent, out of the many which combined in Biron's 
 hands. In 1608 he had fled to Heidelberg, although pardoned by 
 Henry ; in 1604 he was pardoned at the instance of the Elector
 
 HENKY IV.'S PLACE IN THE HISTOEY OF|EUROPE 249 
 
 Palatine, and henceforth Henry kept him employed under his own 
 eye. 
 
 In 1607 Henry united all his patrimonial estates with the crown. 
 In 1608 he made an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Holland : 
 in 1609 he helped the negotiation of the truce between Spain and the 
 United Provinces. The rest of the history of these years comprises 
 little else than a record of court scandals ; of administrative reforms ; 
 and repeated conspiracies formed on a small scale against Henry, 
 whose life was attempted seventeen times before he was assassinated. 
 During this time, however, there is no reason to svippose that Henry 
 neglected the great object for which he was working at the time of his 
 death : preparing to isolate the house of Austria, by entering into 
 close alliances with all her neighbours, and then, by a sudden and 
 general war, to demolish her altogether. 
 
 The greatest of the scandals is perhaps that of the Princess of 
 Conde, a lady of the house of Montmorency, whose marriage the 
 King delayed until he was obliged to suffer it, and in pursuit of whom 
 he drove her husband to carry her off into the Netherlands. The 
 story is a common subject for magazine articles. It is one of the 
 most damaging of all to Henry's character. It took place in 1609. 
 
 In 1610 Henry's military preparations were completed, and the 
 conduct of the Emperor in the matter of the succession to the 
 duchies of Cleves and JuHers gave him the opportunity he had been 
 waiting for. The character of the opportunity belongs to the history 
 of Germany, nor does it enter into French history at this time 
 further. But Henry's preparations were noteworthy. He had 
 ended his long enmity with the Duke of Savoy by the treaty of 
 Brussol, April 25, 1610. By this he bound himself to conquer the 
 duchy of Milan for the Duke, on the understanding that Savoy should 
 be united to France : a curious anticipation, certainly, of the 
 arrangement which resulted in our own day from the alliance of 
 Victor Emmanuel and Lewis Napoleon against Austria in 1859. In 
 February 1610 he made an agreement with the Count Palatine and 
 the Elector of Brandenburg for the preservation of the succession 
 of Cleves and Juliers. He had established the closest relations with 
 England, and in Italy he was not -without a strong party. His army 
 was on the same scale with his alliances. His own army numbered 
 40,000 veterans, besides 6,000 Swiss and a body of 4,000 nobles. 
 The treasure amassed for the war was 40,000,000 francs. But the 
 army of the whole confederation was expected to be not less than 
 300,000 infantry and 50,000 horse ; the fleet, 120 vessels of war. 
 The details are less known because of the collapse of the whole design 
 almost before it was completed : but the first step was taken ; the 
 Archduke was asked for leave to cross his territory into the disputed
 
 250 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 duchies, and the leave could not be refused. Henry's army was to 
 meet at Chalons in the middle of May. The Queen, Marie de Medicis, 
 was to be cro\Yned on the 13th, and directly after she was to be made 
 regent, and Henry was to take the head of his forces. 
 
 On the day after the coronation Henry was stabbed in his coach 
 by Francis Ravaillac. Who prompted the assassin was never known ; 
 not is his history sufficiently clear to allow us to theorise. The 
 guilt was variously laid to the Jesuits, to the Spanish court, to the 
 family of d'Entragues ; to his wife, Marie de Medicis, to the insanity 
 or bigotry of Ravaillac himself. In support of the several theories it 
 was said that Ravaillac had been lately at Brussels ; that he had two 
 sons Jesuits ; that he had been a servant in the family of the 
 Marshal d'Entragues. The Duke of Bouillon in 1636 declared to 
 Sir Robert Sidney, the English ambassador, his belief that the 
 court of Spain was guiltless ; but he would not commit himself to any 
 distinct supposition as to the real criminal. Sidney, therefore, 
 suspected a collusion between the Queen and the Jesuits. Bouillon's 
 acquittal of the Spaniards is more important than Sidney's 
 suspicion of the Queen, for he was one of the judges who examined 
 Ravaillac on the rack. 
 
 The repeated declarations of the assassin that the King was a 
 heretic and extra ecclesiam, one who might therefore lawfully be 
 killed, struck the Duke as singular and important ; but nothing 
 approaching a confession was extracted from him, and perhaps the 
 most reasonable account is that he was a mad fanatic. The passion 
 for assassination, as we know from the attempts made on the life of 
 Queen Victoria, is infectious : seventeen attempts, as I said before, 
 had been made on Henry IV.'s. The doctrine of the merit was a 
 relic easily picked up of the days of the League and of the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew. Mysterious the matter can scarcely be called 
 when it is capable of such a solution. It is in its political aspect 
 a curious example of the way in which the house of Austria has 
 been able to take advantage of her luck. The death of Henry, of 
 which there is no ground whatever for accusing the Hapsburgs, was 
 the luckiest thing that could have happened to them. Henry was 
 prepared to strike a blow which could hardly have failed to paralyse 
 Spain, and to wrest the Empire out of the hands of the Austrian 
 family, if not to abolish it altogether. 
 
 Thus the great project of Henry IV. perished in embryo : did 
 not even reach the point of development at which it would be safe 
 to define it. If it were really what Sully makes it and what I have 
 described it, it was a Utopian scheme ; not impracticable, perhaps, 
 but so far off practicability immediately that he who seriously 
 entertained it can be regarded as little better than a visionary.
 
 HENEY IV.'S PLACE IN THE HISTOEY OF EUEOPE 251 
 
 Henry IV. may have been long-sighted enough to beheve that what 
 he saw in the distance of three centuries was near and within his 
 grasp ; to make him so, however, is not to exalt his genius. That 
 he intended to humiliate Austria is clear : that he wished to establish 
 religious freedom is possible, though, considering his relations with 
 the Jesuits, less probable. What is certain is that by Eavaillac's 
 blow all that he contemplated, and much else that might have been, 
 and would have been far more for the good of France, came to an 
 end. His successors were not able to maintain his policy ; they 
 sought for new alliances, and broke up at once the confederation he 
 had formed : they employed new ministers, and threw into confusion 
 the schemes over which he and Sully had watched so carefully- 
 Still Henry had not reigned in vain ; and the light of his policy, after 
 a long eclipse, was revived to make his descendant illustrious in the 
 world's fashion. 
 
 Into the history of the next reign I do not propose to go further 
 than to indicate the attitude that France, under her altered regime, 
 was preparing to take in the general war that was at hand. The 
 confusion and misgovernment of the early years of Lewis XIII. show 
 that his father's difficulties must have been very great ; and that it 
 took a very strong man to hold down the conflicting parties which, 
 all alike without principle and covetous of gain, were struggling for 
 power. The regency was claimed immediately on her husband's 
 death by Queen Mary ; and for seven years she ruled France, in a 
 way, through her chief minister, the Marshal d'Ancre, an Italian 
 named Concini. The very fact of her regency gave offence to the 
 Condes and the Protestant party who followed them. Her employ- 
 ment of an Italian minister and foreign servants offended the 
 nobility of France, who were jealous in the extreme : she combined 
 against herself both the parties which, without a common enemy, 
 had been used to prey upon one another. By trying to humour 
 these she lost instead of gaining strength ; and her attempts to 
 support her government by foreign alliances gave constant alarm 
 to one or other. From the first she was obliged to give up any 
 attempt to carry out Henry's scheme against Austria, and to get 
 rid of the obligations he had entered into with the Duke of Savoy 
 in the treaty of Brussol. In the next place, she must look for 
 allies in Spain and throw over those whom Henry had made in 
 Germany. But one act of his policy was carried out : a considerable 
 force was sent into Juliers to assist the Duke of Neuburg and the 
 Elector of Brandenburg. 
 
 In 1611 the Duke of Sully retired from the administration of 
 finance, and the last remains of Henry's political system were 
 obliterated. In 1612 the alliance with Spain was confirmed by a
 
 252 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, U519-1648 
 
 double marriasje, Anne of Austria to Lewis XIII., Isabella of France 
 to the Infante of Spain, afterwards Philip IV. In 1613 the intrigues 
 and cabals of the princes began overtly to work. In 1614 Conde, the 
 Duke of Vendome, Henry IV. 's eldest illegitimate son, his brother 
 the Grand Prior Alexander, the young Duke of Maycnne, the Dukes 
 of Guise, Longueville, Eohan, Luxemburg, and others, at the 
 instigation of the Duke of Bouillon, retired from the court, in 
 disgust, as they said, at the Italian ministry. This secession very 
 nearly assumed the dimensions of a civil war ; and was actually 
 terminated by a formal treaty of peace at St. Menehould,' the result 
 of which was the King's declaring himself of age, and the summon- 
 ing of the States General for the last time. No important business 
 was transacted, although much was mooted. The next year, 1615, 
 Conde again headed the malcontents ; demanded high office and was 
 refused ; then turned his indignation on the Concinis. Again the 
 quarrel was healed by a formal peace, and again the peace (of Loudun) 
 was ineffective. But the constant attacks on his mother's favourites 
 ended in drawing the King into opposition. 
 
 The Queen, in 1616, had arrested and imprisoned Conde ; the 
 other princes left court and prepared for rebellion. The opening of 
 the war was favourable to the court, but it came abruptly to an end 
 in the fall of the Marshal d'Ancre, who was killed in attempting 
 to resist Vitri, whom the King had sent to arrest him. He had been 
 won to join in a conspiracy against his own prime minister by 
 de Luynes, his own favourite, who became prime minister in 
 Concini's place. 
 
 With her minister Marie de Medicis's power fell. Concini first, 
 and after him de Luynes, both unprincipled men, governed France 
 on the plan which Richelieu carried out to the full in the later years : 
 the humiliation of the nobility and the protection of the Catholics. 
 Cond6 was released in 1619 ; but the repressive policy pursued 
 towards the Protestant party was gradually producing a feeling that 
 was to end in war. In all these struggles and intrigues the only 
 thing to note is general demoralisation ; there were no great 
 principles at stake ; it was simply a struggle for power, money, and 
 revenge. France was divided between the Queen and the princes. 
 The King was incapable of anything great or noble. The nobles 
 were educating themselves into a state in which they richly 
 deserved a Richelieu. 
 
 ' Conde to have Aniboise and 450,000 livres ; Mayenne, 300,000 ; Longue- 
 ville a pension of 100,000.
 
 LECTUEE X 
 
 GERMANY UNDER RUDOLF 11/ AND MATTHIAS, 1576-1619 
 
 The thrones of Maximilian It. were filled by two of his sons in 
 succession : Rudolf II. reigned thirty-seven years and Matthias seven. 
 Under them the imperial power suffered eclipse and the history of 
 Germany itself went on with very little respect to them. Of Rudolf 
 this is especially true ; and even the history of the reign of Matthias 
 is little else than a history of the Austrian states. The period is of 
 importance as being the period of the Counter-Reformation, as Ranke 
 calls it, through all Germany : but, except in religious questions, we 
 find very little interference of Germany with the rest of Europe : 
 nor does she take part in any war in which the general welfare of 
 Europe was involved, save and except the defence of Hungary 
 against the Turks. This abstention is owing to several reasons ; one 
 is doubtless the assumption by PhiHp II. of his father's place as 
 defender of the Catholic religion ; the Emperor was thus cut out of 
 that part of his work which had for centuries given him the largest 
 share in the politics of Christendom : another was the comparative 
 laxity with which Maximilian II. had held the reins of power, and 
 the recovery by the princes of almost independent authority, largely 
 increased by the religious peace and the doctrine ' cu jus regio ejus 
 religio.' In fact, under these two emperors the Aulic Council and the 
 Imperial Chamber became nearly all the organisation for which | 
 Germany can be said to have been united. The diets were rather | 
 congresses of ambassadors than assemblies of estates of a united | 
 kingdom. ^ 
 
 A further reason for the weakness of the Emperor was the 
 distribution of the patrimony of Ferdinand. The Austrian house 
 had so long depended on a single line, Maximilian being the only 
 son of Frederick, Philip the only son of Maximihan, and Charles 
 having early resigned to Ferdinand the whole hereditary dominions of 
 the Hapsburgs, that we are apt to forget that the principle of primo- 
 geniture was not yet adopted, and that of the fifteen children of 
 Ferdinand I. there were sure to be some who would object to the 
 eldest brother taking all. The dominions of Ferdinand were 
 accordingly divided at his death : Ferdinand took the Tyrol, and 
 Charles took Carinthia and Styria. The extent of the imperial 
 influence was thus limited : especially if the archdukes took difi'erent 
 views of their duties. This is the last partition, however, of the 
 Austrian states : ]\[aximilian's dominions were not divided : but 
 Rudolf succeeded to all.
 
 i 
 
 254 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 The Archduke of Tyrol died in 1595 : Styria and Carinthia 
 descended to Ferdinand, the son of Charles, who became Emperor in 
 1G19. Both these governments were strongly Catholic, but with 
 different results : Tyrol was never seriously affected by heresy ; 
 Styria and Carinthia at one time were almost entirely Protestant. 
 Ferdinand and Charles both pursued a different line from Maximilian, 
 and the repressive policy was maintained as a tradition in the 
 Styrian house, to come out into effect in the Thirty Years' war. 
 By this partition Rudolf's direct influence was confined to Austria 
 proper and Bohemia : Hungary acknowledged him as King, but 
 suffered little interference. The chief reason, however, of his 
 insignificance we must find in his own character. Rudolf II. had 
 been brought up in Spain as presumptive heir of Philip II,, in the 
 purest atmosphere of orthodoxy and etiquette. He was a man of 
 intelligence and information, accomplished and a lover of learning. 
 But he either had a taint of the old insanity or he had become a 
 hypochondriac. After the first few years of his reign he lived the 
 hfe of a recluse in the palace of Prague, in the midst of books, 
 laboratories, museums, and mathematical instruments ; he was 
 never seen by his subjects ; he took his exercise in cloistered 
 galleries carefully fenced off from view ; his associates were 
 astronomers, grooms, and chemists ; his pleasures were found in 
 the possession of an immense stud of beautiful horses which he 
 never mounted, and in the services of beautiful women, of whom a 
 long string in rapid succession bore the reputation of being his 
 mistresses : as, however, he never had any children, it is not 
 improbable that his relations with these were merely platonic, or 
 jEsthetic. He never married : one of his fears being that, according 
 to a horoscope drawn by Tycho Brahe, he would be killed by his 
 son, or, another version, his fall would be due to a member of his 
 own house. 
 
 The Emperor being thus employed, the Empire governed itself : 
 Hungary conducted its own defence against the Turks, the arch- 
 dukes governed the Austrian dominions as they pleased ; in the 
 politics of Europe it was uncertain that Rudolf's voice, if it were 
 exerted, would be recognised. He was a devout and rigid Catholic, 
 and whenever and wherever he chose to exercise any power it was in 
 the direction of repression. From the beginning of his reign it was 
 made evident that in this respect his line was distinctly opposed to 
 his father's. The condition of things in Austria was curious : the 
 nobles were Protestant and were allowed the ministration of 
 Protestant ministers ; the citizens and lower orders were supposed 
 to be Catholic, they retained the churches and the Catholic priest- 
 hood and were forbidden to attend the preachings. Very early in
 
 GERMANY UNDER RUDOLF II. AND MATTHIAS 255 
 
 Rudolf's reign, the Protestant preacher Opitz, who preached to the 
 nobles of Vienna in their Landhaus, scandalised the city by his , 
 violence : he was forced to quit the city and territory. This was in 
 1578, and is marked by Ranke as the beginning of the reaction in 
 Austria. 
 
 The Emperor was not resisted and he proceeded to carry out the 
 same line in the cities. The nobles, however, and the towns in 
 alliance %vith them offered a passive resistance. The Archduke 
 Charles was more successful still in Styria, and the ecclesiastical 
 princes of Germany who had territories in or near Austria, the 
 Archbishops of Cologne and Salzburg, followed the example. 
 Bavaria had inaugurated the policy : Austria carried it out. But 
 it is not to be forgotten that the nobles were still Protestant, and 
 had a very great power in the provincial estates. The policy of 
 repression, therefore, was consistent only with the most thorough 
 economy : any demand for money would be met with a demand for 
 religious liberty. Hence, perhaps, the peace policy pursued for the 
 time by the archdukes. A Protestant reaction followed the death of 
 the Archduke Charles in 1590, and the whole process had to be 
 gone through again by his successor Ferdinand. 
 
 The policy of repression of which I have spoken so often was 
 indeed a form of persecution, and it was the most effective sort of 
 persecution. It consisted in the banishment of the Protestant 
 ministers, the prohibition of the seriices, and the exile of the popula- 
 tions or individuals that had pertinaciously refused to hear the 
 Church. It is strongly contrasted with the Spanish or inquisitorial f 
 process. No blood is shed : no fires lighted except to burn books : f 
 but first the preachers, then the proselytes are eliminated. Pro- 
 testants are ineligible for municipal and government offices : the 
 Protestant nobles, if not eliminated, are consistently snubbed. The 
 charge of cruelty is avoided : the heretic principles are represented 
 to the world without the prestige of martyrdom : the vacant lands 
 are quickly filled up with new tenants whose interest it is to be 
 Catholic and whose instinct is to hate those whom they have perhaps 
 indirectly wronged. Surely this is far better every way than burning 
 and cutting throats. But Rudolf was too lazy to carry out even 
 this consistently : after the death of Charles the nobles got the upper 
 hand. Ferdinand in 1597 had to begin the work : he undertook it 
 against the remonstrance of Rudolf, but the Emperor, seeing his 
 success, took courage and again headed the Counter-Reformation. 
 It was the unpopularity that he gained in this later persecution from 
 1600 onwards that led to his being superseded by his brother 
 Matthias in Bohemia and Hungary and even in Austria itself. But 
 this is to anticipate.
 
 256 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Before I go on to notice the affairs of the Empire, we will dismiss 
 the Turkish wars. The chronic struggle went on languidly during 
 Rudolf's first years : Amurath, the successor of Selinr, being engaged 
 in war with Persia. In this languid war Rudolf took no part, it was 
 carried on from 1579 to 1583 by the nobles of Hungary. It was 
 successful on their part. In 1583 the Emperor made a truce with 
 Amurath for nine years : this was broken by the Turks. In 1587 
 Count Serin, Rudolf's general, won a splendid victory : but in gene- 
 ral the defence devolved very much on the Prince of Transylvania, 
 Si»ismund Bathory, who allied himself closely with Rudolf, and 
 obtained from him recognition as an independent sovereign : this 
 status, however, he retained only three years : his vacillating character 
 leading him first to exchange his territories for lands in Silesia and 
 then to forfeit his dignities by treason. With his assistance, how- 
 ever, Rudolf made good way against the Turks. 
 
 The war began again on the expiration of the broken truce in 
 1592 : the Hungarians gained a series of victories which brought 
 down on them in 1596 the Sultan Mahomet in person. Against him 
 Rudolf sent his brother the Archduke Maximilian. This war lasted 
 for thirteen years : and it took at some points the appearance of a 
 crusade : the French, under the Duke of Mercceur, taking part in it. 
 It was on the whole creditable but wearisome to the Hungarians, in 
 consequence of whose discontent the Emperor in 1606 concluded a 
 truce for twenty years wdth the Sultan : this was renewed by 
 Matthias after he became Emperor, with great advantage to his people, 
 the Turks employing themselves in the East and restoring to him 
 the cities taken in the recent aggressions. It was in the same year, 
 1606, that Rudolf made with the Hungarians the famous Pacifica- 
 tion of Vienna, by which he recognised their constitution and 
 privileges and agreed to employ only native ministers in the 
 government of their country. On the whole, the Hungarians had 
 earned their rights, and their services had saved the reign of Rudolf 
 from being altogether inglorious as regards the Turks, little as he 
 had contributed to the result. 
 
 We v,n.\\ now turn to review the chief events in the history of the 
 Empire itself. In the year 1577 the Lutheran princes and pastors 
 drew up the Formula Concordiae, an agreement as to doctrine which 
 was to reconcile all conflicting schools within the Lutheran body, and 
 which had the result of making the line harder and sharper than 
 ever between the Lutherans and the Calvinists : Martin Chemnitz 
 and David Chytrasus drew it up : the Elector of Saxony and Duke 
 Julius were its chief patrons ; the Palatinate, under the influence 
 of John Casimir, for Lewis VI. (1576 to 1588) was a Lutheran, 
 bitterly opposed it. On the whole, it must have weakened the
 
 GERMANY UNDER RUDOLF II. AND MATTHIAS 257 
 
 non- Catholic influence in Germany and indirectly helped the re- 
 action. 
 
 In 1577 Salentin of Ysemburg, who had been Archbishop of 
 Cologne for ten years and was not yet ordained, determined to marry 
 and continue the paternal line of which he was the last representa- 
 tive. He accordingly resigned the see, and Gebhard Truchsess of 
 Waldburg was elected in his place, in opposition"* to the Bavarian 
 candidate. Gebhard was, no doubt, at the time involved with the 
 Protestants, but the Pope confirmed his appointment and he con- 
 formed occasionally. Politically he attached himself to the Prince of 
 Orange. In 1581, however, he fell in love with a lady of the house 
 of Mansfeld, and, whether by compulsion of her brothers or by his | 
 own honest good will I cannot say, married her, and immediately 
 after this he joined the Protestant princes in the Diet (November 
 1582). He determined not to resign his see, directly in the teeth of 
 the Ecclesiastical Reservation. He made his party among the counts 
 and cities : John Casimir, the Count Palatine, took the command of 
 his forces, and he prepared to resist the Emperor and all the Catholic 
 princes. The Pope deposed him : the Emperor put him to the ban : 
 the chapter elected a new archbishop. Against great odds he made 
 fight for it for a year and more : in March 1584 he had to fly, and 
 took refuge with the Prince of Orange at Delft. After William's 
 death he returned to Germany, but made no more attempts to 
 recover his see. 
 
 This event is of importance : it is the first breach of the religious 
 peace that at all took the dimensions of a war : Gebhard during his 
 prosperity had banished the Catholic priests from Westphalia : on 
 his defeat, by way of reprisals, the Protestant canons of the chapter 
 lost their stalls and revenues. The death of the Protestant bishop 
 of Osnabriick, Bremen, and Paderborn, Henry of Saxe-Lauenburg, 
 opened those sees to the Catholics ; under the influence of the 
 reaction caused by Gebhard's revolutionary proceedings. Altogether, 
 the end of the struggle was decidedly in favour of the Roman 
 Church. Gebhard has been made a hero of romance : one 
 sympathises perhaps with his love affairs, and some people perhaps 
 with his Protestantism : but he seems to have been a dishonest 
 unprincipled man, and fared in the end as well as he deserved. 
 
 The Catholic cause was now winning back a very great part of what 
 it had lost : the Jesuits of course being-the chief agents in the 
 triumph. In 1584 Bishop Julius of Wiirzburg began the work of 
 recovering his states to the Church : the bishop of Bamberg followed 
 the example ; within a very few years Franconia, or the greatest part 
 of it, was Catholic again. The cities, counts, knights even, whom the 
 Jesuits found themselves able to influence, especially those who,
 
 258 LECTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 haviiif? become Protestant in rivalry to the princes and having been 
 disappointed of their booty, were now carrying on the opposition under 
 the contrary colours, vied with one another in restoring the Catholic 
 worship, and, where they could, getting rid of the non-Catholic 
 population and their teachers. It was hoped that the princes them- 
 selves would soon begin to return : the first convert was made in 
 1590_James or Jacob, Margrave of Baden. 
 
 Duriiig all these movements we look in vain for a trace of 
 Rudolf's existence. The agency of Philip through the Jesuits and the 
 Papacy is far more apparent : doubtless Rudolf also was to some 
 extent under Philip's influence. But with the exception of the episode 
 of Mathias's adventures in the Netherlands, of which we have said 
 enough already, the name of Philip does not come much into Rudolf's 
 history. His hand was light, doubtless because he knew that he 
 could get his own way with him when he wanted it. 
 
 In 1590 the question was raised in the Diet of Frankfort how the 
 Spaniards should be expelled from the imperial territories, meaning 
 of course the Netherlands : but the issue was a false one. The 
 Netherlands had long ceased to be any way except technically a part 
 of the Empire : and the discord between the Lutherans and Calvinists 
 alone would have been enough to prevent any action being taken ; 
 as it was, nothing was done. 
 
 In 1592 a disputed election to the see of Strassburg, between 
 John George of Brandenburg, a Protestant, and the Cardinal Charles 
 of Lorraine, brought a struggle which lasted until 1604. The 
 Emperor sent the Archduke Ferdinand to arbitrate, but the parties 
 preferred to appeal to arms : soon tired of fighting, they referred the 
 decision to a board of five princes, two Catholic and three Protestant, 
 all in vain: at last in 1603 Henry IV. of France undertook to 
 arbitrate. He decided in favour of the Cardinal, but made him pay 
 130,000 gulden to buy off his rival's claims. 
 
 It was during this turmoil that the confederacy of Heilbronn under 
 the Elector Palatine was instituted in 1594 ; out of which some few 
 years later the ' Union ' of the Protestant princes grew. In 1595 men 
 began to talk of electing a King of the Romans, but Rudolf distrusted 
 his brothers and would have nothing to say to the proposal. 
 
 These little particulars bring the history down to the year 1600, 
 after which a sort of rousing appears to take place. The Archdukes 
 in fact, seeing the contempt into which Rudolf has suffered the 
 imperial house and dignity to fall, think it high time to provide for 
 the family interests. Rudolf, on the other hand, careless of the use 
 of power, clings to the possession of it. He also is roused to resist 
 the action of his kinsfolk as directed against himself : both bid 
 against one another for the support of the people they govern, and
 
 GEEMANY UNDER RUDOLF II. AND MATTHIAS 259 
 
 both are compelled to make concessions to the political and religious 
 tendencies to which they are more or less opposed. The incident 
 becomes more varied and rapid, and we begin to see more clearly the 
 train of events that is leading to a general war in Germany : the 
 struggling of the fires of liberty under the superincumbent mass of 
 repression, and the progress of a struggle in which those fires are to 
 break forth, here and there to be triumphant, here and there to be to 
 all appearance completely extinguished. 
 
 The regular sequence of events which forms the later history of 
 Rudolf's reign and his successors', and which led directly to the 
 Thirty Years' War, may be regarded as beginning in 1597 with the 
 reactionary measures of the Archduke Ferdinand. The league made 
 at Heilbronn in 1594 was a political rather than a religious confe- 
 deration to refuse pecuniary aid to the Emperor for the Turkish 
 war until the grievances of the confederates were redressed ; and, 
 although it led not indirectly to the formation of a much more 
 important confederation, it contained only the Elector Palatine of the 
 great princes, the Duke of Wiirtemberg and three or four others of 
 secondary rank. ?v 
 
 The history of the life of Ferdinand II. would cover all that is 
 really of political importance down to the year 1637 : forty out of 
 the fifty years' history which must be read before we can understand 
 the Thirty Years' War. The Catholic reformation of the Austrian 
 states begins then under Ferdinand in 1597 in Styria. It was 
 carried on with determination and severity, and it was very 
 successful : the closing of the churches, the absolute prohibition of 
 services, the option between conversion and exile, were the means. 
 In 1603 Ferdinand had got an increase of 40,000 faithful. These 
 proceedings had a twofold effect : they roused Eudolf to imitate 
 them in his own states : they excited also the alarm of the 
 Protestant princes and made them combine by way of precaution. 
 In 1598 the confederates of Heilbronn renewed their league at « 
 Frankfort, adding to their numbers the princes of Brunswick, Hesse, | 
 Nassau, and even Brandenburg. Saxony still stood aloof, jealous as '? 
 ever of the Elector Palatine. This league concluded in 1603 an f 
 alliance offensive and defensive with Henry IV. at Heidelberg ; one 
 of his first steps towards the carrying out of his great project against I 
 Austria. 
 
 But although these confederations were entered into for the 
 purpose of controlling the imperial administration in Germany, and 
 enforcing the respect due to the Protestant interest in the Diet, the 
 imperial chamber, and the AuUc Council, they were only indirectly 
 connected with the Protestantism of the Austrian States, where the 
 right of the Emperor and archdukes to regulate religious matters was 
 
 s2
 
 2G0 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 admitted. But the growth of the Catholic reaction in Austria and 
 that of the Protestant opposition in Western Germany were large 
 parta of the general arming of the two forces one against the other. 
 The success of the Jesuits in Austria emboldened the Catholic 
 princes in the Empire to follow the example, and Rudolf even attempted 
 to effect in Bohemia the same changes that he had been able to carry 
 out in his minor states. 
 
 The events which brought the two powers thus marshalling 
 against each other into collision were first the affair of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, which had been put under the ban of the Empire in con- 
 sequence of the successes obtained by the Protestants, many of them 
 exiles from the Netherlands, in subverting the Catholic character of 
 the town. This ban was executed by the Electors of Treves and 
 Cologne in 1598 and the exercise of Protestantism prohibited. The 
 second was the affair of Donauwerth, an imperial town within the 
 duchy of Bavaria which at the peace of Augsburg had ranged itself 
 on the Protestant side. At Donauwerth in 1605 the Catholics, 
 fostered by the protection of Bavaria, attempted, not, like the 
 Protestants of Aix-la-Chapelle, to get the government of the city into 
 their hands, but simply to hold their processions in the teeth of the 
 municipal law. The abbot of the Benedictine monastery determined 
 to hold processions : the magistrates forbade it : the abbot obtained 
 an injunction from the Aulic Council, which the magistrates could 
 not resist : the people, offended by the procession, rose and insulted 
 the monks : a new appeal was carried to the Aulic Council : the 
 Aulic Council ordered a commission of inquiry ; and the commission 
 was intrusted to Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. Another riot 
 followed ; Donauwerth was put to the ban as Aix-la-Chapelle had 
 been, and Maximilian was ordered to carry it out. He followed his 
 instructions too carefully ; took possession of the town with his 
 forces ; gave over the churches to the Catholics, deposed the magis- 
 trates, and abolished Protestantism. 
 
 This took place in 1607, and at the Diet of Ratisbon in 1608, 
 January 12, it formed a topic of complaint. This Diet is a remark- 
 able epoch : its president was the Archduke Ferdinand : the 
 Emperor's demand, as usual, was for money for the Turkish war. 
 But the policy of the Protestants was to refuse to enter upon any 
 business whatever until Donauwerth was restored to its rights : until 
 the Aulic Council was reformed and the peace of Augsburg positively 
 confirmed. The Archduke, in the Emperor's name, was stiff' in refus- 
 ing or temporising with all these petitions. The princes carried out 
 their resolution of abstention ; and the Diet separated for the first 
 time since there were Diets without coming to any decision. 
 
 The Prince-^ directly after, at Aschhausen in Franconia (May 4),
 
 GERMANY UNDER RUDOLF II. AND MATTHIAS 261 
 
 formed themselves into a new league, to last for ten years and to be 
 under the presidency of the Elector Palatine. This league is known 
 as the Protestant Union, and was concluded by the Elector Palatine 
 and the Count Palatine of Neuburg ; Joachim and Christian Ernest 
 of Brandenburg ; the Duke of Wiirtemberg and the Margrave of 
 Baden. Their object Avas mutual defence against the imperial 
 government. 
 
 Just at the same time, Rudolf's policy in Hungary and Austria 
 brought about its natural result : and Tycho Brahe's prediction of 
 the fall of the Emperor by one of his own house began to be fulfilled. 
 His repressive measures had alienated the affections of the Austrian 
 states, and his distrust of his own family had turned against him 
 his brother Matthias, whose principles were politically opposed to his 
 own, as was shown in the affair of the Netherlands many years 
 before, and who scarcely needed the promptings of ambition to array 
 him against a brother whom he saw to be ruining the fortunes of 
 his house. The Hungarian, Austrian, and Moravian estates put their 
 forces under the command of Matthias ; he marched on Prague in 
 May 1608, the same month that the Diet of Ratisbon broke up, and 
 compelled Rudolf to resign the government of those three states. 
 Matthias was crowned King of Hungary before the end of the year. 
 Both brothers had in consequence to make large concessions to the 
 Protestants : Matthias as a reward to the Hungarians and Austrians 
 for their support, Rudolf to purchase the aid of the Bohemians and 
 to allay the fears of the Protestants in the Empire ; and these con- 
 cessions provoked a counter-confederation among the Catholics under 
 Maximilian of Bavaria ; this was made on July 11, 1609, and is 
 called the League, in opposition to the Union. 
 
 Rudolf, however, was not satisfied with merely obtaining the 
 support of the Bohemians ; he intended to take his revenge on 
 Matthias. As his original quarrel with him had sprung in some 
 measure from his design of procuring the succession to his domi- 
 nions for the Archduke Ferdinand, he determined now to start 
 the Archduke Leopold against him for the remainder of the family 
 honours. And just at this time the decease of the last Duke of 
 Juliers and Cleves (March 25, 1609), leaving the succession open to 
 several competitors, gave him an opportunity of putting out a feeler 
 in this direction. Of the claimants, the chief were the husbands 
 of the four sisters of the last duke ; the Elector of Brandenburg, 
 who had had the succession made part of his marriage settle- 
 ment ; the Count Palatine of Neuburg, the Duke of Zweibriicken, 
 and the Margrave Charles of Austria, son of the Archduke Ferdinand 
 and Philippina Welser. Besides these the Saxon princes had fclaims 
 depending on remoter marriage contracts and Erbvei:bruderungen.
 
 262 LECTURES 0\ EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 The only tAvo who were strong enough to assert their claims were 
 Brandenburg and Neuburg : and these, after a brisk struggle, were 
 induced by fear of an imperial sequestration to make peace at 
 Portmund, June 10, 1609, and agree to administer the inheritance 
 jointly. Rudolf determined, however, to secure the territory if 
 possible, annulled the treaty of Dortmund, and sent the Archduke 
 Leopold, brother of Ferdinand and Bishop of Passau, to take 
 possession. 
 
 This was regarded by the Protestants and by Henry IV. as a bold 
 stroke taken on behalf of Spain against the Netherlands. And here 
 the French and German histories come together again after a long 
 interval. It was on this unlawful seizure of Juliers and Cleves that 
 Henry IV. was to take his first stand in his attack on Austria. The 
 League of Heidelberg was renewed ; the whole network of treaties 
 against the Hapsburgs was strengthened, and the enormous army 
 was raised, which he was going to visit when he was assassinated. 
 He died and his plans collapsed, but the French force w^hich w^as 
 sent into the disputed territory was instrumental in expelling 
 Leopold, and the war came to an end under the management of 
 Maximilian of Bavaria, who obtained the evacuation of Alsace by 
 the Union on condition of leaving the heirs of Juliers and Cleves to 
 make their own arrangements. 
 
 The Emperor's project for Leopold in Bohemia was still more 
 unsuccessful. He allow'ed him at the head of his army to enter 
 Bohemia and produce a panic among the Protestants whom he had just 
 propitiated. The states in their alarm sent for Matthias, who was 
 even too ready to come. He arrived at Prague on March 20, 1611. 
 In vain poor Rudolf tried by offering every sort of concession to 
 recover the allegiance of his subjects. Matthias managed to outbid 
 him : he was deposed : Matthias elected King in his room and crowned 
 on May 23. Rudolf's dominions were now reduced to the four 
 lordships which Matthias consented to settle on him. He was as 
 poor as his ancestor Frederick III. whose astronomical tastes he had 
 inherited. In his despair he threw himself on the princes, but they 
 would have nothing to say to him, or rather w^hat they had to say 
 was cruel. Instead of being moved by his misery they reproached 
 him with his past misgovernment and demanded redress of grievances 
 which it was quite out of his power to take in hand now. They 
 ended in requesting him to call together the electors and proceed to 
 the choice of a King of the Romans. He consented, but contrived 
 to put off the day : the electors, suspecting his policy, fixed it them- 
 selves for May 31, 1612. But before that time Rudolf had taken 
 the last obstacle out of Matthias's way : he died simply broken- 
 hearted, an old man although still under sixty, on January 20.
 
 GERMANY UNDEE RUDOLF II. AND MATTHIAS 263 
 
 Our contempt of Rudolf is not altogether unmixed with pity : he 
 was one of the most unfit persons who ever reigned : his virtues 
 and vices were those of a private man. His piiblic character is 
 almost a blank : his leading policy, the maintenance of the Catholic 
 religion, he had not energy or perseverance to carry out steadily. He 
 might reign safely whilst Philip II. could direct him : but against 
 Henry IV. he was powerless ; and when a generation of weak princes 
 followed the generation of the strong ones, in France, Spain, and 
 England, Eudolf the eldest and the weakest of the weak was the 
 first to go. 
 
 It is satisfactory to know that Matthias did not enjoy the fruits 
 of disloyalty with any approach to comfort. He had risen on the 
 wave of Protestant independence and so overwhelmed Rudolf ; but 
 the wave of Protestant independence was not the strong influence at 
 this time. Ferdinand II. rose still more steadily on the wave of the 
 Catholic reaction. Matthias, like Rudolf, had no son ; he saw from 
 the beginning of his reign a fate not altogether unlike Rudolf's in 
 store for him. The electors met at the appointed time, but the 
 election of Matthias was not the immediate result : the Catholic 
 electors preferred the Archduke Albert of the Netherlands ; the 
 Protestant ones the grand master Maximilian — Matthias's younger 
 brothers. But the two archdukes were faithful to the family 
 interest ; they declined to stand ; and Matthias was elected at 
 Frankfort on June 18, 1612. The capitulation which he signed on 
 the occasion was more stringent than any .that had preceded it. 
 One article is politically important ; it restrained the Emperor from 
 employing the subsidies of the Diet for any purpose except that for 
 which they were specifically granted : another enforced the reform of 
 the Aulic Council and Imperial Chamber : another allowed the 
 electors to choose a King of the Romans ^\ithout the consent of the 
 Emperor. 
 
 The reign of Matthias is a series of disappointments : having 
 worked both Protestant and Catholic interests for his own advance- 
 ment, he found himself trusted by neither party : as Emperor his 
 policy was conservative : as an aspirant he had bound himself to the 
 other party : he was brilliant, Hke his father, but not tolerant or 
 patient : he prepared the way for his own failure. He could not 
 get money for the war against the Turks : and had to make peace in 
 1615, losing Transylvania thereby, which had declared itself indepen- 
 dent under Bethlen Gabor. He ofi'ended the Protestants by con- 
 tinuing the ban on Aix-la-Chapelle and even enforcing it after a 
 settlement had, during the Interregnum, been eft^ected. He had, 
 moreover, in the interest of the Catholics of Cologne, ordered the 
 demolition of the fortifications of Miilheim which were being erected
 
 264 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 by the heirs of Juliers. He seems to have determined to protect the 
 Catholics and to manage the Protestants by intrigue. - Not that they 
 required much management, their own quarrels made them impotent. 
 The Elector of Brandenburg and Count Palatine had agreed to settle 
 the succession by a marriage of the Palatine with the Elector's 
 daughter ; but in the negotiations the Elector got drunk, struck at 
 the Palatine, and quarrelled irreconcilably. The Elector, to obtain 
 the help of the Dutch, turned Calvinist ; the Count, not to be beaten, 
 turned Catholic and was helped by Spain. The struggle ended 
 with the peace of Xanten in 1614, by which the inheritance was 
 divided, the government being still administered jointly. In this 
 Matthias took no part. 
 
 Shortly after this the Archduke Maximilian, seeing that the fate 
 of his family was sealed unless provision were made for the con- 
 tinued union of the estates, proposed that all the archdukes should 
 give up their claims to succession to Ferdinand of Styria : after 
 some difficulties he prevailed with Matthias, the King of Spain, and 
 the rest to accept him. Matthias himself proposed him as King of 
 Bohemia, and he was crowned on June 29, 1617. He became King 
 of Hungary a year after : and by the strength of his mind and 
 persistency of his policy gradually edged Matthias out of power. 
 Klesel, Bishop of Vienna, and confidential minister of Matthias, who 
 had used his influence against his master's resignation, was carried 
 off by Ferdinand and imprisoned. 
 
 He then turned against the Bohemian Protestants and provoked 
 a rebellion, headed by Count Thurn, which ended in the election of 
 Frederick, the Elector Palatine, as King of Bohemia. Matthias 
 attempted in vain to enforce more prudent counsels, Ferdinand was 
 all-powerful in the support of the Spanish court, and the Catholic 
 interest was now strong in the possession of Maximilian of Bavaria. 
 On the other hand, the Protestant Union was intriguing against 
 Ferdinand : the Elector Palatine had already set his mind on 
 Bohemia : the Empire was offered in turn to Maximilian of Bavaria 
 and Charles Emmanuel of Savoy. 
 
 The sufferings of the Bohemian Protestants forced the Union to 
 overt action. The Count of Mansfeld, under the orders of the Elector 
 Palatine, on November 21, 1618, laid siege to Pilsen and took it after 
 a stout struggle : and in a moment Bohemia was lost. The death 
 on March 20, 1619, of Matthias, who was striving to negotiate and 
 had agreed to a conference at Egra, on April 14, put an end to all 
 prospects of peace, and immediately the war began which desolated 
 Germany for thirty years and the results of which produced a 
 permanent change in the aspects of German history.
 
 LECTURE XI 
 
 SPAIN AND FRANCE IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 We have seen, in the last lecture but one, how Henry IV. used the 
 position which Philip II.'s death had left open to him. It remains 
 for us now to take up the strings that have been left loose at various 
 parts of our discussion, and bring them down to the closing point of 
 the period. Philip II. left but one son, Philip III., the son of his 
 niece and fourth wife, Anne, daughter of Maximilian II. Philip III. 
 was twenty-one years old when he began to reign : he reigned twenty- 
 three years, and during twenty of those twenty-three he had but one 
 great minister, the Duke of Lerma ; and that great minister, one great 
 favourite, Rodrigo Calderon. Philip III. was a fairly decent and 
 clever man, but he had no energy or application or even the business 
 qualities which were the great strength of his father's character. 
 The history of Spain in his reign is a history of continuous decline, 
 rapid and unbroken ; although the spell of past power saved the 
 kingdom from becoming, as it did a century later, absolutely powerless 
 and contemptible. 
 
 Of the causes which led to this decline many theories have been 
 given, and various degrees of importance have been ascribed to the 
 causes adduced from different sides and standing-points. I shall not 
 undertake to decide which was the greatest of these destructive 
 influences ; but amongst them these may be regarded as certainly 
 powerful : the decay of national trade and commerce resulting from 
 the possession of the American colonies and the large revenues 
 derived from them ; the exile or destruction of a large industrial 
 population, the most industrious in Spain, the Moriscoes, who were 
 persecuted into conversion and harassed into relapse under Philip II., 
 and under Philip III. were actually driven from the country ; the 
 extinction of national independence by the abolition or disuse of 
 constitutional forms of government ; the forms, where they were 
 retained at all, being a mere mockery of the political life which had 
 before existed ; the uncertainty and uneasiness of every relation of 
 life produced by the secret, penetrating, unscrupulous, unrelenting 
 action of the Inquisition. No doubt, all these were very efficient 
 causes of national decline. I think we may add to them these : the 
 want of any great or able minister, such as France had in Sully 
 and afterwards in Richelieu, who could have remedied the evils 
 consequent on the decay of trade and the influx of the revenues of
 
 266 LECTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 the colonies, cither by proper measures of political economy, or by a 
 system of government in which men would have felt themselves 
 secure and interested ; or by a foreign policy Avhich, even through war, 
 should have maintained for a while the energies of the nation. 
 
 Philip 11. , as we have seen, did none of these things ; but he had 
 power and he had qualities that deferred until his very last years the 
 certain collapse of his affairs. None of his successors had even the 
 kingly qualities which he possessed : had either his administrative 
 capacity or his gift of choosing good ministers. Yet, with the 
 cessation of the power, the wish and the old methods used to further 
 the policy of Philip did not cease ; the old position of orthodoxy 
 and of the defence of the Church was maintained ; the old grudge 
 against France was retained ; the old manoeuvres to keep a hold on 
 the Papacy ; the old intrigues in England during the prevalence 
 apparently of peace with the sovereign : all that was intriguing, 
 all that was underhand and demoralising, all that tended to the 
 sacrifice of the interests of the nation for the supposed interest of 
 religion and exaltation of the house of Hapsburg, was retained : all 
 that had given strength, or fibre, or even cohesion to the policy and 
 manoeuvres of Philip II. was taken away. The influence of Spain 
 in Europe continues to live on the tradition of the influence of 
 Charles V. and Philip II. 
 
 It is seen, moreover, how much of the power of Philip II. really 
 was owing to the weakness of France during the whole of his reign. 
 Such as he was, a man with no great quality, simply, we might say, 
 the habit of being a king, of being a working and intriguing king, 
 he had really no rival. What Henry II. might have been to him we 
 cannot tell : probably not a more competent rival than Francis I. was 
 to Charles V. : but what the sons of Henry II. were we know : 
 adversaries too contemptible to be injured, or friends too much like 
 adversaries to be helped. In Elizabeth of England and William of 
 Orange he had met w^th characters which in themselves were more 
 than a match for his own : but the policy of Elizabeth w^as narrow, 
 and, indeed, in many respects not unlike his own ; William of Orange 
 never had the field or appliances to show how he could have excelled 
 him. In the Empire Ferdinand and Maximilian were able princes ; 
 but exercised in Europe, probably from choice, an exceedingly small 
 influence : and under Rudolf the Empire not merely was but was 
 seen to be insignificant. Philip had succeeded to more than the 
 position of Charles V., being less hampered with imperial difficulties 
 and having nothing to dread from France. 
 
 Under such advantages the decline of Spain began ; no wonder 
 that when these were lost it continued and even accelerated. My 
 idea is that Spain lost all the ad\antages that her colonial empire
 
 SPAIN AND FRANCE IN THE EARLY 17TH CENTURY 267 
 
 brought her by the want of an able and provident ministry ; and that, 
 the advantage being lost, that which should have been to her wealth 
 became an occasion of falling : that it would have been so first, but 
 that the mischief was retarded by the practical supremacy of Philip II. 
 in Europe, and when that was removed, when nothing was substituted 
 for it, when the greatness of Spain was but a tradition of the past, it 
 scarcely needed that the neighbouring nations should have great kings 
 and ministers ; the end must come. 
 
 Under Philip III. there is no great war. The desultory state of 
 things with regard to England continued from 1598 to 1604, when 
 peace was made. In the year 1599 there was a great alarm in 
 England of a new armada, to avenge the attack on Cadiz by Essex 
 in 159G. But it appears to have been a groundless one. Philip III. 
 furnished the Irish rebels with money and with words of encourage- 
 ment : the cause of the panic was simply the sailing of a squadron 
 of eight vessels to the assistance of the Archduke Albert. In 1600 
 Queen Elizabeth and Philip III., at the urgent request of Henry IV., 
 negotiated for peace, Elizabeth demanded on this occasion that the 
 arrangements with respect to trade should be restored as they had been 
 in 1568 before her coolness with Philip II. and the piratical Avar 
 began. But the negotiations were altogether hindered by the demand 
 for precedency on all occasions for the Spanish representatives. 
 Elizabeth yielded in etiquette all that she could, but, no conference 
 being possible, no peace was arranged. The state of war, whose 
 determination was less important to England and Spain than that 
 of the relative dignity of the ambassadors, could not have been 
 very burdensome. Vexatious enough it was, and a hindrance to 
 trade and a cloak to intrigue ; but it was also a convenient outlet for 
 uneasy spirits and a sop to the strong Protestant politicians of 
 England and the Catholic bigots of Spain : and there was a strong 
 party in England whose interests were bound upon the speculations 
 which but for the state of war would have been called by their true 
 name of piracy. 
 
 Again, in 1602 the Spanish court prepared to send a large army 
 to Ireland, where Aguila, at the head of a small force, had the year 
 before occupied and fortified Kinsale : that design was prevented by the 
 surrender of Kinsale : and a plan of seizing the Isle of Wight was 
 then undertaken, under Frederic Spinola ; but it was defeated by 
 the English fleets, v/hich destroyed two Spanish squadrons, one on 
 the coast of Portugal and the other in the channel. Elizabeth's 
 death stopped this warfare, and peace followed. This peace was not 
 maintained by -James I. without considerable difficulty, owing to the 
 strong sympathy felt by the people for the struggles of Maurice 
 in the Netherlands and the traditional hatred of Spain felt by the
 
 268 LKCTQRES ON EUEOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 puritan and pirate interests. That James was falling under Spanish 
 influence was the cry : and although there was, no doubt, some 
 reason in the cry, for the great bulk of Spanish power and its show 
 remained whilst the real spirit was departed ; and, as I have said, the 
 intriguing machinery remained although the guiding hand was 
 removed ; there can be no doubt that its efficacy was owing to the 
 national excitement and to the growth of other causes which ended in 
 the revolution of the next reign. The peace or twelve years' truce 
 between Spain and Holland in 1609 might have availed to allay any 
 such fear, but the feeling that had been growing so long could not 
 be at once allayed ; and instead of being allayed it found other 
 influences to run Avith it. The postponed Spanish marriage of 
 Charles I. was very unpopular : you may remember how this feeling 
 extended into the next reign : how in 1621 the English parliament 
 compelled James I. to go to war with Spain : how on Charles's 
 accession the Commons begrudged the supplies and laid the blame 
 of the war on the Duke of Buckingham : how Charles was thus forced 
 into illegal means for raising money : and the long miseries of England 
 under Puritan faction and unconstitutional rule began. 
 
 The state of peace with France was not broken during the reign 
 of Philip III. : no doubt, the death of Henry IV. prevented a breach 
 that must have followed his projected attack on the Austrian family. 
 The peace was cemented in 1612 by the marriage of the Prince of 
 Asturias with Isabella of Bourbon, daughter of Henry IV., and of 
 Lewis XIII. with the daughter of Philip III., famous afterwards as 
 Anne of Austria. 
 
 This is perhaps the place for sketching the termination of the 
 long struggle in the Netherlands, where the Archduke Albert, with 
 the assistance of Spanish fleets, was maintaining as well as he could 
 the attitude of resistance to the constant aggressions and aggressive 
 policy of Maurice of Nassau. We left the two parties in 1598, 
 Albert having been recently appointed governor and his wife Isabella 
 sovereign of the remaining Spanish possessions. During the absence 
 of Albert, the government was carried on by Cardinal Andreas of 
 Austria ; Mendoza, admiral and general of the Spanish forces, at- 
 tempted to get into the northern provinces through Cleves and West- 
 phalia, and, not succeeding in doing so, created great miseries in the 
 undefended country through which he passed. Maurice, not averse to 
 this, from the idea that the imperial government would be obliged to 
 take the side of the Hollanders if their enemies should put themselves 
 decidedly in the wrong within the boundaries of Germany, pressed 
 Mendoza as hard as he could and made gigantic efforts to repel the 
 attack which he expected from the Archduke ; the whole power of 
 Spain being now at liberty, released from the French war, to help
 
 SPAIN AND FRANCE IN THE EAELY 17TH CENTURY 2G9 
 
 him. These efforts produced a great deal of hardship among the 
 Dutch, of which the Spanish government might have taken 
 advantage had it not likewise been hampered with domestic diffi- 
 culty, a league among the national party being formed to expel the 
 foreign soldiery. This the Archduke, on his return in Sept. 1599, 
 obviated by promising that as soon as the war was over all foreign 
 troops should be removed. He then proposed terms of peace to the 
 Seven United Provinces, but the states rejected them and the war 
 was briskly resumed. 
 
 In June 1600 an important action occurred that diversifies the 
 otherwise monotonous character of this most tedious struggle. 
 Maurice invested Nieuport in Flanders with an enormous fleet of 
 boats. The Archduke and his wife brought up a force to relieve the 
 place, and in a battle on July 2 their troops gained a victory : but, 
 the battle being renewed the same day, fortune had turned, the victory 
 became a defeat, and Maurice beat them with a loss of 8,000 men. 
 The inhabitants of Nieuport, however, defended the place so stoutly 
 that in the end he had to retire without taking it. Another negotia- 
 tion followed : and another campaign. 
 
 The event of 1601 was the opening of the siege of Ostend by 
 Albert, which began on July 5, and lasted until Sept. 19, 1604, when 
 it was taken by Ambrosio Spinola : in this siege there were 
 employed troops and funds from all the states of Christendom : 
 England, France, Holland, and Germany assisting in the defence ; 
 Spain, Italy, and Austria in the attack. During the siege some 
 important actions were fought and divertissements attempted else- 
 where : but all the interest is concentrated upon it. Maurice took 
 Grave and Sluys, which he had besieged in order to draw off the 
 attack from Ostend. In this war Maurice was opposed by the 
 Marquis Spinola, who disputes with him the character of the 
 greatest master of military science in the age. 
 
 The transactions of the following years are complicated by the 
 exhaustion of both parties. The Archduke could get no money from 
 Spain ; and Spinola's troops were accordingly constantly in revolt, 
 almost as difficult to manage as the enemy : Maurice was compelled 
 by the states to be economical. The states were, however, finding 
 that the English policy was the best and that the vulnerable points 
 of Spain were her colonies and fleets : points which in future time 
 they also were to find constituted their own strength and also their 
 weakness. The rivalry of Dutch commerce and the foundation of 
 Dutch colonies date from the difficulties of this struggle. The 
 Spaniards were heartily weary of a war in which there was no way 
 of avoiding loss, and in which all the expense they incurred seemed 
 simply to be wasted. The English King was disposed to take the part
 
 270 LECTURER ON EUROPEAN UISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 of a pacificator : the dignity of the Archduke was not so great but 
 that he could condescend to treat when Philip could not : the 
 Portuguese, whose East India trade was being destroyed by the 
 Dutch, importuned the royal ears with entreaties for peace. At last 
 in 1608 the states at the Hague and the court at Brussels opened 
 negotiations with one another. 
 
 The states had, however, grown up, we may say, in war ; peace 
 was a novelty they were not disposed to covet. The Archduke could 
 remember his pleasant days in Portugal and would be glad of rest. 
 Maurice was opposed to peace : the interests that had flourished at 
 sea and on the destruction of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies 
 resisted the idea : as did the Calvinistic religious interest. Barne- 
 veldt and the statesmen dreaded the ambition of Henry IV. The 
 Archduke was ready to make sacrifices and gradually disarmed 
 opposition. 
 
 A congress was agreed on at the Hague; Spinola headed the 
 body that represented the Archduke: William of Nassau and 
 Brederode the states. The negotiations hung lire a long time : the 
 opposition of the policy of Maurice to that of Barneveldt dividing 
 the states among themselves, and having the effect of rendering their 
 attitude towards the Archduke insolent and exacting. Humiliating, 
 however, as it was, he persevered : and at last, on April 9, 1609, a 
 truce of twelve years was concluded : by the first article of which 
 the Archduke for himself and for the King of Spain renounced all 
 claims on the sovereignty of the United Provinces, and acknowledged 
 their independence : the second article fixed the duration of the 
 truce : the third determined that both parties should hold what they 
 had, without cessation or restoration. The fourth provided for a 
 general amnesty and full freedom of trade : the other articles referred 
 to the regulation of commerce. 
 
 So the great struggle ended, and the work that William the 
 Silent had laboured for was so far crowned wdth success. It is the 
 glorious part of Dutch history, and of the life of Maurice, who was 
 not so great a ruler as he was a captain. He never forgave 
 Barneveldt the part he had taken in the negotiations ; though it 
 was not until 1618 that he succeeded in destroying him. The seeds 
 sown in this rivalry bore fruit in the long party quarrels of the Dutch, 
 with which the names of Grotius, and the de Witts later on, are 
 inextricably involved. 
 
 The last memorable event of Philip III.'s reign was the disgrace 
 of the Duke of Lerma produced by a court intrigue. He was 
 succeeded as minister by his son, the Duke of Uzeda ; and the change, 
 it is said, was no improvement. It matters little : such a particular 
 is not worth remembering, and yet it is nearly all there is to be
 
 SPAIN AND FEANCE IN THE EARLY 17TH CENTURY 271 
 
 remembered of the last years of Philip III. He died March 31, 1621. 
 He was a kind and good man, but utterly incapable and careless as 
 a ruler ; that is all that can be said for him. 
 
 We have now brought to a close our view of the events and 
 characters and influences that form the public history of Europe 
 during the sixty eventful years that intervene between the resigna- 
 tion of Charles V. and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. I have 
 not thought it desirable for us to read these times with any special 
 reference to the Thirty Years' War, because, as you know, I am averse 
 to reading history backward and prefer to trace events in their 
 development first, and to analyse results and trace them to their 
 causes afterwards. I shall not then attempt now to anticipate 
 reflexions which belong more properly to the period of that great 
 war than to this intervening time. But some reflexions are in place 
 at the end of a course even if it wants the element of unity which 
 an anticipation of the Thirty Years' War might give it. We must not 
 forget that when we speak of the period of the Thirty Years' War we 
 mean much more than the war in Germany. We include in the 
 term the great constitutional struggle in England and the ad- 
 ministration of Eichelieu in France : a period abounding in great 
 men and in decisive struggles. Let us just see how the elements 
 which were to contend in those struggles were now disposed to one 
 another. 
 
 In Germany we have no difficulty in seeing : there the cloud of 
 war first breaks and the forces at the end of the intervening period 
 are most clearly and preparedly arrayed. In Germany ever since 
 the Peace of Religion the two parties have been looking forward to a 
 resumption of the strife. The Ecclesiastical Reservation and the 
 imperial declaration have been alike a dead letter wherever the 
 reigning prince or municipal governing body has been strong enough 
 to override them. These transgressions have produced much 
 quarrelling, much intrigue, much oppression and misery : neither 
 party has thought of forbearance, and neither has understood the 
 virtue and power of tolerance. 
 
 The balance of blame inclines, however, legally to the Protestant 
 powers who had not only, Hke their Catholic neighbours, persecuted 
 wherever they could, but have, by force and fraud of every kind, set 
 aside the Ecclesiastical Reservation, on the understanding of which 
 the imperial declaration issued. It is true the Protestants repudiated 
 the reservation as the Catholics repudiated the declaration ; but both 
 had become the law of Germany and both should have been 
 respected. The Protestants broke through both. Yet war on 
 anything like a large scale was not produced by these trespasses. 
 Under the shadow of a peace which neither party observed in terms.
 
 272 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1048 
 
 material peace was strong enough to maintain itself for nearly sixty 
 years. And those sixty years witnessed the great change in Germany 
 that made the Thirty Years' War a struggle for existence to the 
 Protestants. 
 
 The preaching of the Jesuits, the repressive policy of the 
 Austrian, Bavarian, and ecclesiastical princes, had changed South 
 Germany from being, as it promised to be, the home of Protestantism, 
 into a uniformly Catholic territory. It had consolidated the 
 Protestants into a tolerably uniform mass of opposition. The 
 Protestant Union under the Elector Palatine and the Catholic 
 interest under Ferdinand II. were two bodies between which it was 
 scarcely possible for waverers of either party to find standing-ground : 
 they had no point of agreement or pacification, neither respect for 
 the Empire, nor regard for the house of Austria, nor the spirit of 
 German patriotism, nor the hatred of foreign interference ; not one 
 of the causes which during so large a part of the reign of Charles V. 
 had maintained peace, and which had not entirely been extinguished 
 under his successors, now continued to be effective. Germany was 
 clearly divided ; the attempt of Frederick on Bohemia was but the 
 outlet of forces panting to be free. 
 
 Now if we look at France we see on a smaller scale something of 
 the same sort. Only there the contest is not going to be between 
 Catholic and Protestant only, but between the King and the princes : 
 the ministers and the nobles : between an oligarchic and a des- 
 potic government. The Edict of Nantes has given peace to the 
 Protestants, but it has also given them too much power and an 
 organisation too independent to be safe. If Henry IV. had thought 
 his Huguenot allies would have been safe without this political 
 power, this recognised impermm in imperio, this distinct territory 
 and towns and privileges, he would have doubtless granted no 
 more than simple toleration. As neither party knew what toleration 
 meant, he was obliged to give them power and means to maintain their 
 existence, power, and privileges which made them at once an object 
 of alarm to the despotic system which Richelieu saw to be for the 
 time necessary to France. The Protestants were themselves very 
 jealous of any measure taken by Henry IV. to their disparagement : 
 their jealousy was justified amply by the measures taken during the 
 minority of Lewis XIII. : the reclamation of the Church lands in 
 B6arn, the limitation of their assembling in council, and the positive 
 denial of power to their chief representatives, the Conde princes. 
 
 In France, then, Catholic and Protestant were ready for a struggle 
 when an opportunity should arise. The Jesuits in their strength over- 
 whelmed opposition, and extinguished the opposing element ; they, 
 however, provoked the opposition where they were not all-powerful
 
 SPAIN AND FRANCE IN THE EARLY 17TH CENTURY 273 
 
 and intensified it by their constant aggression, until it became 
 irrepressible and the struggle inevitable. In like manner with the 
 nobles. We have seen how, during the reigns of the sons of 
 Catherine, the nobles, the princes of the blood at the head of them, 
 divided the government ; how when a balance could be maintained 
 amongst them peace was preserved, but the wavering of the balance 
 produced almost an annual war. These annual wars, although they 
 were connected with religion, cannot be called strictly religious, 
 because a considerable part of the body that we generally regard as 
 fighting the Protestant battle were really Catholics : but neither can 
 we regard them as wars of personal intrigue, for as fast as one 
 champion fell, and they fell in rapid succession, another took his 
 place. It was a struggle of the princes for power ; as against the 
 crown and as against one another. 
 
 Well, the death of Henry III. and the war of the League against 
 Henry IV. simplified matters very much : in the great question of 
 religion and the royal title, the factions lost their importance ; but 
 on the restoration of peace they revived, and, next to Henry's love 
 affairs and escape from assassination, they gave him more trouble 
 than anything else that he had to encounter. When his adroit 
 hand was removed, the factions sprang into more than former 
 violence. Marie de Medicis had more principle or less power of 
 intrigue than Catherine had had, and so the balance was harder to 
 her to maintain : but what was needed was not now intrigue but 
 policy : and for that purpose first Concini on a small scale, then 
 Eichelieu on a large one, adopted the same policy — the depression 
 of the princes and nobles, the establishment in supremacy of the 
 royal government independent of the territorial magnates. Such a 
 reform ought to have been carried out into an alliance between the 
 whole people and the King : but it was not : we may even doubt 
 whether Richelieu ever entertained the idea : it was enough work for 
 him to crush the factions, but it was the true policy : an alliance 
 between the King and people which would concentrate administration 
 in hands acceptable to both, and abolish feudal jurisdictions with 
 everything that belonged to them. The time when this should be 
 done was yet a long way off froni France. 
 
 Now, if we turn to England, we may see, I think, that these 
 contrasts and oppositions abroad were not without their echoes and 
 reflexions here. True there was no great Catholic and great 
 Protestant party opposed to one another, nor as yet any great 
 constitutional faction-schism between the different orders of the 
 state. But there were strong antipathies and strong sympathies, 
 and there were causes which would give these their opportunity at a 
 time not very distant, although those causes might be altogether 
 
 T
 
 274 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 distinct from anything that was heard of at the time in Europe at large. 
 In the first place there can be no doubt that the great body of the 
 thinking people were possessed with a hatred of Spain and of the 
 Roman Catholic religion ; and a great desire to see the Netherlands 
 emnncipated and the power of Spain humbled in America, and the 
 Protestants of Germany victorious. 
 
 On the other hand, James I., without loving Spain, had a great 
 and natural horror of rebellion, such as even that of the United 
 Provinces continued legally to be : and the court and the Church, 
 and to a great extent the nobles also, were afraid of that composite 
 system of puritanism and republicanism which was favoured by the 
 Protestants of the Netherlands and Switzerland. The divines of the 
 Caroline period were no Romanisers, but they would not, could not 
 sympathise with either the religious or the political principles of the 
 Continental Protestants. The synod of Dort proves this : the 
 nearest approach ever made by the Church of England to the 
 Calvinists. 
 
 When accordingly the Elector Palatine was chosen King of 
 Bohemia, the court avoided, the people urged the assistance of the 
 Protestants against the Emperor. The conservative party, we may 
 say, sympathised Avith authority, the popular party Avith change. 
 This opposition led unquestionably to an attitude of opposition 
 between the court, clergy, and nobles on one side, and the middle 
 classes in the towns on the other. The policy of the court to avoid 
 interference would be amply justified on modern principles : on the 
 principles of the day it was probably justified by necessity : the 
 court could not without the people join the imperial side : they 
 would not with the people join the opposition. No doubt, the 
 approach of James I. to Philip III., the Spanish marriage proposed 
 for Charles I., was an imprudent policy, in the then temper of the 
 people : it may well be questioned whether, if it had come to maturity, 
 it would have been more unfortunate for England than the marriage 
 of Charles to Henrietta, and the French connexion that ruined the 
 house of Stewart for ever. This jealousy, — these antipathies foster- 
 ing the jealousy, the sympathies of puritanism with republican 
 principles and with republican interests on the Continent, — produced 
 a wide division between a great part of the English nation and its 
 rulers. That division widened into war, produced by other causes, 
 but a war which would have been impossible but for these. 
 
 But in the midst of all these new influences, or new developments 
 of the old ones, the old international jealousies still subsisted. 
 France would persecute Protestantism at home, but would not, 
 could not, act heartily in conjunction with Spain or Austria 
 abroad. France could not join openly in the opposition to the
 
 SPAIN AND FEANCE IN THE EAELY 17TH CENTURY 275 
 
 Catholic powers : but she could take every advantage both of their 
 necessities and of their misfortunes. Charles V. was never forgotten 
 or forgiven until Lewis XIV. had revenged France on both Spain 
 and Austria. This cannot be left out of consideration in all the 
 complications with which the coming period is filled. These 
 hatreds had become national ; as the English hatred of France in 
 the middle ages : they were not mere jealousies of kings, they were 
 the accumulated memories, the inherited instincts of peoples. The 
 dread of Spain did in England, during a large part of the seventeenth 
 century, cast into the shade the hatred of France : but yet England 
 and France were never found fighting on the same side abroad : and 
 the result, as I have said, showed that French influence at home 
 was more injurious than Spanish influence, at a period when 
 Spanish influence was declining and French influence was increasing 
 daily on the Continent generally, could possibly have been. The 
 wars of William III. against Lewis XIV. were not indeed fought for 
 English purposes : but they were on the old English model. In 
 the war of the Spanish succession, England was again on the 
 imperial side, so she was also in the Hungarian and imperial wars 
 that followed the death of Charles VI. Germany, whether repre- 
 sented by a Hapsburg or not, by Catholic or Protestant, is, as 
 against France, the immemorial and natural ally of England : at 
 least historically. 
 
 What, however, no doubt contributed largely, perhaps most 
 largely, to terminate the period of international peace that we have 
 been studying in this term's lectures, was the fact that the genera- 
 tion of weak men was being succeeded by a generation of strong 
 ones : men with strong convictions, strong wills, and strong powers 
 of administration. The sixteenth century was a period of strong 
 kings : no period probably has ever seen at one time on the thrones 
 of Europe so many great kings as there were during the nearly forty 
 years that Charles V., Henry VIII., Francis I., and the Sultan 
 Solyman governed their States. Even Philip II. and Elizabeth and 
 Henry IV. are small beside these : but it is not in Philip II., 
 Elizabeth, or Henry IV. that our period comes to its natural close. 
 It is in Philip III., and Lewis XIII., and James I. 
 
 The period that follows is rich in great men ; but they are 
 not great kings. Ferdinand II. is a strong-willed man ; but the 
 figures of the period are Richelieu and Cromwell and Wallenstein ; 
 Gustavus Adolphus comes in rather as a general than as a king, an 
 adventurer rather than the ruler of a European state. Under such 
 men, or even during the prevalence of influences that raised such 
 men to the surface and head of affairs, there could not but be great 
 struggles. They were men with wills and policies and power: 
 
 t2
 
 276 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1648 
 
 determination, whether against one another, or for the carrying out 
 of independent purposes, which could not fail to meet with obstacles 
 which could not yield without gigantic efforts. 
 
 I do not know whether we can, in point of principle, strike a 
 balance between the great men of the sixteenth century and those of 
 the seventeenth. The best men of the sixteenth were men of im- 
 pulse more than of principle : men like Maurice of Saxony, Philip 
 of Hesse, Henry IV. of France in his earlier career (even Luther 
 was a man who had a great purpose, but an uneducated and dispro- 
 portionate zeal) ; men whose principles were not incompatible with 
 thorough immorality and dishonesty in the most flagrant extremes, 
 but whose character in popular estimation was redeemed by energy 
 and spirit. The men of the seventeenth had deeper purposes, more 
 matured and educated zeal ; impulses better trained, deeper seated, less 
 easily roused, but more consistent, more proportionate, more thorough. 
 Men like Cromwell and Strafford are not to be named with Maurice 
 and John Frederick. William the Silent is perhaps an exception, as 
 he is an exception to most generalisations : but very much of his 
 glory depends on the contrast between him and contemporary states- 
 men. His convictions and purpose and statesmanship, great or 
 strong in contrast with those of his neighbours, will hardly bear 
 comparison with those of the heroes of the seventeenth century. 
 
 But we have had enough of him, and perhaps of all of them. 
 The period is not a lively one ; and very much of its interest depends 
 on its evolution from what precedes, and its influence on the time 
 that was coming.
 
 THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF EUROPE 
 DURING THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 
 
 LECTUEE I 
 
 EUROPE AT THE OPENING OP THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 
 
 The first thing to be done in this present course of lectures is to 
 attempt to get a clear view of the condition of affairs at the beginning 
 of the period on which we are going to work, the origin and direction 
 of the political forces which by their conflict produce the action of 
 the period, and, if we can, some definite notion of the character of 
 the actors with whom the action begins. The subject of the course 
 is not the Thirty Years' War only, but the political history of 
 Europe during that war ; of Europe, that is the Continent, for we 
 shall not venture on anything touching England directly except in 
 so far as our own country joins in the action or is affected by the 
 influences that are at work on the Continent. But as in this, in the 
 same way as I have done in the former courses on this line of history, 
 I propose to give our chief attention to German history, our second 
 to France and Spain, and to content myself with very general reviews 
 of the other members of the European commonwealth. We are sure 
 to find the Thirty Years' War turning up at every step of our 
 course ; it is the central action, the plot of our drama. I do not 
 then intend to anticipate by attempting in this lecture any summary 
 of the acts of the drama, or any general sketch either of the process 
 of the war or its results upon Europe at large. Such a view will be 
 appropriate to the last lecture : an introduction must be of a different 
 sort. 
 
 But, as usual, with one general remark, a general caution, I must 
 begin. It should not be difficult for an Englishman to take a fair and 
 impartial view of this eventful period. An educated Englishman 
 should be as far removed from the persecuting repressive instincts of 
 seventeenth-century Jesuitism as from the hypocritical and rapacious 
 intolerance of seventeenth-century Puritanism. If he is left to 
 himself he naturally feels that he has little in common with either, 
 and that, given the authentic materials, he can with little difiiculty
 
 278 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 strike the fair balance between the two great parties who divided 
 the world. He is able to say at once how much of the repulsive 
 character that is common to both belongs to the age and to the 
 nationality of the combatants, and, measuring the two parties side 
 by side, to strike out of the comparison all the points that are common 
 to the two. He is not likely to screen and extenuate the cruelties of 
 one party and to exaggerate those of the other, nor to blacken the 
 character of the one in points in which he sees that of the other to 
 be indefensible. And he is not hampered by the necessity of coming 
 to the conclusion that one side of the two was infallible and im- 
 peccable. But Avhen I say this, I say it with an important drawback, 
 if he had the materials before him for forming a complete judgment. 
 Unfortunately, we have not the materials before us in a shape in 
 which they can be made available for such a decision. What we 
 have is the work for the most part of bitter partisans ; a sort of 
 material every particle of which, before it can safely be used, requires 
 a testing which we are not in condition to give it. 
 
 Although there are some, and those honourable, exceptions 
 among the accessible writers on the Thirty Years' War, there are 
 very few who have not thought it a part of their duty as historians to 
 support the Protestant cause against the Catholic ; and this bias is 
 strongly perceptible in English books written before the revival of 
 historical study in Germany. In the writings of German authors, 
 that is of those German authors whose works find their way to 
 England, and considerably leaven the history-writing of modern 
 Englishmen, there is, besides the religious prejudice, a strong 
 political one. History has been largely taken up by those German 
 scholars who incline most strongly to Prussian interests in politics, 
 or by those who, not being actually Prussian, still place their hopes 
 of the German future in the line in which Prussian politics are 
 working. 
 
 Now, at the period at which the Thirty Years' War began, 
 Prussia and the Hohenzollern family made but a very small figure in 
 , European politics, and it would have been a fruitless task to attempt 
 ^ to show that so early as that they had marked themselves out as the 
 future regenerators of European society. Hence the effect of the 
 bias is rather to the depreciation of the powers which governed before 
 Prussia began the work, or whose interests ran counter to the 
 Prussian interests, after the resurrection began. Of course Austria 
 and the house of Hapsburg is the victim of all such lucubrations. 
 Beginning with an imaginary Charles V., and an imaginary policy of 
 universal empire and unflinching repression, the whole existence of 
 the Austrian dynasty is represented as a sin against society. In so 
 great a house there must have been diversities of character ; but
 
 EUROPE AT THE OPENING OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 279 
 
 there is no diversity of treatment allowable ; every Hapsburg is a 
 tyrant. If strong, he is a strong tyrant : if weak, he is a petty 
 tyrant ; if repressive, he is a shameless tyrant ; if liberal, he is false 
 and subtle, but still a tyrant. In every act of the drama of European 
 history it must be shown that Austria has been clearly and deter- 
 minately in the wrong. As soon as Prussia begins to exist she must 
 be shown to be invariably in the right ; until then it is enough to 
 prove that Austria is wrong. 
 
 And what have we to set on the other side ? Why, simply this. 
 Writers in the Catholic, imperial, or Austrian interest have very 
 commonly written as if the defence of the faith were a shield that 
 covered all wrong-doings, as if shortsightedness in policy, un- 
 scrupulousness in action, faithlessness in covenants, might all be 
 excused, because the Catholic ends were so great and good as to 
 justify all means. A cause that allows itself to use such arguments 
 is extremely difficult to defend ; we are not concerned to defend it ; 
 but worse than that, it renders the judgment of an impartial person 
 even more difficult than it would be, were the writers on both sides 
 working merely to blacken the character of their adversaries. Still, on 
 the whole, an Austrian partisan could aftbrd to give a more favourable 
 account of his enemies than the Prussian could. He feels that the 
 heresy of his antagonist is a sufficient cause to condemn him, and 
 that granted, he is not bound to make out circumstantially that all 
 his virtues are vices. As for his own side, it is covered by the shield 
 of the faith ; it is not necessary to make out all vices to be virtues. 
 Thus the Austrian's position is damaged by the very comparative 
 fairness of his own story. 
 
 You will, I doubt not, think that, in much of what I shall say, 
 I am taking too mild a view of Austrian policy. I do it inten- 
 tionally ; historical fairness compels us to pull to the Austrian 
 side in spite of its faults. It does not follow, because I insist 
 on a fair trial for such men as Ferdinand II. and Maximilian of 
 Bavaria, that I am blind to the virtues of Gustavus Adolphus and 
 Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. So far as I can read history at all, I can 
 see that the balance of i*ight and wrong, of virtue and vice, is not 
 uniformly the same at every stage or in every person of a dynasty. 
 There is no cause so good that it can justify by argument in detail 
 every act of its defenders, any more than there is any so good that 
 the crimes of its defenders disappear or become less of crimes 
 because they were done in support o-f it. 
 
 In pursuance of this line of thought we may approach our first 
 introductory question : What was the Germany of the Thirty Years' 
 War ? In it what was there besides the Empire and the imperial 
 house? What were the grounds of the differences between the
 
 280 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN UISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 North and the Soiith, between the princes, the prelates, the people, 
 and the nominal sovereign ? Germany at the beginning of the 
 imperial history was an aggregate of four nations, the Franks, the 
 Bavarians, the Alemannians, and the Saxons ; of whom the Franks 
 and Alemannians or Swabians soon lose their distinctive national 
 identities, but the Saxons and Bavarians retain both strong identity 
 and strong antagonism. In all the early struggles of the Empire, 
 North and South are opposed. Whilst the imperial dynasty is 
 Saxon, Bavaria and Swabia are anti-imperial ; when the imperial 
 dynasty is Swabian or Bavarian, North Germany is in opposition to 
 the Empire. As the imperial dignity settled down permanently into 
 the South German houses, the Bavarian, Austrian, and Luxemburg 
 lines. Saxony, that is North Germany, became the seat of constant 
 disaffection. Against the Hohenstaufen it was the great bulwark of 
 Papal interests ; against the Luxemburgers and earlier Hapsburgers 
 it was in armed independence. So long as the struggle between the 
 Empire and the Papacy lasted. North Germany was enthusiastically 
 Papal. As soon as Austria and the Papacy reconciled their differences 
 and became, as for the most part of modern history has been the 
 case, firm allies. North Germany took up with ardour the doctrines 
 of the Reformation ; her antipathy to a Southern Cfiesar was great 
 enough to overcome her ancient and as yet unshaken constancy to 
 the Chair of St. Peter. 
 
 Of course this was not the only ground for the characteristic 
 position and attitude of the two divisions. Early Saxony was faith- 
 fully Catholic not merely because it hated the Emperor and his anti- 
 popes, but because it had been brought to Christianity and civilisa- 
 tion under men and principles according to which Roman Papalisni 
 was an integral portion of religion : and modern Saxony was not 
 enthusiastically Protestant only because the Empire was Catholic 
 and Southern, but because Luther and his friends the Saxon electors 
 were natives of the land and spoke directly to the hearts of the 
 people, and quite as much because the prelates who had grown 
 wealthy on the old Papal support offered a rich booty to men to 
 whom the change of religion was the relaxing of all ties of honour, 
 duty, and regard for right of property, and who saw in the downfall of 
 the old system the readiest way to aggrandise themselves. The three 
 influences, the Empire, the faith, and the plunder, all affected the 
 North Germans in the same way. And so the South : whilst the 
 Papacy was politically strong, the imperial influence, mainly South 
 German, was in opposition ; witness the fate of the Hohenstaufen 
 and of Lewis of Bavaria. With the great schism of the West, and 
 the termination of the Babylonish exile, begins the drawing together 
 of the Empire and Papacy. When the Reformation begins, the North
 
 EUROPE AT THE OPENING OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 281 
 
 accepts it and the South rejects it. But here with a great difference. 
 In the North, princes and people alike reject the Papal authority in 
 religion. In the South the princes are faithful, but the people 
 become Protestant ; and this adds a distinct complication to the 
 many other complications that we are obliged to consider as leading 
 to the great crisis of the Thirty Years' War. 
 
 I confess that to my mind this attitude of opposition between 
 North and South, Saxon and Bavarian, or, as it becomes later, 
 Prussian and Austrian, is one of supreme importance : so important 
 that I think it yet a problem whether any permanently united 
 organisation of Germany can be formed.^ Second to it is the atti- 
 tude of imperialism and anti-imperialism ; meaning by imperialism, 
 however, only the supremacy of Austrian influence, that being the 
 sole imperialism that belongs to our present period ; then the rival 
 forces of Catholicism and Protestantism. Again, as to this last : 
 in South Germany Protestantism grew as rapidly as in North : as I 
 said just now, in the North the princes and the people went together, 
 in the South they went different ways. In Austria, Bavaria, Swabia, 
 and Franconia, the people became Protestant, the princes continu- 
 ing Catholic. At one time the middle nobles in South Germany 
 were also Protestant, but that was not long ; strong repressive 
 measures soon brought them back or disabled them, and chiefly they 
 were discouraged by finding that Protestantism and plunder would 
 not be allowed to go on together as they were doing in the 
 North. 
 
 But although German Protestantism quickly took root in the 
 South, it was distinctly a Northern product, distinctly Northern in 
 affinities ; that is, Lutheranism presented itself to the rulers of South 
 Germany as the pohtical programme of their enemies and rivals in the 
 North. Scarcely less hateful was the aspect of Calvinism : Calvinism 
 was not only uncatholic, but it was French, it was Dutch, it was 
 republican. Bavaria and Austria saw not merely doctrinal but 
 political and dynastic principles arrayed against them under the 
 name of Protestantism ; and their struggle against it was a struggle 
 on the part of the dynasties for existence. 
 
 We ask, how was it that Protestantism failed in South Germany 
 when it was backed up by the North, and had so little real strength 
 set against it ? the answer to this question should be supplied by 
 the study of the period of sixty years that intervened between the 
 death of Charles V. and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. It 
 was caused, first, by the divisions of the Protestants themselves, the 
 disputes between the Lutherans and the Cahdnists, between the Saxon 
 and Palatine Electors, and between the two branches of the house 
 ' These words were said before the events of 1871.
 
 282 LECTURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1 648 
 
 of Saxony ; secondly by the enovmons exertions of the Jesuits, who 
 by every means in their power or in the power of man, by preach- 
 in?, by cdncatins;, by intrigning, by persecution, by persuasion, by 
 bribing, by taxing, by force and fraud, threw their great and intricate 
 organisation against the advancing tide of Protestantism and efi'ectu- 
 ally stayed it ; thirdly, by the material power and assistance which the 
 German Hapsburgs and other Catholic princes could invariably look 
 for from Spain under Philip IT. — a poAver which the Jesuits directly 
 or indirectly could bring to bear where and when they pleased. By 
 these three causes the victory of Protestantism was cut short, the 
 interests of the Bavarian and Austrian dynasties thoroughly con- 
 solidated with those of the Papacy, and the South enabled to present 
 a strong, united, and in the main a victorious opposition to the 
 North. ^ 
 
 Among the secondary causes were the retention of the imperial 
 power by the house of Hapsburg, and the constantly available imple- 
 ment which was thus put in their hands for interfering -^ith the 
 chronic quarrels and jealousies of their rivals. So long as the 
 machinery of the Empire, election and jurisdiction, was kept up, 
 so long as the three ecclesiastical electorates continued Catholic, 
 and the King of Bohemia's vote gave the Austrians a majority 
 in the electoral college, so long it was in the power of the 
 Austrian house to play oft" their opponents at their discretion. This 
 had been early apparent when Charles V. broke the power of the 
 Smalkaldic league, by setting up Maurice as competitor to his 
 cousin in the Saxon Electorate ; and as long as the Empire lasted 
 this Aveapon remained effective. It was unquestionably a great 
 fulcrum, by which Austria stopped the progress of Protestantism : 
 Protestantism which it hated no doubt for its own sake sufficiently, 
 but scarcely less because in the political programme of the Protestant 
 North the first article was its own humiliation. 
 
 With these points in our minds let us recall the train of events 
 that connects the religious peace which terminates the reign of 
 Charles V. with the state of affairs at the accession of Ferdinand II. 
 The two great principles laid down at the peace of Augsburg for a 
 compromise between the two religious parties were, first, that called 
 the Ecclesiastical Reservation, intended to restrain the Protestants 
 from any further appropriation of the property of the Church, and 
 secondly, the Imperial Declaration of Toleration, which was intended 
 to preserve to the Protestants the toleration of their religious 
 freedom. It cannot be said that either party honestly or sincerely 
 accepted the compromise. But the guilt of breaking it first belongs 
 to the Protestant princes, who were unchecked by any scruple in 
 their attempts to appropriate the abbeys and bishoprics, at a moment
 
 EUEOPE AT THE OPENING OF THE THIETY YEARS' WAR 283 
 
 Avhen ihe Catholic party was far too much humiliated to attempt 
 open persecution. During the reigns of Ferdinand and Maximilian 
 the imperial power was but little exerted to compel the parties to 
 keep the compromise : bishops renounced Popery and retained their 
 sees in spite of the Ecclesiastical Reservation ; and, by means of 
 indults from the Empire, Protestant princes were elected to, and 
 retained all their lives, the government of ecclesiastical states 
 without taking orders. On the other hand, the Catholic party, as it 
 revived from the severe shock it had experienced, stirred up by the 
 Jesuits and by the restored life and discipline that flowed from the 
 Council of Trent, began largely to proselytise, more largely to 
 repress religious freedom, and, where there was room, to persecute. 
 The later years of Maximilian II., during which he fell more 
 completely under the"ififlu6nee of Philip II., saw him less and less 
 inclined to oppose the restoration of Popery. The Catholic reaction 
 set in strongly both in Germany and France ; and very considerable 
 portions of Central Germany, which had been regarded as lost to 
 the Church, were effectually and permanently reclaimed : Franconia 
 especially, under the influence of the bishops of Bamberg and 
 Wiirzburg, returned in large proportion to the faith. The Emperor 
 Rudolf, who succeeded Maximilian, went in far more coniipletely 
 than his father had done for the reaction. Maximilian Had simply 
 allowed both parties to take their own course, but Rudolf and 
 several others of the imperial family determined to give a firm 
 support to orthodoxy. And the field for their action in this respect 
 was principally their own immediate states : Bohemia, which had 
 long before Luther been leavened by Huss Avith tenets opposed to 
 the doctrine of Rome, and Austria, where the whole of the nobles 
 and large portions of the country population had embraced Pro- 
 testantism. The character of the policy of repression which was 
 adopted in the Austrian states was not the same as that which had 
 been exercised so cruelly and so unsuccessfully in France and the 
 Netherlands. The Protestants were not burned, but their teachers 
 were forbidden to hold'services for more than a limited number of 
 worshippers ; they were next imprisoned and banished ; then the 
 professors of Protestantism were compelled to emigrate, and their 
 places were filled by strangers, who both religiously and politically 
 were bound to be faithful to their patrons. 
 
 Such was the line taken by the Catholic reaction in Germany : 
 a more humane and also far more effective policy than that of 
 Philip II., and one which, administered by the Austrian princes who 
 were generous and humane by character, although determined in 
 their pursuit of their great object, perhaps caused as little acute 
 sufi'ering as any religious persecution has ever done. Rudolf him-
 
 281 T^EC'TURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTOEY, ],j19-1G48 
 
 self, however, had no energy of any sort, and whilst big influence 
 was supre)ne in his own states, men went very nuich their own 
 way. 
 
 The great start of the reaction in the Austrian states dates from 
 
 1597, when Ferdinand of Styria, the archduke who ultimately 
 
 became Ferdinand II., set his shoulder to the wheel and rapidly 
 
 succeeded in turning back the tide of the Keformation in that 
 
 country. The zeal of Ferdinand revived the zeal of Eudolf, who 
 
 also began to proscribe and banish Protestants in Austria ; and, 
 
 wherever the imperial jurisdiction gave him any power, to throw his 
 
 weight into the Catholic scale. The able man of the party was, 
 
 however, Maximilian of Bavaria, whose long reign covers a great part 
 
 of the Catholic counter-reformation and the Thirty Years' War also. 
 
 Well, the success of the reaction at last awoke the fears of the 
 
 Protestant princes. As early as 1594 at Heilbronn, several of them 
 
 had formed a confederation for mutual defence, and resistance to the 
 
 imperial claims. In 1597 they renewed this league at Frankfort, 
 
 ^\^th additional provisoes bearing on religious points : thus united 
 
 they had concluded at Heidelberg in 1603 an alliance with Henry IV. 
 
 of France, the ol)ject of which was the destruction of the house of 
 
 Hapsburg and the remodelling of the state system of Europe ; and 
 
 in 1608 they had formed themselves into a league, at Aschhausen, 
 
 called the Protestant Union, which was to keep together for ten 
 
 years, under the presidency of the Elector Palatine, who was a 
 
 Calvinist. The formation of the Protestant Union was regarded as 
 
 a challenge by the Catholics, who in reply formed themselves into 
 
 the C/atholic League under Maximilian of Bavaria. Thus, under the 
 
 two rival princes of the house of Wittelsbach, the two parties 
 
 stood face to face nearly ten years before actual hostilities began. 
 
 Many circumstances contributed to delay the general outbreak 
 for which all things seemed now ready ; the first and most impor- 
 tant was undoubtedly the death of Henry IV. at the moment that 
 he was going to march into Germany to adjust the succession to 
 the Berg-Juliers inheritance, as it was said, but in reality to 
 attempt the overthrow of the Hapsburgs, in consequence of which 
 the war was smothered in its beginning. Another was the split in 
 the imperial house itself, and the result from that split, that each of 
 the parties attempted to win the Protestants by concessions. 
 Rudolf, by his negligence and eccentric conduct, had lost the affec- 
 tions of the Austrians, and by his repressive policy had provoked the 
 populations of Bohemia and Hungary — for Hungary was largely 
 Protestant and always discontented-— to throw off his yoke. 
 
 Advantage was taken of this state of things by his younger 
 brother, the Archduke ^Matthias, who had led an adventurous life,
 
 EUKOPE AT THE OPENING OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 285 
 
 and had been the nominee of William of Orange as Governor of the 
 Netherlands at the time when there seemed a probability of their 
 succeeding in shaking off the yoke of Spain, and who had, in 1607, 
 succeeded in wresting the Hungarian crown from Rudolf. Matthias 
 was a not less strong Catholic than Rudolf, but he had more 
 suppleness and more power of intrigue. The only justification of 
 his conduct is to be found in the fact that, had he not stepped in, 
 Rudolf would have lost the richest part of the family inheritance in 
 circumstances which rendered it very improbable that it could ever 
 be recovered. By intriguing with the malcontents in Bohemia, he 
 got himself called in to mediate between them and the Emperor, 
 who was trying to obtain the succession for Leopold, his cousin, 
 and Matthias's rival. Leopold had brought into Bohemia the army 
 which Rudolf had collected to oppose Henry IV. and the Evangelical 
 Union, and had frightened the Bohemians with an alarm of perse- 
 cution. Matthias then succeeded in supplanting Rudolf on the 
 Bohemian throne as he had done on the Hungarian. This was 
 in 1611. 
 
 In 1612 Rudolf died, and the Empire was open to election. The 
 choice of the electors seemed practically confined to the Austrian 
 archdukes, for, except Maximilian of Bavaria, all the princes who 
 were of rank sufficient to allow them to be competitors were Protes- 
 tants, and the idea of electing a Protestant Emperor was never 
 broached. The Protestant electors would, however, gladly have 
 had either the Archduke Albert of the Netherlands or the Archduke 
 Maximilian, the grand master of the Teutonic knights. They, true 
 to the family tradition, refused to be put in nomination, and 
 Matthias, who was trusted by neither party, became Emperor. But 
 he found his power, when he got it, nothing but labour and sorrow. 
 He had intrigued with the Protestants against Rudolf, and could 
 not expect the Catholics to trust him. The Protestants were 
 not likely to trust a Catholic who had so clearly only used them for 
 his own ends. In vain he attempted to hold the balance between 
 them. He saw a successor in Ferdinand of Styria, gradually gaining 
 upon him in the support of the whole Catholic interest of Germany. 
 As he had edged out Rudolf, he was now edged out by Ferdinand. 
 
 But this time all was done decently. Neither Matthias nor any 
 of his brothers had children, and the result of the succession being 
 left open on his death would be probably a redivision of the estates 
 of the house, in which no one would be strong enough to attempt 
 to hold the old family position in the Empire. I need hardly 
 remind you how strong the family feeling has always been in the 
 great ruling houses of Germany. The Archduke Maximilian, in the 
 interest of the family, proposed in 1617 that the surviving members
 
 286 J.ECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1510-1648 
 
 should yield their claims on the succession to the Archduke Ferdi- 
 nand of Styria. Mattliias saw no help but to agree. Contrary to 
 the advice of his minister, Klessel, and unwarned by the example of 
 his brother Rudolf, he obtained for Ferdinand the succession to 
 Bohomia in 1617, and in the following year the Archduke secured 
 the crown of Hungary. He did not wait for the death of Matthias 
 to imdcrtake the administration of his estates. He began to attack 
 the Bohemian Protestants at once ; and, to prevent any attempt on 
 the part of Matthias to recover power, carried off and imprisoned 
 Klessel. 
 
 It was the persecution by Ferdinand, begun before the death of 
 Matthias, that kindled the flames of the Thirty Years' War. The 
 materials were all ready long before. The Protestant Union was 
 ready for the struggle, and intriguing for the imperial succession. 
 Ferdinand was known to be an able and determined Catholic : such 
 a one as had never yet sat on the throne of Charles V. Ferdinand I. 
 had been a fair and honourable mediator ; Maximilian II. more than 
 half a Protestant ; Rudolf had been a nobody ; Matthias was 
 incapacitated by his own engagements, and was already shelved. 
 But Ferdinand was able and determined. If it were possible to 
 prevent his accession to the imperial throne, the fate of Catholicism 
 in Germany would be sealed. It would not be possible to elect a 
 Protestant Emperor, but the gift of the Empire might be made a 
 bribe to secure the adhesion of some prominent Catholic to the 
 anti-Austrian scheme. Maximilian of Bavaria, it was thought, 
 might be detached ; on his refusal, the Duke of Savoy was sounded 
 in vain. But before an attempt could be made to secure the im- 
 perial crown, the Bohemian vote must be made safe. A change of 
 dynasty in Bohemia would have the effect of altering the balance in 
 the electoral college. Bohemia was in a state of discontent and 
 rebellion. Matthias once out of the way, the election of Ferdinand 
 might be set aside as unlawful, and a Protestant King substituted. 
 The Protestant party would then have four out of the seven votes in 
 the election. 
 
 But no one was anxious to seize on the succession. The battle 
 would have to be fought by the Protestant Union, and the head of 
 the Protestant Union was the Elector Palatine. The Elector 
 Palatine was not a wise man nor a bold man : but he was wise 
 enough not to covet either of the dangerous crowns. Moreover, he 
 was a Calvinist, whilst far the greater proportion of Protestant 
 Germany was properly Protestant : that is, Lutheran after the 
 Confession of Augsburg. But the Electress Palatine Elizabeth 
 Stewart, daughter of James I. of * England, was ambitious, and 
 strong-minded, and romantic at the same time, and she would be a
 
 EUROPE AT THE OPENING OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 287 
 
 queen. Under her persuasion Frederick began to regard himself as 
 King of Bohemia soon to be. But the crown was not yet within his 
 reach. So long as Matthias lived no successful attempt could be 
 made legally to set aside Ferdinand. 
 
 Ferdinand's own intolerance made the opening that was waited for. 
 His chief ministers in Bohemia were Slavata and Martinitz, two 
 very determined enemies of the Protestants, and active persecutors. 
 The leader of the Protestant party was Matthew Henry, Count of 
 Thurn. The council of regency consisted of ten members, seven 
 Catholic, of whom Slavata and Martinitz were two, and three 
 Protestants. The religious toleration of Protestantism in Bohemia 
 had been secured in 1611 at the accession of Matthias. This, then, 
 was the situation of alfairs. The accession of Ferdinand was 
 viewed with horror by the Bohemians ; Martinitz and Slavata would 
 be ready instruments, and had already shown that they knew how 
 to persecute. Count Thurn was the natural leader. 
 
 To look back a Httle further, the exact circumstances that led the 
 way to the revolt were these : By the royal edict of toleration (the 
 letter of Majesty, July 5, 1609, wrested from Rudolf by the Protes- 
 tants when they revolted before the election of Matthias), the towns 
 which were members of the Bohemian estates were enabled to build 
 churches and schools for Protestant worship ; but this did not extend 
 to those towns which were in the demesne of lords, only to those 
 which were immediately under the crown, members of the states. 
 Two towns in demesne, Brunau, which was subject to the Abbot of 
 Brunau, and Klostergraben, which was subject to the Archbishop of 
 Prague, built themselves churches, under a mistaken interpretation 
 of the edict. Ferdinand, soon after his coronation, directed the 
 demolition of the churches. Count Thurn, anxious, it would seem, 
 for a pretext against the government, declared this a breach of the 
 edict ; and, in his capacity as one of the defenders of religion, called 
 a meeting of delegates to Prague to protest. The delegates protested 
 violently, demanding the expulsion of Martinitz and Slavata from 
 the council of regency, and, having obtained admission to the 
 council, threw the two out of the window. May 23, 1618. Thus the 
 revolt broke out before the death of Maximilian, before the 
 imprisonment of Klessel, which did not take place until July 20, 
 1618. It was the spark that set the whole mass ultimately on tire. 
 We have, however, some further generalisations to make before we 
 can begin the war.
 
 \ 
 
 2S8 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1619-1648 
 
 LECTUEE II 
 
 THE BOHEMIAN STRUGGLE 
 
 The first act or episode of the Thirty Years' War is this Bohemian 
 struggle, some sketch of which I began to give in the last lecture. 
 This act has a certain completeness of its own ; it is concluded 
 without bringing any of the other European powers outside of 
 Germany openly into the arena. I shall then in the present lecture, 
 after recapitulating in chronological order the train of events that I 
 grouped together in the last lecture, proceed to detail the remaining 
 particulars of importance of the years 1619 and 1620. 
 
 Our train of events begins with the accession of Ferdinand to 
 the Bohemian throne. His coronation took place on June 29, 
 1617. He promised then and there not to interfere with the 
 government of Bohemia during the life of Matthias. Matthias's 
 chief minister. Cardinal Klessel, was opposed to his master's resigna- 
 tion, and was more anxious to maintain the peace of the country 
 and the tenure of it by the house of Austria than to persecute the 
 Bohemians into Catholicism and lodge the supreme power in the 
 hands of Ferdinand in particular. Besides the opposition of Klessel, 
 the Protestant princes of Germany viewed Ferdinand's promotion 
 with great dislike, and, as we said, began to contemplate a counter- 
 movement even before the opening for their interference was made. 
 The events at Klostergraben and Brunau took place soon after 
 Ferdinand's coronation, and the appeal to Matthias on the subject 
 showed Ferdinand the irreconcilable opposition between his views 
 and those of Klessel. 
 
 The assembly of delegates called together by Count Thurn to 
 petition the Emperor for redress took place on March 6, 1618. 
 Matthias's answer was that he would not interfere between the 
 vassals and their lords, who, acting on an imperial prohibition, had 
 closed the heretical churches. This closing of the churches may 
 seem to us an act of religious persecution, but there is, I think, no 
 doubt that it was warranted by the law, and neither is there any 
 doubt, 1 think, that the action taken on the occasion by Count 
 Thurn was the result of a deeply laid plan to throw off the Austrian 
 yoke ; the Protestant powers watched the progress of events, and on 
 May 14, 1618, renewed the Union for three years. It was, no doubt, 
 the knowledge of some ready help to come from this quarter that 
 emboldened the delegates to execute, on May 23, the famous 
 defenestration of Slavata and Martinitz, and to efi'ect the institution 
 of a provisional government in Prague.
 
 THE BOHEMIAN STRUGGLE 289 
 
 The rebellion in Bohemia accelerated the action of the Union. 
 Now it seems to have been that they determined to offer the imperial 
 crown to the Duke of Savoy, and to place Frederick, the Elector 
 Palatine, on the Bohemian throne. But neither party had much of 
 an army at command. Matthias was very reluctant to come to 
 blows with the Bohemians. He sent an army, under his two 
 generals, Dampierre and Bucquoy, into the country, but he spoke 
 fairly to the provisional government, and really hoped, it would 
 seem, to settle the matter pacifically. Two parties, however, were 
 concerned, besides the Bohemians and Matthias, who were deter- 
 minedly set against compromise : Ferdinand, who was prepared to 
 risk everything for the Church, and the Evangelical Union, who 
 were determined not to tolerate Ferdinand. In order to get rid of 
 the moderate counsels of Klessel, Ferdinand, on July 20, kidnapped 
 him away from Vienna ; and the Union about the same time took 
 up arms in support of the Bohemian government. It sounds 
 curious to hear that just at this time — July 7, 1618 — Ferdinand 
 succeeded in acquiring the Hungarian crown. 
 
 The interference of the Union in Bohemia was preceded by a 
 meeting at Kothenburg, which addressed to Matthias a strong 
 remonstrance on his treatment of the Protestants ; and then an 
 army under Mansfeld was sent into the country. The date of 
 Mansfeld's attack on Pilsen is November 1618. Whilst he and 
 Dampierre and Bucquoy were maintaining an attitude of mutual 
 defiance and neutralising one another's influence, the Bohemians, 
 under Count Thurn, were rapidly revolutionising Bohemia, and 
 even ravaging the Austrian states. The weight of power and force 
 was conclusive against Matthias for the moment. He had no other 
 army than that under Dampierre and Bucquoy, and Ferdinand had 
 none at all. As the winter approached he proposed peace, and an 
 arbitration between himself and his subjects, to be made by the 
 Duke of Bavaria and Elector of Mentz on one side, and by the 
 Electors Palatine and of Saxony on the other. The day was fixed for 
 a conference to adjust preliminaries, April 14, at Egra ; but before 
 that Matthias was dead, March 20, 1619. 
 
 The position of Ferdinand was anything but promising ; nothing 
 but great luck or great ability could have saved him. The German 
 Protestants were determined to be rid of him ; Bohemia was in a 
 state of revolution ; he had no strong support in Europe, although, 
 no doubt, England, France, and Spain viev/ed the rebellion with 
 aversion ; and it was absolutely vital to him to obtain the election 
 to the Empire. But he had very considerable ability, very great 
 luck, and above all, enemies to deal with who were strong neither in 
 principle nor in union. The death of Matthias seems to have put an 
 
 u
 
 290 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 end to the idea of a conference. Ferdinand was not likely to com- 
 promise matters, even if he were without resources. He addressed 
 the Bohemians ^nth pacific professions, but did not recognise their 
 new government, and directed, without any power of enforcing his 
 orders, the restoration of the unpopular council of regency. On 
 the other hand, the pro\dsional government would not recognise him. 
 Thurn proceeded in May to revolutionise Moravia as he had already 
 done Bohemia, and prepared the Bohemian estates to elect a new 
 Iving. In the following month he entered Austria, and on June 6 
 blockaded Ferdinand in Vienna. 
 
 Ferdinand had no other force than that opposed to Mansfeld in 
 Bohemia. The people of Vienna were disaffected and excitable. 
 Almost alone he held out against his vindictive antagonist ; he sent 
 away his family into Tyrol, refused to listen either to Thurn or to 
 the revolted Viennese, and awaited his fate with intrepidity. Just 
 at the desperate moment, with the townspeople clamouring for 
 surrender and Count Thurn thundering at the gates, he was relieved 
 by the arrival of 500 brave men, whom Dampierre had detached to 
 his assistance. This little band penetrated the town by the only 
 gate that the Bohemians had been unable to close, and their presence 
 restored order in the city. It is suggestive of the vast difference 
 between ancient and modern warfare to read of 500 men in such 
 circumstances saving an empire. What little force Ferdinand had 
 was far away ; Thurn, at the head of the Bohemians, was unable 
 completely to beleaguer Vienna ; and the arrival of 500 men turned 
 the scale. Vienna has always been famous for hairbreadth escapes, 
 and this was a signal one. The 500 disciplined soldiers got the city 
 into order, revived the spirit of the loyal and intimidated the 
 traitorous, organised a defensive force, and successfully held the city 
 against Thurn, until news arrived of the defeat of Mansfeld by 
 Bucquoy at Tein on June 8, in consequence of which the besieging 
 army was suddenly withdrawn. 
 
 The raising of the siege enabled Ferdinand to set to work at once 
 to secure his election to the Empire. He placed the defence of the 
 estates in the hands of the Archduke Leopold, and went into Ger- 
 many. The meeting of the electors was called for July 20 at 
 Frankfort. For a short time there is a luU in the war and fighting 
 gives place to intrigue, until this affair is finished. The business of 
 the election is curious as well as important. During the vacancy of 
 the imperial throne, the office of Vicar of the Empire was discharged 
 by the Elector of Saxony and the Elector Palatine, the latter of whom, 
 as president of the Protestant Union and intending to be King of 
 Bohemia, was anxious to thwart Ferdinand, whilst the former, as a 
 Lutheran, had to choose between the Catholics and the Calvinists.
 
 THE BOHEMIAN STRUGGLE 291 
 
 The object of the Elector Palatine was, as his overtures to Bavaria 
 and Savoy were ineffectual, to prolong the interregnum until some 
 arrangement could be made for transferring the Bohemian vote from 
 Ferdinand to himself. He urged delay. Ferdinand urged the 
 importance of promptness, and, although none of the electoral body 
 seems to have been enthusiastic in support of Ferdinand, he 
 triumphed. 
 
 The ecclesiastical electors and Maximilian of Bavaria, who, 
 although not himself an elector, was the most important man of the 
 Catholic party and directed the policy of the archbishops, inclined to 
 peace at any price. They had seen the progress made by the 
 Counter-Reformation in the way of quiet repression, and although 
 fully determined not to yield an inch, but to maintain an attitude of 
 armed resistance, still felt averse to the actively aggressive policy to 
 which Ferdinand was considered to be attached. Of the three 
 ecclesiastical electors, Ferdinand of Cologne was brother to Maxi- 
 milian and brother-in-law to Ferdinand ; John Suicard, the Elector 
 of Mentz, was an earnest and politic churchman ; the Elector of 
 Treves, Lothar von Metternich, was a prominent man in the reaction, 
 and, with the Elector of Mentz, was the founder of the Catholic 
 League. Of the lay electors, Frederick himself was one ; John 
 Sigismund of Brandenburg, who had embraced Calvinism in 1613, 
 and was likely to act in concert with him, was another ; and the third 
 was John George of Saxony, who at once represented the Lutheran 
 religion and maintained the imperialist tendencies of his house. In 
 this combination there was not much material to work upon ; the 
 ecclesiastical party, though not enthusiastic for Ferdinand, accepted 
 him as the only safe candidate ; and the Elector of Saxony had no 
 great objection to him. The Palatine and Brandenburg electors 
 were in a hopeless minority. 
 
 But if the Empire was unassailable, the Bohemian crown was 
 within reach. An earnest appeal for delay was listened to, and the 
 day of election deferred till August 28. The Bohemian estates were 
 then immediately summoned ; a list of grievances against Ferdinand 
 was exhibited, and his election annulled. A new election followed, 
 and the estates of Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia admitted to take 
 part. On August 27 Frederick, at Prague, was elected King of 
 Bohemia ; and the next day at Frankfort, Ferdinand was elected 
 Emperor. Frederick was crowned on October 25 by the adminis- 
 trator of the Calixtines : Ferdinand on September 9 by the Arch- 
 bishops of Mentz and Cologne. 
 
 As for the constitutional aspect of all this, there is no doubt that 
 the Bohemians had strong grounds of complaint against Ferdinand. 
 He had, contrary to his undertaking, interfered in Bohemian affairs 
 
 o2
 
 292 LECTrT?KS ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 during the life of Matthias, he had sent or continued the employment 
 of foreif^n troops in Bohemia, and had, by undertaking to procure 
 the succession for the Spanish branch of the family on the failure of 
 the German one, infringed the right of the Bohemians to elect their 
 own kinf^. But it is very questionable whether these grievances 
 could have constituted a legal argument for his deposition, and it 
 should be remembered that the opposition to him in Bohemia dated 
 much earlier than any of his transgressions. It is not enough to 
 show that Ferdinand was guilty without showing that he was not 
 forced deliberately into his false position : the defenestration and its 
 consequences amply justified his interference and the mission of 
 such troops as he had to send. This, however, matters little. 
 Whichever side was right and whichever wrong, the plan of Count 
 Thurn and the designs of Frederick on the kingdom are more than 
 enough to show that Ferdinand's sins were a mere pretext of 
 aggressive enmity, an enmity which might have been perfectly just 
 in itself, but was not justified by these pleas. 
 
 The failure of the Protestant opposition at Frankfort to impede 
 Ferdinand's election had the effect of making it an easier matter 
 than it would have otherwise been : instead of a strict capitulation 
 with new safeguards, as was usual, the only two new articles were of 
 merely technical import, touching the right of the Vicariate and the 
 machinery of the Aulic Council. Thus, then, on August 27 and 28, 
 the two great parties saw placed at their heads two Kings of Bo- 
 hemia, a Catholic and a Protestant one, adding to their religious 
 differences the hatred of personal rivals, the vindictive bitterness of 
 personal wrongs. 
 
 No formal truce had been made to facilitate these proceedings ; 
 but the occupation of the principal actors had caused a momentary 
 lull. It was broken by Bethlen Gabor, the Prince of Transylvania, 
 who represented the anti- Austrian feeling in Hungary, although he 
 had personally supplanted, a few years before, the recognised head 
 of the Transylvanian party. He was one of the determined Pro- 
 testants who had urged Frederick to set aside his scruples about 
 accepting the Bohemian crown ; and, seeing that that stroke had 
 succeeded, he determined to play the same part in Hungary. He 
 marched into that kingdom, raising all the malcontents as he went, 
 and on October 20 took Presburg. From Presburg he advanced 
 into Austria at the head of a huge horde, and drove Bucquoy, upon 
 whom the defence of the country against Count Thurn had been 
 imposed by Leopold, and who had been brought from Bohemia where 
 he was rapidly gaining on Mansfeld, to take refuge in Vienna. 
 
 Ferdinand, on his return from Germany early in November, 
 found himself, from a military point of \'iew, little better off than he
 
 THE BOHEMIAN STKUGGLE 293 
 
 had been when he undertook the journey. The withdrawal of 
 Bucquoy from Bohemia had enabled Mansfeld to recover his lost 
 ground. He had retaken the towns that had been compelled to 
 submission. Budweis was the only place in the Bohemian kingdom 
 that remained to the Emperor. But the worst was now come. The 
 approach of winter put a stop to hostilities. Bethlen Gabor was 
 unable to support his great army at such a distance from home and 
 withdrew from Austria, styling himself, however. King of Hungary. 
 
 Both parties devoted the season to an attempt at obtaining new 
 and efficient allies ; that is, to make the war, which was as yet con- 
 fined to the Austrian states, and was nominally between Ferdinand 
 and his rebellious subjects, a German if not also a European war. 
 It was not yet even a German war. The two great organisations 
 had not yet drawn swords against each other, although both were 
 armed, and saw probably that the end was not far off. 
 
 Before the end of November the Protestant Union met at Nurem- 
 berg. The meeting was attended by the Count Palatine, the 
 Duke of Saxony of the Ernestine house, the Margrave of Bran- 
 denburg, the Duke of Wiirtemberg ; the Landgrave of Hesse, and 
 the Margrave of Baden. Every house that had accepted the Kefor- 
 mation in either of its two great phases was represented. Frederick, 
 the new King of Bohemia, the president, appeared in person, and 
 even the Emperor sent envoys to represent his interests and watch 
 the proceedings, the discontented Austrian states also being present 
 by deputy. Ferdinand's envoys were received : on his part they 
 promised peace and remedial legislation, and exhorted the confede- 
 rates not to break up the peace of the Empire. Frederick pleaded 
 his own cause more eft'ectually ; but his personal influence was 
 enough to secure his success. In reply to the imperial envoys the 
 Union answered that no credit could be attached to the Emperor's 
 promises. They presented a long schedule of real and formal grava- 
 mina touching the constitution and action of the Aulic Council. 
 They insisted that the Emperor should procure the disarmament of 
 the Catholic League, in which case they would themselves disarm. 
 As for Bohemia, they were bound both by religion and by self-preser- 
 vation to see that no wrong was done there, and certainly would 
 not allow the new King to be molested in his own hereditary states. 
 
 The Catholic League was not less on the alert. Ferdinand on 
 his way home from the coronation betook himself to his brother-in- 
 law, Maximilian, and agreed with him on the plan to be pursued. 
 Allies were to be sought for everywhere, and the Emperor must even 
 submit to a small diminution of territory, if it were necessary, to 
 secure ultimate victory. A meeting of the League was called at 
 Wiirzburg, at which new resolutions were taken for the support of
 
 294 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 the Catholic faith ; new members, especially the Duke of Lorraine, 
 were taken into the confederation, and it was determined to seek 
 succour for the faith from the Pope and the King of Spain. 
 
 The winter was devoted by both parties to the formation of 
 alliances and the collection of forces. The Protestants looked mth 
 contideuce to England and Holland and the North ; but they relaxed 
 nothing in their efforts to bring together a thoroughly German army. 
 The Catholics applied to France, where the Duke de Luynes was now 
 prime minister, ha\dng just succeeded in supplanting Anne of 
 Austria and the Concinis ; to Spain, where Philip III. was getting 
 into his last years, and to Eome. The request for aid was only 
 partially successful on either side. James I. — divided between the 
 desire of pleasing his people, who were enthusiastic on the side of 
 the Count Palatine, and the fear of a quarrel with Spain ; between 
 the wish to preserve the inheritance of his grandchildren and the 
 dislike to encourage the Bohemians in their deposition of their law- 
 ful sovereign — at length decided on sending 4,000 men to Holland, 
 who were to set free 3,000 Dutchmen for the assistance of Frederick. 
 He sanctioned also the assembling of 2,400 volunteers to aid the 
 Count Palatine. The 3,000 was the contribution of the United 
 Provinces towards the defence of religion. Hungary, under Beth- 
 len Gabor, might be relied upon, and, although the Northern 
 powers were slow to move, the German princes showed so much 
 energy as might safely be expected to maintain the struggle until 
 they should be able to assist them. 
 
 The cause of Ferdinand was not less well supported : Philip III. 
 was prevailed upon by the threats and remonstrances of the Austrian 
 ambassador Khevenhiiller, and in opposition to the advice of the 
 Duke of Uzeda, his prime minister, to furnish 24,000 men under 
 Spinola (Ambrosio) to invade the Palatinate from the Netherlands. 
 The Pope granted a tenth of all Church revenue in Spain, Italy, 
 and the Netherlands, and a monthly subsidy of 20,000 zecchins. 
 France would not furnish either money or soldiers, but would urge 
 peace and attempt mediation. Immense forces were in the mean- 
 time collected in Germany itself, and the crisis was looked for early 
 in the spring. 
 
 Before the crisis came the fortunes of Ferdinand began to look up. 
 In January 1620 he felt strong enough to issue a formal document 
 declaring the election of Frederick to be null and void ; the next 
 month he obtained from Saxony the assurance of neutrality, soon to 
 be followed up by active assistance ; and, what was even more impor- 
 tant, he concluded a truce with Bethlen Gabor, which relieved him 
 from pressure on the side of Hungary. These were the beginnings 
 of a change.
 
 THE BOHEMIAN STEUGGLE 295 
 
 Whilst Frederick was making a royal progress in the Bohemian 
 States, Ferdinand was intriguing might and main. In March the 
 Lutheran party, Saxony and Hesse, at Miilhausen, joined the ecclesi- 
 astical electors in a demand on the Union to abstain from inter- 
 ference, and in a request to Frederick to resign the crown. It was 
 only by the strenuous opposition of the Electors of Mentz and 
 Saxony that they were prevented from putting him under the ban 
 of the Empire. At the same time they declared to the Union that 
 the dispute was not a religious dispute, and ought not to be treated 
 as if liberty of rehgion were at stake. The Union was perfectly 
 aware of this ; its object was avowed, not only to secure religious 
 liberty, but to limit the ambition of the house of Austria, to which 
 it attributed the design of establishing a supremacy in Europe, and 
 consequently a crusade against all the forms of Protestantism. 
 
 These mutual threats, however, of the great parties did not 
 expedite the war. Fighting was still going on in Bohemia, but not a 
 blow was struck in Germany. Only the two great armies drew nearer 
 and nearer, and at last encamped over against one another, the host 
 of the Union under the margrave of Anspach, Joachim Ernest of 
 Brandenburg, at Ulm ; and that of the League, under Maximilian, at 
 Giinzburg. Large as the army of the Union was, the confident 
 spirit that pervaded the Catholic army was wanting, and they had 
 no leader like Maximilian. 
 
 A ^"Idiey "Were waiting for battle and Europe watching them, the 
 French envoys, the Duke of Angouleme at their head, arrived, and, 
 instead of a battle, negotiations took place, the result of which was 
 an agreement between the Union and the League, arrived at on 
 July 3. By this it was determined that the attitude of hostility 
 between the two great parties should cease ; the League undertook 
 not to attack the Palatinate, and the Union to abstain from inter- 
 ference in Bohemia. Nothing but the certainty of failure or internal 
 treason could have moved the Union to submit to such terms as 
 these. The League was left free to fight Ferdinand's battles in 
 Austria and Bohemia ; the Union undertook to maintain the 
 integrity of the Palatinate against Spain and Austria : a most 
 unequal division of responsibihty in reality, although in words it 
 appears plausible. Virtually it was a surrender of Frederick to 
 Ferdinand, as the consequences rapidly showed. No doubt there 
 were both internal dissension and something like treason among the 
 Protestants ; the Margrave Joachim Ernest of Brandenburg was 
 strongly suspected of corruption and jeatotis of the exaltation of 
 Frederick ; but the most powerful solvent waK ho question, want of 
 sympathy and despair of success. The Lutheran party, Saxony, 
 Denmark, and Hesse were on the Emperor's side, and the remainder
 
 /' 296 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 / of the Protestants were not even united by a common Cahdnism. 
 
 ^, Further, as I said before, there was no leader who inspired con- 
 
 . r \ lidence. 
 
 "~As soon as the treaty was concluded the armies separated ; that 
 \\' of the Union marched into the Lower Palatinate, and that of the 
 
 V| League into Upper Austria. Spinola, with 20,000 veterans, was 
 
 ' '• already occupying the former country, and against him the army of 
 
 the Union, under the Margrave George Frederick of Baden, was 
 perfectly powerless. Spinola marched to the Rhine without op- 
 position ; his enemies did nothing before the winter compelled them 
 to return home ; and before the winter the fate of Frederick was 
 decided. The attack on Bohemia was managed with the utmost 
 abihty and crowned with complete success. Maximilian of Bavaria 
 undertook the reduction of Upper Austria. The King of Poland, 
 Sigismund III., an energetic Catholic (who had been also King 
 /> of Sweden, and had tried hard to restore the Church of Rome there, 
 losing his kingdom for that reason in 1604), poured a horde of 
 Cossacks into Silesia ; and the Elector of Saxony invaded Lusatia, 
 persuaded by the promises of Ferdinand and by his jealousy of the 
 Calvinist predominance in his immediate neighbourhood. The 
 imperial forces were thus at liberty to concentrate upon Frederick ; 
 \ ,^' ' and Bucquoy, at the head of them, was able to agree on a project of 
 campai^ with Maximilian, whose work in Upper Austria was soon 
 accomplished. 
 
 Against these the only ally on whom Frederick could depend was 
 
 Ap iBethlen Gabor, who at the expiration of the truce had declared him- 
 
 ^ f}- self 'King of Hungary and renewed the war. The third imperial 
 
 ^ry army, under Dampierre, was sent against him. The odds in 
 
 \^ Bohemia were very uneven. Frederick had not more than 20,000 
 
 men, and an auxiliary force of 8,000 Hungarians ; he had many 
 
 If^.l/V^ I brave friends, but few generals. Christian of Anhalt, John George 
 
 /of Jagerndorf, the Count Hohenlohe, and Ernest of Mansfeld, the 
 last of whom supported his army by plunder, were all. Even the 
 . affection of the Bohemians and Moravians was alienated by his 
 \ I Puritanism, and Count Thurn, who had made him king, was offended 
 
 \x } by being displaced to make way for the Duke of Anhalt. In every 
 
 respect Frederick showed himself at once without capacity, tact, or 
 _ < ^ personal courage. His Calvinism and his wife were the two strong 
 
 ' ^ ^ points about him, and they did him fully as much harm as they did 
 good. Steadily the Germans under MaximiUan, the Italians and 
 Spanish forces under Bucquoy, advanced upon him, the united forces 
 amounting to 50,000 men. 
 
 Count Tilly, John Tserclaes, one of the two great names of the 
 Thirty Years' War, a Netherlander by birth, of Brussels ; a devoted 
 
 If
 
 THE BOHEMIAN STEUGGLE 297 
 
 and unscrupulous Catholic, and an almost invincible soldier, was 
 Maximilian's chief adviser. Under his arrangements the two armies 
 entered Bohemia by different routes, from the south, and joined at 
 Pisek on September 30. The army of Frederick was at Presnitz, 
 in the north-western corner of Bohemia, inferior vastly in numbers, 
 and with divided counsels. Frederick himself was hovering between 
 Presnitz and Prague. Pisek was one of the most important 
 fortresses in Bohemia ; there was nothing fit to present an obstacle 
 to the enemy between it and Prague. It was summoned to sur- 
 render ; but before the terms were agreed upon it was taken by 
 escalade by the Walloons and Cossacks, and, notwithstanding the 
 efforts of Maximilian and Bucquoy, cruelly sacked. The terror of 
 the example was so great that all the strong towns of Western and 
 Southern Bohemia at once gave in their adhesion to the Emperor as 
 King of Bohemia. 
 
 The next town to be besieged was Pilsen, where Count Mansfeld 
 commanded, and towards which Frederick was gradually bringing up 
 his forces. The season was, however, now far advanced, and the 
 commanders were averse to undertaking a regular siege. They 
 moved off in the direction of Prague. Constant skirmishes took 
 place between the advanced posts of the two armies, but no general 
 battle ; Frederick being gradually driven back on the city of Prague 
 itself. After a vain attempt at negotiation, Frederick encamped the 
 remains of his divided, discontented, and demoralised army on the 
 Weisserberg, close to the south-west side of Prague ; there they 
 attempted to raise defences, whilst he himself took refuge in the city 
 itself. On November 8, 1620, was fought the battle of the Weisserberg 
 or of Prague. The Moravians under Christian of Anhalt and the 
 younger Count Thurn fought bravely, but the Hungarians fled at 
 once, and the Bohemians made no effort. The battle was over in an 
 hour. Frederick at the time was giving a banquet in the city, and 
 although the alarm of the engagement reached him, his good 
 manners prevented him from leaving the table. When he at last 
 rose, he found the gates of the city closed and the fugitives demand- 
 ing admittance. 
 
 Frederick showed the spirit of a mouse. He demanded a truce 
 of twenty-four hours. Maximilian offered him eight on condition 
 of his renouncing his claims on the crown. Frederick purchased 
 the eight hours' truce by resignation, and decamped^ af Once. His 
 friends were heartily ashamed of him. They tried to show him that 
 the struggle was far from lost ; that Pilsen was still untaken ; that 
 a large Hungarian force was at Brandeis ; that he was behaving 
 treacherously and cowardly ; that his position was no worse than 
 that of Ferdinand had been when, but a year before, he was besieged
 
 it 
 
 ^ 298 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 in Vienna. It was all in vain. Panic fear had seized the unlucky 
 prince, and off he went. With his wife and family, Anhalt, Hohen- 
 lohe, and Thurn, he escaped to Breslau in Silesia, and thence to 
 Berlin. The people of Prague, seeing themselves deserted and their 
 defenders dispersed, surrendered at once ; the States consented to 
 acknowledge the Emperor as King on November 13. Mansfeld only 
 continued to hold out at Pilsen and Tabor with the remains of the 
 army, and he was obliged to confine himself to defensive warfare. 
 
 I3ohemia was thus, before winter, at the feet of Ferdinand, and 
 the first act of the drama was closed. The characters of the two 
 competitors are well shown by their conduct at Vienna and Prague, 
 and the difference of their characters is almost by itself enough to 
 account for the result of the war. Ferdinand was a man of invin- 
 cible spirit and determined perseverance. He was a pupil of the 
 Jesuits in their best days ; accomplished, vigilant, politic, and brave ; 
 narrowly and devotedly Catholic, but in all other respects a man who, 
 had he been a Protestant, would have been a first-rate Protestant 
 hero. He was a good husband and father, pure in life, temperate, 
 religious to fanaticism, and with the fanaticism unscrupulous in 
 word or deed such as might defend the great cause. On the other 
 side was Frederick, the Calvinistic champion, vain, presumptuous, 
 and cowardly ; as intolerant as Ferdinand, but without any of his 
 great or good qualities ; unable to command, unable to deliberate, 
 an intriguer without craft, and ambitious without either courage or 
 perseverance. The facts of his having a beautiful wife and of being 
 an uncompromising Puritanical Calvinist are scarcely enough to 
 warrant us in making a hero of him. Far worthier and greater men 
 are now to take up the part that he has so signally failed to play. 
 As for himself, his failure is complete, but the punishment has yet 
 to be paid. 
 
 The end, then, of 1620 saw the Emperor completely triumphant, 
 the only misfortune of the war being the loss of Dampierre, who 
 was killed in Hungary and his army routed by Bethlen Gabor. We 
 have nest to see how the victorious party used their triumph, and 
 how the war which seemed to be thus rapidly extinguished came to 
 be a Thirty Years' and European war. 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAR 
 
 Never, probably, in European history had been a reverse so sudden 
 and so entire as that of Frederick of Bohemia : the victory of the 
 Weisserberg made him in a moment a beggar and an exile. But it 
 
 //
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAE 299 
 
 did not follow immediately that Ferdinand's position became 
 correspondingly strong, or strong enough to enable him to be 
 merciful. He determined to hold no terms with either the usurper 
 or his supporters, and he was not the man at any time to temporise 
 or to make any secret of his intentions. 
 
 Within the limits of Germany the state of affairs was this during 
 the winter of 1620 : — Mansfeld was yet in possession of Pilsen, 
 Tabor, and the neighbouring places in Bohemia ; and in the 
 Palatinate, Heidelberg, Mannheim, and Frankenthal had been able, 
 under English commanders and officers, to hold out against Spinola. 
 Within the territories that he had or claimed, these few towns were 
 all that were left to Frederick. Ferdinand, on the other hand, was 
 hampered everywhere by the smallness of his forces and by the variety 
 of his enemies. The loss of Dampierre, who had fallen at Presburg 
 in October, had to be replaced by the mission of Bucquoy into Hun- 
 gary, and the mission of Bucqucy involved the employment of 
 Maximilian and Tilly to watch Mansfeld. At the same time 
 Silesia was anything but quiet, and indeed it was nearly a year 
 before that province was brought to submission. He was further 
 deep in debt ; Upper Austria was pledged to Maximilian for the 
 expense of the war ; and Lusatia was promised or given to the 
 Elector of Saxony in consideration of his support. Nor was the 
 imperial position strong in Germany. It never indeed was strong, 
 and the mere collapse of the opposition, by the self-stultification of 
 the Evangelical Union at Ulm, was not enough to throw life into 
 the system which had been for the moment victorious. The Evan- 
 gelical Union still existed ; among the Protestant princes who 
 were not in the Union there were many who would be ready to 
 oppose to the death any attempt, either to limit the extension of 
 Protestantism or to recover the lost endowments of the Roman 
 Church. Even amongst the Catholics there was a strong feeling 
 against any measure which should destroy so great and ancient a 
 member of the Empire as the Elector Palatine. 
 
 Outside Germany, the world had enough to do to mind its own 
 business just now. James I. was deep in the plans of the Spanish 
 marriage. France was just beginning a religious war waged by the 
 Court against the Protestants under Rohan and Soubise. The truce 
 of twelve years, made between the United Provinces and Spain, was 
 on the point of expiring (April 10, 1621), and, as soon as hostilities 
 should recommence, Spinola would have to be recalled from the 
 Palatinate. In Spain Philip III. was approaching the end of his 
 reign, and although he was well disposed, as he had shown, towards 
 the Austrian branch of his house, any attempt at common action 
 was viewed with the greatest jealousy by both France and the
 
 BOO LECTURES ON EUKOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Italian powers ; it was at this moment proved by the resistance 
 opposed by France and Venice to the attempt made -by the Spanish 
 and Austrian armies to seize the Valtelline and so establish a com- 
 munication between Milan and the Tyrol. 
 
 Ferdinand, in view of these complications, seeing that any 
 moment might so alter the state of affairs as to throw the forces that 
 were now keeping one another in suspension into energetic action, 
 determined that on his part no time should be lost. He could not 
 afford to be merciful ; he might as well push his severities to the 
 point of vindictiveness. The Union had had in November a meeting 
 at Heilbronn at which nothing was done. The imperial policy was 
 to strike such terror into it that it should fall to pieces. On January 22, 
 1621, Ferdinand took a first and most decided step. He published 
 from Vienna the ban of the Empire against Frederick the Count 
 Palatine, John George of Brandenburg-Jagerndorf, the Count of 
 Hohenlohe, and Christian of Anhalt : the execution of the ban in 
 the Upper Palatinate was entrusted to Maximilian of Bavaria, and in 
 the Lower to the Archduke Albert, sovereign of the Netherlands. At 
 the same time the Emperor prepared to take savage revenge on the 
 Bohemians ; forty of the leaders of the insurgents were arrested, and 
 after four months' imprisonment twenty-three of them were put to 
 death : Count Thurn and twenty-seven others who had fled were 
 proscribed and their estates forfeited : a proclamation was issued 
 directing all landholders who had been implicated in the rebellion 
 to sue for pardon, or to suffer entire confiscation in case of sub- 
 sequent information. Over seven hundred nobles submitted and had 
 their lives spared, but their estates were seized, and their families 
 beggared. The whole fabric of society in Bohemia was subverted, 
 and since that period the country has until the present century 
 been either quietly submissive to Austrian rule or devoid altogether 
 of political life. 
 
 These proceedings of Ferdinand are in themselves indefensible. 
 They were impolitic as well as unjust. It may be true that the 
 Bohemians had no constitutional standing-ground, for they had 
 prosecuted internecine war against their king and could have no 
 claim to the mercies of a constitution which they not less than their 
 oppressor had set at nought, but the ruthless relentless character of 
 the revenge was more likely to inspire the remaining enemies of 
 Austria with a desperate spirit of resistance than to frighten them 
 into hopeless submission. And the proceedings against Frederick 
 were carried out in defiance of the constitution of the Empire, without 
 the consent, against the wish, of the electoral body, and in breach 
 of the capitulation made at the election of a new Emperor. All this 
 Ferdinand overlooked in his anxiety to make an end of Frederick
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAE 301 
 
 and out of his estates to find means for repaying the services of 
 Bavaria and Saxony, getting his own dominions out of pawn. 
 
 At the moment these severities were successful. A meeting of 
 the Catholic League in February alarmed the Union into the expecta- 
 tion of a general attack ; and on April 12, at Mentz, peace between 
 the League and the Union was concluded. Peace was made also 
 between Spinola and the Union, who could not wait even for the 
 week that intervened before the truce between Spain and Holland 
 expired ; and almost immediately after the Evangelical Union broke 
 up, having done no work except the production of the Thirty Years' 
 War, in which on every occasion it shirked fighting. The Pala- 
 tinate was thus left in the hands of Spinola, save the three towns 
 that held out for Frederick, and these were besieged in execution of 
 the ban. _ 
 
 Now, however, there is again a turn in the tide. The King of f 
 Spain died on March 31, 1621 ; the truce between Holland and Spain I 
 expired on April 21 ; and on July 13 the Archduke Albert died at 
 Brussels. Spinola was recalled from the Palatinate, the forces being 
 placed under Gonzalvo de Cordova ; and at the other side of the '' 
 Empire, the force of Bethlen Gabor was increased by the arrival of 
 the Bohemian refugees, with whose aid he defeated Bucquoy at 
 Neuhausel, the imperial commander falling in the battle. Just now 
 for the first time we find Christian of Denmark beginning to move, 
 calling together the estates of Lower Saxony and giving signs of 
 the action that he took two years later. 
 
 But all interest now centres in Mansfeld, whom we left at Pilsen 
 in November, and who still kept the standard of Frederick hoisted 
 in Bohemia. Tilly was the general pitted against him by Ferdi- 
 nand, and they were well matched ; both were brilliant generals, 
 strong religious partisans, and unscrupulous men. Mansfeld is 
 known chiefly as a plunderer and ravager, Tilly as a sacker of cities ; 
 both of them have had their admirers, Mansfeld among the Puritans, 
 Tilly among the Jesuits. Both of them may have had redeeming 
 points : but they do not come out in history. For many months 
 they watched one another with very inferior forces. Mansfeld had 
 about 8,000 men, Tilly had not many more ; the imperial army in 
 Hungary had sunk to 8,000 men too. At length the Elector of 
 Saxony came into the field with 5,000 men, and Tilly got some 
 other reinforcements. Mansfeld had exhausted the resources of the 
 country and the patience of the people. Pilsen was surrendered 
 by his men against his will, and he was compelled to leave Bohemia ; 
 by a forced march of singular daring he struck across the Upper 
 Palatinate, what is now the north-eastern part of Bavaria, and 
 encamped at Rosskopf, near Nuremberg. Tilly was hot in pursuit,
 
 302 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 and jMansfeld made proposals to surrender. Whilst these were in 
 consideration, on October 4, he broke out of his entrenchments in the 
 night and marched at full speed into the Lower Palatihate, where he 
 was joined by the English contingent, making up an army of 20,000 
 men. With these he expelled Gonzalvo and the Spaniards, relieved 
 Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Frankenthal, and revived the hopes of 
 Frederick. Tilly failed to prevent the union of the forces, and as 
 the winter approached hostilities, as usual, ceased. 
 
 Mansfeld took his army to Alsace, where they could find subsis- 
 tence by exactions from the Emperor's subjects, and there he was 
 joined by Frederick. The Margrave of Baden put his army in 
 preparation ; the Duke of Wiirtemberg also moved, and Christian of 
 Brunswick set to work on the Protestants of Lower Saxony — in 
 pursuance of the line taken by the King of Denmark early in the 
 year. But before these successful proceedings of Mansfeld and his 
 allies gained anything like completeness, the luck of Ferdinand on 
 the Hungarian and Silesian frontiers had put him in a condition to 
 make Western Germany the chief seat of the war. Silesia had 
 made complete submission in October. In January 1622, by the 
 peace of Niklasburg, Bethlen Gabor reconciled himself with Ferdi- 
 nand, resigned the title of King and surrendered the regalia, receiv- 
 ing from Ferdinand in return large endowments in lands, titles, and 
 treasure. Thus effectually disarmed, although he rebelled again 
 in 1625, and in 1629 made preparations just before his death to 
 invade Hungary, he drops permanently out of our story. At this 
 time also Ferdinand married his second wife, Eleanora Gonzaga, 
 and on the occasion granted an amnesty in Hungary on the 
 most liberal terms, granting even the election of a Protestant 
 Palatine. 
 
 The interest of the year 1622 depends on the military movements 
 of Tilly against Mansfeld, the Margrave George Frederick of Baden 
 Durlach, and Christian of Brunswick. The margrave was an un- 
 lucky man ; he had been one of the supporters of Frederick's election 
 to Bohemia, and by his consent to let the Austrian troops cross from 
 Alsace through his territories towards Bohemia had acted, unfor- 
 tunately and against his own will, in a manner fatal to the elector's 
 interest. Now he determined to devote himself entirely to the cause ; 
 going so far as to divest himself of his dominions in favour of his son 
 lest the house should suffer, by his incurring the imperial ban. Chris- 
 tian of Brunswick was a different sort of man, much more of the 
 selfish adventurer : he was a young man, a violent and cruel perse- 
 cutor. As Bishop of Halberstadt he had a stake in the Protestant 
 cause which made him an irreconcilable foe to the Catholics ; his 
 atrocities on the priests were such that it was said they believed
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAE 303 
 
 him to be Antichrist in person. He, however, was a much more 
 able general than the margrave. 
 
 These three armies, then, supported the Palatine or Protestant 
 cause against Tilly, and together they would have been too much 
 for him. At Mingolsheim, on April 29, 1622, he was beaten by 
 Mansfeld and the margrave ; and took care not to meet them 
 together again. The separation between the two, caused by an 
 attempt of the margrave to penetrate into Bavaria, gave him his 
 opportunity : he met and defeated the army of Baden at Wimpfen 
 on the Neckar on May 6 ; left Mansfeld to tire himself at the siege 
 of Ladenburg, and marched to meet Christian. Him he met at 
 Hochst on the Main on June 20, and beat him, pursued him until he 
 joined Mansfeld, and then drove them both into Alsace. They were 
 still far from discouraged ; the Protestant feeling of Germany was 
 but half roused, when all at once Frederick let them down and left 
 them without a legal standing-ground. 
 
 James I. of England was hard at work at statecraft. He knew 
 that his people were enthusiastic on the side of Frederick. He had 
 not yet discovered the illusory character of Spanish engagements. 
 He persuaded himself that he could by his influence with Spain 
 prevail on the Emperor to restore the Elector Palatine, and, in 
 conjunction with Denmark and the Archduchess Isabella, who wanted 
 to maintain peace in the Netherlands, to restore peace to Europe. 
 His self-deception imposed on his son-in-law : he withdrew himself 
 from Mansfeld and his other friends, and, although they were ready 
 to fight for him even only for the name, and wefe besieging 
 Saverne on his behalf, retired into Holland. 
 
 Christian and Mansfeld, finding themselves forsaken, looked out 
 for an escape. Mansfeld even entered into negotiations for taking 
 service mth the Emperor, whose most dangerous enemy he had been 
 so long. At length, however, they determined to join Maurice in 
 the Netherlands. They pushed accordingly from Alsace, through to 
 Verdun ; there they parted, Mansfeld passing through Champagne, 
 to the terror of the French, and Christian through Bouillon and 
 Luxemburg. They met again at Breda, and there strengthened 
 Maurice so thoroughly that he was able to raise the siege of Bergen- 
 op-Zoom. At Fleury in Hainault Mansfeld met Cordova on 
 August 29, and a severe engagement followed, but he succeeded in 
 making his way to Breda. 
 
 The Margrave of Baden submitted to the Emperor and disbanded 
 his forces. TiHy was now free to repossess himself of the Palatinate, 
 and to anticipate the claims which the Spaniards by whose armies 
 it had been overrun might make upon it. This was speedily done. 
 On September 6, Heidelberg was taken by assault : Mannheim capitu-
 
 304 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 lated ; and with the exception of Frankenthal, Frederick had no 
 longer a spot of ground that acknowledged him. 
 
 Ferdinand was contemplating a measure that would seal his 
 deprivation ; the transfer of the electoral dignity to the other branch 
 of the Wittelsbachs, in the person of Maximilian of Bavaria, whose 
 claims on Upper Austria he intended to buy off by a gift of the Upper 
 Palatinate. His preparations for this severe act were completed in the 
 winter ; and a Diet was called at Ratisbon. This Diet had originally 
 been summoned for Midsummer 1621 ; it met at Ratisbon on Novem- 
 ber 24, 1622, and had business enough to arrange. The Landgraves 
 of Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Cassel had a quarrel about Marpurg; 
 the Margraves of Baden about the Upper Mark of Baden ; the 
 Elector of Saxony was discontented at the treatment of the Lutherans 
 in Bohemia ; and endless other quarrels were on hand, looking to be 
 settled now. And the Emperor had some difficulty in getting the 
 estates round to his own way of thinking. Even Spain remon- 
 strated at the entire destitution of the Elector Palatine. The other 
 members of the Palatine House, the Count of Neuburg particularly, 
 who was a CathoHc, protested against the diversion of the electorate 
 from his family as contrary to the Golden Bull. Brandenburg and 
 Saxony remonstrated in the Protestant interest. But Brandenburg 
 was very weak and Saxony only half zealous ; and Ferdinand man- 
 aged, by playing off the smaller princes against one another, as their 
 family disputes very generally enabled him to do, to get his own 
 way at last. 
 
 The question was considered from January 7 to February 25, 
 1623, and on the latter day the Emperor formally declared the 
 electoral vote transferred from the elder to the younger branch of 
 the Wittelsbachs, as Charles V. had transferred that of Saxony from 
 the Ernestine to the Albertine line of Wettin. The new elector was 
 recognised by all his fellows, Brandenburg alone objecting ; and by 
 the ambassadors of France. The Elector of Saxony was put in 
 possession of Lusatia : Lewis of Darmstadt was reconciled by the 
 investiture of Marpurg ; Christian of Anhalt was admitted to 
 favour : John George of Hohenzollern was made a Prince of the 
 Empire. But although the Diet had been thus easily managed, 
 Mansfeld and Christian were far too active and determined to allow 
 this to be a settlement of all claims. Mansfeld during the winter 
 had led his forces into East Friesland, the Count of which country 
 was friendly to the Emperor, and had there, as usual, maintained 
 them by pillage. Christian had again stirred up the princes of Lower 
 Saxony ; they had formed a league, of which the King of Denmark, 
 the Elector of Brandenburg, the Dukes of Brunswick, Holstein, and 
 Mecklenburg were members : which avowed as its object the defence
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAE 305 
 
 of the country against Tilly on one side and Mansfeld on the other, 
 but which Christian intended to use for the recovery of the 
 Palatinate. Before the Diet of Eatisbon separated, which was in 
 March, the Emperor found it necessary to send Tilly to break up 
 this combination. The princes urged Christian to make his submis- 
 sion to Ferdinand ; and he found it necessary to evacuate Westphalia. 
 On his way to join Mansfeld in East Friesland, Tilly overtook him 
 at Stadtlohn on August 6, and thoroughly routed him. After some 
 months, manoeuvring, they found themselves helpless and the country 
 they were occupying exhausted : and in January 1624 these two 
 renowned adventurers broke up their forces ; they both took refuge 
 in Holland, to reappear again for a short space. But their great 
 game was played, and their place is taken by new though not more 
 famous actors. 
 
 The year 1624 was a little interval of peace : that is, of intrigue. 
 Poor Frederick had gone quite out of sight. Mansfeld and Christian 
 were beggared and their armies dispersed. The imperial forces 
 under Tilly occupied the Palatinate, the Duke of Bavaria kept South 
 Germany in order. Bethlen Gabor made an attempt with Turkish 
 aid to recover what he had resigned at Niklasburg, but he was 
 brought to terms again by May. Ferdinand devoted the breathing 
 time to persecution and repression : everywhere within his States he 
 enforced the restitution of the property of the Church and proscribed 
 the worship of the heretics. Everywhere he showed the determined 
 pertinacity of his policy, and made it too plain to the hostile or half- 
 reconciled princes what they would have to undergo if he should 
 ever succeed in making himself Emperor iu deed as well as name. 
 A long list of restitutions enforced in Franconia and other territories 
 where the imperial power was strong and the petty princes could be 
 taken in detail, warned the North German powers which had grown 
 strong on the plunder of the Church of what would befall them. 
 The King of Denmark trembled for his tenure of the archbishoprics 
 of Bremen, Liibeck, and Verden ; Christian could not hope to retain 
 Halberstadt, or the Brandenburgers Magdeburg. And the germ of 
 an organisation there was already : the princes formed a new league, 
 and this time with promises of alliance and aid from a far wider 
 circle than ever before. The treaty of Paris, concluded August 8, 1624, 
 united the Kings of England, France, Denmark, the Duke of Savoy, 
 and the republics of Holland and Venice, in an agreement to recover 
 the Palatinate for Frederick and to resist the further aggrandisement 
 of the Emperor. Sweden also joined the confederation. 
 
 It is important, by the way, to observe that each of these | 
 confederates was induced by different reasons to pursue this end. 
 James I. had awakened from his dream of the Spanish marriage and 
 
 i 
 
 X
 
 306 LECTURES OX EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 was concluding a French one for his son ; he would fain be revenged 
 on the Spaniards and at last strike a blow for his son-in-law. 
 France was now at peace, comparatively speaking, under the growing 
 influence of Richelieu, jealous, moreover, of the Italian intrigues of 
 Spain and Austria exemplified in the attack on the Valtelline and an 
 attempt to partition the estates of Genoa between Spain and Savoy. 
 The Duke of Savoy, who had missed the acquisition he hoped to 
 make, was, like the Venetians, in dread of the same policy, which was 
 to unite the Milanese with the Tyrol by the annexation of the 
 Valtelhne. Denmark was especially hostile at this moment because 
 the Emperor had enabled the Counts of Schaumburg to renew their 
 claims on Holstein, and the King now remembered that he was uncle 
 to the Elector Palatine's wife and bound in honour to look after his 
 interests. Gustavus Adolphus was not only an earnest Protestant 
 hero, but he had a revenge to wreak on Ferdinand, who^ supported 
 Sigismund of Poland in the claims he still made to the Swedish 
 throne, from which Charles of Sudermania, the father of Gustavus 
 Adolphus, had ejected him in 1604. It was true Gustavus had no 
 reasonable pretext for going to war. His possessions nowhere even 
 approached those of the Emperor, and his power was in no real 
 danger from him ; but by the gift of part of Pomerania which might 
 any day become an imperial escheat, by the dropping in of the life of 
 the childless duke, he might have a standing-ground given him ; 
 and, if this could be done, he in character and ability stood so high 
 that he might fairly claim to be head of the league. 
 
 The year 1624 passed before it was determined who should take 
 the lead. It fell at last to Christian, King of Denmark, and he was 
 accepted by the Lower Saxon States as their head also in lieu of the 
 Duke of Brunswick, Christian of Liineburg, who had been director 
 of the circle for eleven years, withdrawing in his favour. This con- 
 clusion was come to on March 25, 1625 ; and war almost immediately 
 followed : a branch or department of the Thu-ty Years' War which 
 lasted exactly four years ; and which brought on the stage new 
 persons and a new policy on the part of the Emperor which are 
 memorable for ever. In the name of Wallenstein these new 
 principles are centred. It was to resist the Northern League that 
 Ferdinand availed himself of the services of Wallenstein, whose 
 name marks this epoch of the war as distinctly as those of Frederick 
 and Maximilian did the first ; those of Mansfeld, Christian, and 
 Tilly, the second ; and those of Gustavus Adolphus and Bernard of 
 Weimar the period that follows. 
 
 The employment of Wallenstein marks an independent line of 
 action on the part of the Emperor. All through his policy there 
 were two lines of design : one the restoration of the Roman Catholic 
 
 «
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAE 307 
 
 religion, the other the restoration of the imperial power. Up to 
 this time, however, the main direction of his efforts and those of 
 his supporters had been towards the recovery of his hereditary 
 dominions and the punishment of those who, in the purpose of 
 establishincf Protestantism, had attacked him in Bohemia. No 
 doubt whatever, the Protestant princes were intent on curbing the 
 imperial power as well as on stopping the Comiter-Eeformation : in 
 both points they regarded the overthrow and humiliation of 
 Ferdinand as the great object of war and policy, and there were 
 many powers in Europe that looked kindly on their efforts in one or 
 both designs. 
 
 England, in the person of her king, might stand aloof and desire 
 the continuance of the old state of things that had existed under 
 Ferdinand I. and Maximilian, when the Empire as such exerted no 
 influence on the politics of Europe, and religious matters were, after 
 a period of great excitement, almost at a standstill ; but the English 
 people and Parliament were enthusiastically earnest in support of 
 the cause of the Elector Palatine, and disliked, as far as they under- 
 stood it, the predominant position of Austria, which they looked on 
 as a dependency of Spain. 
 
 France, on the other hand, whilst she hated and dreaded Pro- 
 testantism, hated and dreaded quite as much the revival of the 
 power of her old antagonist. To her the cause of Germany, of the 
 Empire, of the Austrian Hapsburg, was still the cause of Charles V., 
 although the territory that made Charles V. so terrible to France 
 had altogether run off into the other line, with which the present 
 rulers of France were closely alhed. We might expect the action of 
 France in a struggle like that which was progressing to be neutra- 
 lised by these motives. If her hatred of the Reformation drew her 
 one way, her hereditary policy with regard to the German princes 
 and her attitude towards the Austrian house drew her the other. 
 
 Whilst, then, to France and states like her the designs of 
 Ferdinand were only partially dangerous, he was on both points 
 opposed tooth and nail by the German Protestant princes. But 
 further than this : the German Catholic princes were zealous enough 
 for the restoration of the faith ; but far less zealous, nay occasionally 
 jealous, of the aggrandisement of the imperial power. The Catholic 
 League was formed for the defence of the Catholic religion ; not 
 for the increase of the imperial power, still less for the purpose of 
 securing or enlarging the Hapsburg inheritance. As for this third 
 motive, liberally as it is attributed to the Austrian house in 
 general, I confess that I do not see much in Ferdinand's policy that 
 seems directed to the securing of it, independently of his design of 
 increasing the imperial power. He seems to have regarded the 
 
 x2
 
 308 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 imperial power as the inheritance, and working for the former he 
 worked effectually but subordinately for the latter. But the Catholic 
 League fought for neither, only for the restoration of religion. The 
 Catholic League was strong in the support of France, which had 
 concluded the pacification of Ulm and had never countenanced 
 the programme of Frederick, but which still held Toul, Verdun, and 
 Metz, standing proofs of her strength and of her enmity to the Empire. 
 
 And what is the point ? The battle had been hitherto fought by 
 the Catholic League : the director of all the armies was Maximilian 
 of Bavaria, Ferdinand's friend and brother-in-law, but not one of his 
 own house — a man if not superior, certainly not inferior to himself 
 in ability, as honest, as religious, as experienced, and more popular, 
 because more thoroughly trusted. In all points touching religion 
 Maximilian might be thoroughly confided in; but the League of 
 which he was the head was not likely to go further than it had done. 
 To Ferdinand, but not to the League, were the triumph of religion 
 and the restoration of the Empire one and the same thing. The 
 leaguers had not looked kindly on the deposition and proscription 
 of Frederick ; as members of the Empire they could not but see 
 that the precedent was dangerous to themselves, and an example 
 that might, when the tide of fortune turned, be most fatal. If it 
 ever came to a struggle between the Empire and the princes on 
 purely secular grounds, the Lutherans and Catholics and Calvinists 
 might make head together. It was high time, then, for the Emperor 
 to take the war into his own hands, to take the Catholic League 
 for an ally or an instrument, instead of being an instrument of the 
 Catholic League. Tilly was the general, and the forces were the 
 forces of the League. The Emperor himself had no standing army 
 to speak of, only a few thousand mercenaries, who would be needed 
 for the defence of Bohemia and Hungary : nothing like the standing 
 army which Charles V. had had ; and which even he had drawn 
 from Spain and Italy, rather than from his own German lands. 
 
 Ferdinand had neither men nor money, and his mind was not 
 one which could complacently contemplate a system of warfare such 
 as was carried on by Mansfeld, which paid the wages of its 
 mercenaries by promises of pillage from friend as well as foe. But, 
 although he could not contemplate it as directly his own action, he 
 could prevail on himself to use men who would act on the same 
 principle. If he could not pay an army he might attach to his 
 service some leader who would be able to find means of paying one. 
 To reward the leader out of the spoils of the Bohemian traitors, or 
 with prospective grants from the forfeitures of imperial vassals, 
 would not be so difficult or so repulsive. So the Emperor looked 
 round for a general after his own heart and found Wallenstein.
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WAR 309 
 
 Wallenstein was a nobleman, of German descent, of a family 
 settled in Bohemia. His name was Albert Wenceslas Eusebius 
 von Waldstein, lord of Waldstein and Hermenetz : he was born in 
 1583, and now therefore was forty-two. He had been brought up a 
 Protestant, but converted to Eomanism in consequence of an escape 
 which he regarded as miraculous. He was educated in the family of 
 Charles, Margrave of Burgau, son of the Archduke Ferdinand and 
 Philippina Welser, at Innsbruck. He had travelled over Europe, 
 studied languages, history, and mathematics, and gone deeply into 
 astrology. After his marriage to an old rich Moravian lady, he took 
 to the practice of arms, and had made the acquaintance of the 
 Emperor when he was Duke of Styria, by raising a small body of 
 cavalry at his own expense and fighting on his side against the 
 Venetians in Friuli. His second wife was the daughter of Count 
 Harrach, one of the Emperor's ministers. He had lost his estates 
 in Bohemia as a Catholic and imperialist, during the revolutionary 
 period, and had been, when Ferdinand triumphed, rewarded in 
 proportion to his losses, so that he was already a rich man, and high 
 in the Emperor's confidence. He had raised a force of 1,000 
 cuirassiers at his own expense, had shown signal ability, and had 
 fought with signal success. 
 
 Whilst Ferdinand was looking for a general, Wallenstein was 
 looking for his opportunity. He saw the state of matters and 
 proposed to the Emperor that he should at his own expense raise 
 a force of 50,000 men, in the Emperor's name ; provided he should 
 have himself the supreme command and appoint his own oflicers. 
 Here was the exact thing that Ferdinand wanted ; by accepting the 
 offer he would avoid the repulsive system of mercenary or adventurer 
 forces, and have an instrument after his own way of thinking. 
 Other men looked on Wallenstein as an extravagant, ambitious 
 visionary. But Ferdinand had watched him and seen his ability, 
 ability that was none the worse in his eyes for being accompanied 
 by a lofty enthusiasm. Historians differ, and probably always will 
 differ, as to the character of Wallenstein : as to the question 
 whether he inspired Ferdinand with his own designs, or Ferdinand 
 chose him for his adaptability to his. The genius of the men suggests 
 the former theory ; the situation of affairs countenances the latter : 
 but it is even more probable that the complication of religious and 
 imperial interests called into play the genius of the man so 
 wonderfully adapted to meet both.
 
 310 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 LECTUEE IV 
 
 THE INTERVENTION OF DENMARK — WALLENSTEIN's SUCCESSES 
 
 Whether the policy which Ferdinand II. adopted in taking Wallen- 
 stein for the leader of his armies was suggested to him by Wallenstein 
 himself, or was, as I showed in the last lecture, the natural result of 
 the circumstances in which he found himself, Wallenstein being the 
 instrument ready to his hand, I shall not venture to decide. It is 
 clear that Wallenstein was ready, and wonderfully well suited to the 
 post in which his master placed him. He received the imperial 
 commission to raise 50,000 men, and was elevated, by a very unusual 
 exercise of imperial authority, to the rank of a duke — Duke of Fried- 
 land in Bohemia. It was from particular districts of Bohemia that 
 his force was to be levied, and it was very speedily made up to 
 22,000 men ; before it reached Lower Saxony it numbered 30,000. 
 With these the policy of the imperial general was to join Tilly, the 
 general of the League, and to overwhelm in detail the armies of 
 Christian of Denmark, Ernest of Mansfeld, and Christian of 
 Brunswick. 
 
 Of the latter two we have heard a good deal before. Christian of 
 Denmark was brother of Anne of Denmark, wife of our James I. 
 He was king for sixty years, from 1588 to 1648. He was an 
 experienced soldier and a man of a good deal of ambition, but not of 
 high character in any respect, and far from a good king. Nor was 
 he in pohcy a match for either the friends who would use him, or 
 the foes who would thwart him. It was his fear for his ecclesiastical 
 acquisitions in North Germany and for his Holstein duchy that led 
 him, more than any interest for the Count Palatine or the Lutheran 
 religion. 
 
 The election of Christian to the headship of the new confederation 
 took place on March 25, 1625, at Segerburg in Holstein. Other 
 meetings were held in the course of a few months at Brunswick, at 
 which larger promises and engagements were entered into ; Tilly, on 
 behalf of the League, protesting against the organisation as a breach 
 of the constitutional law of Germany. The war opened formally by 
 a declaration from King Christian that the object of the confederation 
 was the securing the peace of the circle of Lower Saxony. The 
 circle of Lower Saxony included the duchies of Holstein, Lauenburg, 
 Mecklenburg, and Brunsmck, in all their branches, and the bishoprics 
 of Bremen, Hamburg, Liibeck, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, and Hildes- 
 heim, the larger part of which was in the hands of Protestant pseudo-
 
 THE INTEEVENTION OF DENMARK 311 
 
 bishops ; and formed a compact bundle of spoil, more to be coveted 
 and easier to be handled than any other ecclesiastical plunder except 
 perhaps the Franconian, which were in safe Catholic keeping. It 
 was not unfair that Lower Saxony should be the battle-field of such 
 a contest, 
 
 • Well, the watchful eye of Tilly was upon all the arrangements of 
 the-«ew confederation. He marched upon the Weser, sending the 
 Count John Jacob of Anhalt into the territory of Cologne to oppose 
 the march of Christian and Mansfeld, who had been collecting forces 
 in England and France. Tilly rapidly occupied Hamelen and 
 Minden before the King of Denmark got his reinforcements ; and 
 pushed on into the Brunswick territories, and the states of Lower 
 Saxony, already frightened, opened negotiations with him for peace. 
 Already at Brunswick, in August, these negotiations were in progress, 
 and as Wallenstein with the imperial army approached the scene of 
 action they were renewed. By November, however, both parties were 
 ready for the contest, and the news from the allies abroad was 
 encouraging. Tilly's force was not indeed large enough to hold all 
 the territory that he overran ; he had been indeed obliged to with- 
 draw from the siege of Nienburg, after a sharp struggle ; but 
 Wallenstein's army was approaching in full strength, enriched with 
 the spoils of the Magdeburg and Halberstadt countries. On the 
 other hand, Mansfeld occupied the duchy of Liineburg, Christian 
 of Brunswick was collecting a new force in the bishoprics, and the 
 united armies under the King of Denmark reached the number of 
 60,000 men. With these the struggle was to begin as soon as the 
 season permitted. In the meanwhile a series of truces was made to 
 give Christian time to visit Denmark, and to allow the other princes 
 who were not in the Lower Saxon league to try their hands at 
 negotiating. But the efforts for peace made by the Electors of 
 Brandenburg and Saxony counted for nothing with men like Mans- 
 feld ; and the alliance between England, Holland, and Denmark, 
 made in December at the Hague, the object of which was to assist 
 the confederation, was far more effectual for mischief. 
 
 Early in the spring of 1626 hostilities began in earnest. King 
 Christian arranged a plan of campaign, dividing his forces between 
 himself and his two great leaders. To Christian of Brunswick he 
 committed the task of raising men and supplies in the bishoprics of 
 Lower Saxony and Westphalia, and of keeping order in the duchy 
 of Brunswick. He himself took the field against Tilly, and Wallen- 
 stein he hoped to thwart by the skill and experience of Mansfeld. 
 King Christian's field was the country on the Weser ; Mansfeld's, 
 that on the Elbe ; the sphere of Christian of Brunswick's labours 
 lay between the two. But Christian's work was very nearly done by
 
 312 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 this time. He was only twenty-nine years old, but a veteran in war ; 
 unrivalled in daring ; oppressive, unscrupulous, an adventurer of the 
 extremest cast. But he was dying of an internal complaint which 
 was incapacitating him for work even when he took the command, 
 and was probably the reason why the easiest part of the campaign 
 was allotted to him. After making a short invasion of Hesse, chiefly 
 to levy men, money, and provisions, and fortifying Gottingen and 
 one or two other places against sudden attacks, he retired to 
 Wolfenbiittel, where he died on June 6. He had resigned his 
 bishopric of Halberstadt in 1624, and as he had no territory of his 
 own, nor any descendants, his name has had none to defend it. His 
 brother, Frederick Ulric, who was the reigning Duke of Wolfenbiittel, 
 took the opposite side in politics ; whence, perhaps, arose Christian's 
 prominence in the Protestant councils. He was the last of the house, 
 and on his death, in 1634, the duchy fell to the Liineburg branch. 
 
 The interest is concentrated on the other two commanders. The 
 decline and death of Christian of Brunswick threw the chief burden 
 of the fighting on the King of Denmark, who now had double work. 
 His plan was to prevent if possible any meeting between Wallenstein 
 and Tilly ; and to do this he despatched the Duke of Saxe- Weimar to 
 make a diversion in Westphalia. If Tilly could be drawn from the 
 Weser, he himself might advance southwards and occupy Hesse, 
 and so reach the Palatinate. The design, however, was too trans- 
 parent : the Duke of Weimar was successful as far as he went, for he 
 met no army, no resistance ; the people bought him off mth presents 
 and elected the son of King Christian coadjutor of Osnabriick, but 
 he did not draw Tilly away from his chosen ground, and King 
 Christian did not venture as yet to attack him. Tilly took Got- 
 tingen notwithstanding poor Duke Christian's precautions. Then he 
 attacked Nordheim, but, finding it well provisioned, he determined 
 to compel King Christian to a general engagement. This was fought 
 at Liitter, in the duchy of Wolfenbiittel, on August 27. Tilly was 
 completely victorious. Christian with difficulty escaped into Hol- 
 stein ; five thousand of his men perished on the field, two thousand 
 were taken prisoners. The whole of the duchy of Liineburg thus 
 fell into Tilly's hands ; the Count of Anhalt occupied Osnabriick 
 and the other Westphalian towns that were reduced early in the 
 year ; and so far as the circle of Lower Saxony was concerned, it 
 was infinitely worse off than when it began the struggle. 
 
 The other branch of the campaign was before now removed 
 into a very remote region. Wallenstein had wintered at Dessau, 
 the capital of one of the Anhalt duchies, lying close on the borders 
 of the circle of Lower Saxony, and had intrenched his camp at 
 the bridge there over the Elbe. So threatening was his position
 
 THE INTEEVENTION OF DENMAEK 318 
 
 that as early as February Christian William of Brandenburg, the 
 administrator of Magdeburg, had made an energetic attempt to 
 dislodge him, which was defeated with very great loss. A month 
 later Mansfeld was sent against him, rather perhaps with the inten- 
 tion of diverting him than of j&ghting a pitched battle. He moved 
 through Brandenburg upon Anhalt, and, having taken Zerbst, 
 attacked the intrenched camp at Dessau. Wallenstein, however, came 
 down on him in force on April 25, and inflicted a very severe defeat. 
 Mansfeld was the last man to recognise a beating : he retired into 
 Brandenburg again, and, having levied another force, in conjunction 
 with the five thousand Danes under John Ernest of Weimar, who 
 had returned from Westphalia, made a bold stroke at the imperial 
 states. Before Wallenstein could stop him he was in Silesia, 
 carrying all before him, Bethlen Gabor waiting for him on the 
 Hungarian frontier. With their forces joined they awaited the 
 attack of Wallenstein, who reached Hungary soon after with thirty 
 thousand men. 
 
 But the season was more advanced, and pestilence appeared in 
 both armies. John Ernest of Weimar was left behind in Silesia ; 
 and, although this placed an active enemy in the rear of Wallenstein's 
 army, Mansfeld's was proportionately diminished. Disease and 
 desertion were rapidly weakening Mansfeld, when Bethlen Gabor, 
 who invariably did the wrong thing at the wrong time, made a truce 
 with Wallenstein to April 1627, and withdrew into winter quarters. 
 Mansfeld saw that the game was up : he disbanded his men, sold 
 his artillery at Buda, and started through Bosnia on his way to 
 Venice. At Zara, however, in Dalmatia, he was overtaken by the 
 last enemy, and there he died on November 30. John Ernest of 
 Weimar, who was keeping the joint conquests in Silesia in the rear 
 of Wallenstein's army, survived Mansfeld only a week, and so 
 escaped defeat ; for Wallenstein, on concluding the truce, had turned 
 back to meet him. 
 
 Thus much for Wallenstein's first campaign. The report of the 
 year's warfare was very much in favour of Ferdinand : the King of 
 Denmark beaten at Liitter ; Christian of Brunswick, Mansfeld, and 
 John Ernest of Weimar dead and their armies dispersed ; Lower 
 Saxony in the hands of Tilly ; the Dukes of Brunswick petitioning 
 for reconciliation ; and Silesia re-occupied by Wallenstein. 
 
 The history of the year 1627 is the supplement of that of 1626 : 
 it is marked by no great battle or by the appearance of any new hero. 
 But the successes of the imperialists were steadily followed up ; and 
 the places which still held out against them, throughout the whole 
 area of the war, were one by one taken, and Christian was driven step 
 by step into Denmark, The war was still confined to Lower Saxony
 
 314 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 and Silesia ; the only attempt at a diversion in the south being made 
 by the Margrave George Frederick of Baden-Durlach, who quitted his 
 retirement at Basel and levied forces in Alsace on behalf of the 
 Count Palatine. He was soon dislodged by the Archduke Leopold, 
 and retired with his little force to join the King of Denmark ; but 
 he was beaten by Tilly, as was to be expected, and did nothing to 
 redeem his usual character for ill-luck. The details of the year are 
 
 briefly these : 
 
 Wallenstein first completed the subjugation of Silesia, which, 
 after the death of the Duke of Weimar, had been committed by King 
 Christian to the younger Count Thurn, and to Christian William of 
 Brandenburg. He took Eatibor, Jagerndorf, and Troppau ; and, 
 having pacified the country, marched to join Tilly, During this 
 time King Christian was strengthening the garrisons of the places 
 that still held out, and establishing a series of forts between the Weser 
 and the Elbe^ so as to save at least Holstein and the Mecklenburgs 
 in the general ruin. The submission of the Brunswick dukes 
 rendered the Liineburg territory untenable, but Wolfenbiittel still 
 held out, and Wallenstein indemnified himself by ravaging the 
 northern duchy. 
 
 Tilly left the western division of the work, as usual, to the 
 Count of Anhalt, who undertook the country lying between the 
 Weser and the Elbe ; then, when Wallenstein had finished in 
 Silesia, he advanced to meet him. Whilst the Administrator of 
 Magdeburg was preparing to hinder his crossing the Elbe at 
 Dessau, he crossed it at Tangermlinde, considerably lower down ; 
 and then, passing the Havel, took Havelberg, and joined Wallen- 
 stein ; the conjoint armies made little trouble of Brandenburg, 
 compelled the Elector to withdraw his protest against the transfer 
 of the Palatinate, and then marched northwards. Lauenburg and 
 Boitzeburg fell before them. At last Tilly reached Holstein, took 
 Eendsburg, and compelled King Christian to fly to the islands. 
 The news of these successes caused the surrender of the few fortresses 
 that were still defending themselves. Nordheim was taken by 
 Fiirstenburg ; Nienburg and every strong place in the bishopric of 
 Bremen except Stade by the Count of Anhalt ; Wolfenbiittel by 
 Pappenheim. The poor Dukes of Mecklenburg, who had been com- 
 pelled to do homage to the King of Denmark, were despoiled of 
 their territories, and Pomerania and Brandenburg were compelled 
 to submit to heavy exactions. Stade, Gliickstadt, and Krempe 
 were the only places that resisted the imperialists in the whole 
 circle of Lower Saxony. 
 
 The complete humiliation of an enemy gave time for discussing 
 conditions of peace ; and the Emperor was meanwhile making the
 
 THE INTERVENTION OF DENMARK 315 
 
 most of his advantages in another way. The utter prostration of 
 the Protestant cause had already inspired the stefner-Oathulics with 
 the idea of the Edict of Restitution, which was issued a year later, 
 directing the restoration of all secularised ecclesiastical property. 
 The Emperor seems to have been anticipating the idea by obtaining 
 the election to the northern sees for the Archduke Leopold, his 
 younger son. Leopold was already bishop of Strassburg and Passau. 
 The Emperor now took advantage of the state of things in Lower 
 Saxony to obtain for him the succession to Halberstadt, and pre- 
 pared to lay claim for him to Magdeburg and Bremen. But before 
 this was accomplished the tide of war had turned. The thrones of 
 Bohemia and Hungary were about the same time secured by the 
 usual preliminary election and coronation for his eldest son Ferdi- 
 nand ; and a negotiation for peace with the Turks was completed in 
 September 1627. 
 
 The proposals for peace between the King of Denmark and the 
 Emperor were also passing freely : Tilly, on behalf of the League, 
 attempting to soften, Wallenstein, in pursuit of his own and the 
 imperial objects, to harden, the rigour of the terms offered. But 
 the year ended without any feasible plan being devised, and Christian 
 had recourse to the last resources of a Danish king, by equipping 
 a small fleet and preparing to attack the coasts of the Baltic where 
 Wallenstein was in possession. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the League was content with the 
 measure of success that it had already attained, and was sincerely 
 desirous of peace. At Wiirzburg, in the summer, a great meeting 
 of the Catholic princes had bitterly complained of the exhaustion of 
 the country by the war, and of the great miseries caused by the 
 pecuniary exactions and quartering of the troops during the winter 
 on their oppressed subjects ; and at Miihlhausen, in September, 
 earnest pleadings for peace and loud complaints made themselves 
 distinctly heard. Still, it is not to be wondered at that no common 
 terms of peace could be arranged. The Emperor, in his great 
 triumph, thought no humiliation too great fOr his foes. Christian 
 and Frederick were not disposed to acquiesce formally in their own 
 annihilation. Matters could not be worse. Miserable as matters 
 were, they could be made more miserable still by perpetuation. 
 
 The proposals made to Christian were that he should renounce 
 his claims to all territory outside of Denmark, should surrender 
 Gliickstadt, the only place in Holstein that he still possessed, and 
 should pay to the Emperor the expenses of the war. To Frederick, 
 who made his suit by the Dukes of Lorraine and Wiirtemberg, the 
 conqueror prescribed the renunciation, not only of the Bohemian 
 crown, but of the electoral vote ; the restoration of the Catholic
 
 31(i LECTURES ON EUKOPEAN HlSTOllY, 1519-1648 
 
 religion throughout the Palatinate, and the confiscation of as much 
 of his dominions as would remunerate the Emperor for his expenses. 
 Such terms carried their own rejection with them ; the victims 
 had nothing to gain by such submission. So at the close of 1627 
 peace was not made ; and since actual resistance was almost im- 
 possible Ferdinand and Wallenstein determined to push their advan- 
 tages and carry out some of the schemes which they entertained in 
 common for completing the imperial supremacy. 
 
 Early in 1628, the Upper Palatinate was made over to Maximilian 
 instead of Upper Austria, which he still retained for the expenses of 
 the war of 1621. He and the League as impersonated in him were 
 thus for the moment propitiated ; and the Emperor could give his 
 entire attention to the North. On March 4, 1628, he bestowed on 
 Wallenstein the title of Duke of Mecklenburg, confiscating to him 
 the duchies as forfeitures, in consequence of the compulsory oath 
 of allegiance which the dukes had taken to Denmark. He conferred 
 on him also the title of Admiral of the Baltic. Wallenstein's 
 """^v, adventurous spirit was roused as much by the new commission 
 probably as by the accession of dignity and territory; he entered 
 warmly into the imperial scheme and betook himself to the task of 
 besieging Stralsund, which was the key of the Baltic, and had 
 received in 1626 a Danish garrison by way of precaution. 
 
 The siege of Stralsund began on May 16, 1628, and lasted to 
 July 22, when it was relieved by the Swedes, and Wallenstein, having 
 reached the limit of his conquests, retired in disgust. The exact 
 design of Ferdinand in taking this line is not certainly known. The 
 old view is that he intended to attack Sweden, and restore King Sigis- 
 mund of Poland ; but this, although it may have been put forward at 
 the time, seems too far-fetched an idea. It was twenty-four years 
 since Sigismund had been dethroned, and the Swedes were all strong 
 Protestants ; their King Gustavus, moreover, was one of the most 
 popular and accomplished princes of the time. On the other hand, 
 it is regarded by modern writers as a still deeper but more practicable 
 scheme, to destroy the English and Dutch commerce and throw all 
 the mercantile traffic of the world into the hands of Spain. 
 
 As yet Wallenstein was an admiral without ships ; the imperial 
 towns of the Hanseatic League were well furnished with ships and 
 sailors ; the first step to be taken, whatever the ulterior design was 
 ^ to be, must be to get the ships of the Hanse Towns into the hands 
 of Wallenstein. To effect this the Emperor made a formal proposi- 
 tion to the Hanseatic League. If they would consent to give up 
 their neutrality, to renounce their connexion with Sweden and 
 Denmark, and the freedom of trade, the Emperor would incorporate 
 them under his own protectorship, and let them have the monopoly
 
 THE INTERVENTION OF DENIVIARK 317 
 
 of trade with Spain and the Indies. They rejected the offer with 
 contempt ; contempt, perhaps, hardly warranted by their position, 
 but gaining much in force by the effectual resistance of Stralsund. 
 Stralsund Wallenstein had sworn to take, even if it were bound by 
 chains to heaven. Stralsund he failed to take, failed even to prevent 
 her from recei\ing a Swedish garrison and renewing the alliance 
 between the Hanseatic League and Sweden. 
 
 It may, I think, be questioned whether the imperial design were 
 so exclusively a mercantile one. I confess that I tliink that the plan 
 for the acquisition of the fleet was rather more likely to be dictated 
 by mihtary than by economical considerations ; and that it was to 
 complete the subjugation of Denmark and to prevent any attempt 
 on the part of Gustavus Adolphus to renew the war. Wallenstein 1 
 may, like Alexander, have sighed for new w^orlds to win, and dreamed I 
 of further conquests north and east ; and there were doubtless in | 
 the imperial councils men capable of forming an ulterior design ^ 
 for the creation of a great mercantile Germany under the imperial 
 guidance and in strict alliance with Spain ; but the reason that lies 
 nearest the surface was the one that I have stated. This design 
 was confounded by the resistance of Stralsund and by the refusal of 
 the towns to listen to Ferdinand's propositions. 
 
 The siege of Stralsund wore out the summer. Christian was 
 able to sw'eBp the Baltic, plunder some of the towns in the imperial 
 interest, and cut off the supplies of others. Tilly took Stade, but 
 managed no other success, Gliickstadt and Krempe he could not 
 take without a fleet. Some few places in Holstein and Schleswig 
 were recovered by the Danes with English help ; but the transactions 
 were not brisk, the Emperor had to send a considerable force into 
 Italy, where war was going on between him and the Duke of Nevers ' 
 for Mantua, which the latter claimed as heir, as against the Duke of 
 Guastalla, whilst the Emperor insisted that it was an imperial fief 
 and should be placed in his hands until a Judicial examination 
 showed to which of the claimants it should be adjudged. Many 
 considerations tended towards the pacification and to obtain some- 
 what easier terms for Christian ; and at last, in May 1629, by the 
 mediation of the Elector of Brandenburg, and through the all- 
 prevailing influence of Wallenstein, peace (the peace of Liibeck) was 
 made. Christian was allowed to receive back all his lost dominions, 
 but bound to interfere no more in the aftairs of Germany than when 
 and where his interests as Duke of Holstein authorised him, thus 
 tacitly renouncing the cause of the Count Palatine and the Dukes of 
 Mecklenburg, and to give up all claims to the great ecclesiastical 
 possessions in Lower Saxony on which he had set his heart, as the 
 provision for his children. The Swedish ambassadors were not
 
 'MH LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1048 
 
 \ admitted to this congress : and Ferdinand would not even allow 
 ' ' Gustavus Adolphus to be named King of Sweden, a piece of folly 
 of which we should hardly have thought him capable. 
 
 So ended the four years' act of the Thirty Years' War — the Lower 
 Saxon or Danish episode. Before we proceed with the remaining 
 incidents of this great struggle — and we have now only run through 
 ten of the thirty years — it is necessary to ask what were the causes of 
 the collapse of the European confederation which had promised so 
 great things in 1625, and where were the succours of England, 
 Holland, and France. The anti-Catholic and anti-Austrian policy 
 that was so dear to the Protestant heart of Europe had as yet only 
 ruined every prince who had gone heart and soul into it. Frederick 
 the Count Palatine is an exile and a beggar ; Christian of Denmark 
 a fugitive in his own dominions ; the Margrave of Baden, the Dukes 
 of Mecklenburg, not to speak of the hundreds disinherited in 
 Bohemia, totally wrecked ; and every great general who had yet taken 
 up the Protestant leadership beaten or dead. Why have England, 
 France, and Holland been wanting, or, if they have not, where is the 
 ; result of their goodwill ? 
 
 We will take England first. We have had occasion to note 
 already the position taken up by James I. in regard to the Palatinate. 
 Although that policy was dictated by a comparatively unworthy 
 motive, and James was deceived by the power to which he was 
 sacrificing his people's confidence, it must be allowed that it was in 
 itself wise and sensible. England's interests were not great in 
 ^ Germany, and her influence has never been admitted by German 
 * statesmen except when and where capital could be made by it. It 
 i was different with Holland, in the working out of whose independence, 
 I both as against Spain and in behalf of liberty generally, the English 
 ' rulers might wisely have shown more, and more disinterested, zeal 
 than they did. If Elizabeth's policy was prudent in letting the 
 United Provinces fight their battle alone, or at least only helping 
 them where they could afford to give substantial securities, it was 
 not to be ascribed to James as a folly that he declined to join in a 
 crusade for the propagation of Protestantism, of that especial 
 description of Protestantism that he knew best and hated most. From 
 almost every point of view, save and except the religious, the Spanish 
 connexion was more valuable to England than the German if the 
 German could not be had without alienating the Spanish. It is 
 impossible to read ^\ith patience much of what were once regarded 
 as the great exploits of the Elizabethan age ; the piratic and 
 buccaneering work of men whose only excuse was that their enemies 
 were more inhuman than themselves and could not be attacked 
 according to the rules of civilised warfare. 
 
 I
 
 » M \ ** THE INTERVENTION OF DENMARK 319 
 
 I?/' 
 
 * When the nation cried out for a crusade on behalf of Frederick, 
 
 it was as well that the helm of state was guided by a king who hated 
 war and was bent on being friends with Frederick's enemies. As the 
 failure, however, of the design for the Spanish marriage freed James 
 from any poUtic scruples he might have had about offending Spain, 
 he was unable at the time, 1623, to do more than continue the liberal 
 allowance he had made of 18,000Z. a year to his daughter and her 
 husband, and to attempt a negotiation for peace, the only result of 
 which was the desertion by Frederick of the cause for which Mansf eld 
 and Christian were fighting. It was the unhappy influence of 
 Buckingham that brought England into the war. He knew how 
 popular the cause of the Count Palatine was with the Puritans, and 
 that for a war in his cause the ParHament would not begrudge a 
 vote of money. Under his influence James laid the state of affairs 
 before the Parliament in February 1624 and received from the two 
 houses, on March 5, a unanimous ad\'ice that the transactions exist- 
 ing with Spain and the Emperor should be broken off, with a promise 
 that should war follow they would grant liberal supplies. James, in 
 answer, declared his reluctance, and insisted on his poverty. The 
 Parliament made a large grant, and James prepared for war. 
 
 The marriage of Charles with Henrietta Maria gave the oppor- 
 tunity of bringing France into the plan. Mansf eld himself negotiated 
 the details of the English alliance and drew ^ap a plan of the cam- 
 paign to be fought -svith English money and by English men. But the 
 opening of the struggle was unfortunate, large numbers of men were 
 lost by disease long before the fighting began ; and before the Lower 
 Saxon circle had elected Christian of Denmark as its general, James I, 
 was dead (March 27), Maurice of Nassau died also on A'pril 13, and 
 the loss of the two sovereigns was fatal at the time to the united 
 enterprise. Charles I. was probably more sincerely desirous to rescue 
 his brother-in-law than James had been ; but he succeeded to 700,000Z. 
 of debt, and was never able to do more than contribute money : the 
 grants of the Parliament to James were quite inadequate even to i 
 start effective warfare. 
 
 I do not propose to go further into the troubles of Charles's reign, 
 which were unquestionably caused by the conduct of the Parliament | 
 in respect to the war with Spain and in behalf of Frederick. The |; 
 warlike enthusiasm of the Puritans was exhausted before the war | 
 began, and quite quenched by its ill success. Negotiation succeeded 
 negotiation, and expedient expedient. Charles was impoverished at 
 home, and the money he contributed was wasted abroad. The rela- 
 tions with the French were hampered by the religious quarrels in 
 France also. Charles was distrusted, and the Parliament unreason- 
 able. The war with France which broke out early in 1627, and the i
 
 320 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 dissolution of the Parliament, in February 1629, put a stop to any 
 possible efforts on behalf of Frederick. The Puritan party had forced 
 the war, had stopped the supplies by which alone it could be main- 
 tained, and, involving the King in difficulties, forcing him into uncon- 
 stitutional ways of conducting the government, made those unconsti- 
 tional proceedings the plea for overthrowing the throne. 
 
 So ended the share of England in that war. Much was done by 
 English money, and much by English men, but the money was con- 
 tributed as subsidies, and the men fought under a foreign flag. 
 England as England did nothing. France, however, did even less 
 than this. If England's policy was foolish and useless, that of France 
 was careful and selfish. She had mediated and negotiated, and the 
 result was the desertion of Frederick by the Union in 1620. She 
 had confined her efforts to negotiation during the frantic struggles of 
 Mansfeld and Christian in 1622. She joined England in the league 
 of 1624, but never attempted anything overt in support of the Pro- 
 testants. Richelieu simply contented himself as yet with defeating 
 the plans for increasing the imperial influence in Italy. His designs 
 had not yet ripened ; Ferdinand's power had not yet reached its 
 height, nor had either realised the notion that France must adopt 
 the principles of Henry IV. if Ferdinand was going to revive the 
 claims and the policy of Charles V. 
 
 As for Holland, the death of Maurice of Nassau in 1625, hastened 
 as it was by the failure of his attempt to relieve Breda, left the republic 
 with more than enough on its hands. War with Spain, with Spinola 
 that is, followed, and although from time to time we find the Dutch 
 able to divert Tilly and Anhalt from the war in Westphalia and occa- 
 sionally suffering at their hands, they had enough to do to maintain 
 their own position ; and probably did as much as could be done in 
 this way for the Protestant cause, preventing the archduchess from 
 joining in overwhelming the remaining forces still struggling. That 
 Sweden should stand aloof from the contest in which at so short an 
 interval it was to take so great and decisive a part is much more to 
 be wondered at ; the reasons of this we must discuss by and by. 
 
 We close our view of this part of the struggle with the reflexion 
 that Austria has now reached the pinnacle of power, and that any 
 change must be a change for the better for the Protestant side. We 
 may question, and I think very reasonably, whether the designs of 
 Ferdinand did not grow wider as his success became greater, and the 
 difficulties which at the beginning of his reign seemed overwhelming 
 melted one by one like snow before him. At first they were probably 
 limited to the proscription of Protestantism in his own states, a 
 measure which he had long contemplated and to the furtherance of 
 which he devoted himself with all the earnestness of his strong
 
 THE INTEEVENTION OF DENMARK 321 
 
 nature. The aid of the League and the speedy collapse of the 
 Bohemian opposition opened up the possibility of rehabilitating the 
 imperial authority ; and the successes in Lower Saxony having com- 
 pleted that, opened in turn the prospect of extinguishing dissent in 
 the length and breadth of the Empire, strangling the Eeformation 
 in its native seats, and making the authority he wore again an 
 Empire, Holy and Eoman. 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 THE SWEDISH INTERVENTION 
 
 The next great point we reach is the Edict of Restitution, March 6, 
 1629 : a date preceding the Peace of Liibeck by a couple of months, 
 but leading to a train of events entirely distinct from that which was 
 closed by that treaty. This edict was partly the result of the action 
 of the League, which had already discussed the matter with the 
 Emperor, partly a consequence of the two lines of Catholic and 
 imperial policy which we have seen were held by Ferdinand and 
 Wallenstein in common. The restoration of all ecclesiastical 
 property which had been alienated since the religious peace at the 
 close of the reign of Charles V. was a measure in strict accordance 
 with the terms of that peace, the Ecclesiastical Reservation in par- 
 ticular. But the peace was a compromise : on the one side the 
 Ecclesiastical Reservation, on the other the Declaration of Tolera- 
 tion. Systematically the Protestants had disregarded the former. 
 As systematically the Catholics had disregarded the latter. We 
 have seen in former lectures how the Ecclesiastical Reservation was 
 evaded, and how the imperial declaration was defied : how the im- 
 perial power connived at the invasion and threw its whole weight 
 into the scale of the Catholic reaction. 
 
 The triumph of the Catholic party naturally suggested the 
 formal resuscitation of the Ecclesiastical Reservation, and the an- 
 nulment of everything that had been done in defiance of it. The 
 party that should have insisted on the concession of religious tolera- 
 tion was now, to all appearance, bound hand and foot. It was in 
 Lower Saxony in particular that the ecclesiastical endowments had 
 been most shamelessly perverted. Two archbishoprics, Bremen and 
 Magdeburg, and twelve bishoprics had been permanently alienated 
 from the Catholic Church : the chapters were filled with Protestant 
 canons, and the sees administered either by laymen under the title 
 of administrators, or by bishops who were not less laymen and 
 
 Y
 
 322 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Protestants, allowed by imperial indults to enjoy their position until 
 their visit to Rome, which visit they never intended to pay. The 
 great houses of North Germany, Brunswick, Saxony, and Branden- 
 burg, had grown rich in this way. The cupidity of the Catholic 
 princes in South Germany was not less marked, but it was gratified 
 in a way some degrees less uncanonical. The younger sons were 
 educated for holy orders and received immense endowments in the 
 way of pluralities, as we saw in the case of the Archduke Leopold. 
 
 So long as the struggle was undecided, and the armies of the 
 Leaf^ue were fighting heart and soul on the same side with the 
 Emperor, there seems to have been but one opinion among the 
 Catholics as to the propriety of issuing such an edict. But when 
 the Emperor and Wallenstein struck out their newer and bolder line, 
 when the princes saw that the object of their policy was not merely to 
 restore the faith, but to make the Empire a powerful reality, they 
 began to reconsider the wisdom of the measure ; and their recon- 
 sideration was quickened no doubt by the fact that the edict was 
 issued, without their consent having even been asked, by the Em- 
 peror on his own authority, and that its execution was committed 
 to the hands of Wallenstein. Ferdinand's policy in his own states 
 was such as to strike terror into his friends as well as his foes. 
 Bohemia was given up to military tyranny. The Jesuits preached, 
 and the soldiers massacred and plundered those who would not 
 comply. The whole social fabric was overturned, and the people, one 
 might say, outlawed. The Emperor forsook all the characteristic 
 features of the repressive policy of Austria, and took up for the 
 time that of Spain : not, indeed, the Inquisition and the stake, but 
 the not less efi'ective weapons of the sword and famine. 
 
 The example of Bohemia roused the terrors of Germany. The 
 Lutheran princes, represented by the Elector of Saxony, who had 
 throughout been faithful to Ferdinand, remonstrated bitterly against 
 the Edict of Restitution ; against the act itself, the way in which it 
 was carried out, and the policy which it too plainly indicated. The 
 party of the League began to fear that the constitution of the 
 Empire would be in danger from the exaltation of the Emperor ; 
 they also resented the military occupation of their estates on 
 the pretext of the execution of the edict. Maximilian of Bavaria 
 was jealous, as he might well be, of Wallenstein, and, much as 
 he desired the destruction of Protestantism, had a stronger feeling 
 in his dread of the destruction of Germany. 
 
 The property of the convents recovered under the edict was not 
 given to the bodies that had formerly possessed it, but was heaped 
 on the .Jesuits, whose influence was regarded as supreme with the 
 Emperor. Already, since the appointment of Wallenstein, the zeal of
 
 THE SWEDISH INTERVENTION 323 
 
 I 
 the League had begun to cool : now he was all-powerful, they were in- .. 
 
 significant. This feeling was intelligible enough abroad. Although I 
 
 Ferdinand shut his eyes to it, neither Richelieu nor Gustavus Adol- | 
 
 phus, the hero of the coming epoch, was wilfully blind ; out of this 
 
 alienation they saw their way to work the humiliation of the great foe. 
 
 Nothing like resistance, however, was yet possible : the princes stood 
 
 by and saw the edict ruthlessly executed in Swabia and Franconia, 
 
 where the chief offenders were the imperial cities. These, as they | 
 
 had been under Charles V., were the first to lose their liberty of I 
 
 religion : especially hard it was on Augsburg ; and so complaints | 
 
 multiplied. '" 
 
 Ferdinand showed his hand too plainly. At the very moment 
 that he issued the edict he was trying to prevail on the League to 
 dismiss its forces and leave the defence of religion and the peace of 
 Germany to him. The answer of the leaguers assembled at Heidel- 
 berg in March 1629 was emphatic. They would not be dismissed as 
 in disgrace : they had won the triumph of religion and set up the 
 house of Austria again ; until they were indemnified for all they 
 had done they would not yield an inch of territory ecclesiastical or 
 secular, or dismiss a single soldier. For more than a year the mass 
 of Germany was seething in discontent, from the Edict of Restitu- 
 tion in March 1629 to the Diet of Ratisbon in July 1630. In that 
 assembly the mischief reached its head, but before that assembly 
 met Gustavus Adolphus had begun his wonderful career of conquest. 
 
 Whilst the thunder-cloud was gathering, Ferdinand's forces were 
 largely drawn off to Italy. There also he was beginning to revive 
 the designs of Charles V., and there the old weapons of French 
 hostility were being sharpened to defeat him. Italy had been very 
 little on the German mind since the death of Charles. The Spanish 
 branch had inherited all the Italian possessions of the house, and 
 they were strong enough to sway the country without imperial 
 interference, though without the imperial title. Ferdinand I. and 
 Maximilian were thoroughly German : Rudolf and Matthias had far 
 too much to do at home to think of interfering. But Ferdinand II., 
 in this as in all other matters, was a different man. He thought 
 more of the Spanish connexion than any of his predecessors ; and 
 he wished both to play into the hands of Spain, to strengthen the 
 family interest — that is, to extend the imperial power — and to cut 
 oft' the rising hopes of France. 
 
 The design on the Valtelline, the design on Genoa, had been 
 foiled by the French. Now the duchy- of Mantua and Montferrat 
 was in danger of becoming an outpost of France. The last duke 
 of the Gonzaga line died in 1627; the duchy fell into" debate, 
 as I mentioned in the last lecture, between the Duke of Nevers, a 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1619-1648 
 
 Gonzaga by birth but a Frenchman by allegiance, and the Duke 
 of Guastalla, whose line had branched off from the main stem of 
 the Gonzagas a generation earlier than that of Nevers.' The Duke of 
 Savoy took the opportunity of claiming Montferrat. Naturally 
 enough, France supported Nevers ; as naturally, Spain supported 
 Guastalla and Savoy ; the Emperor demanded possession of the 
 whole inheritance as a deposit until it should be shown to whom it 
 
 ; legitimately would fall. The French supported their claimant 
 energetically, Lewis XIII. himself taking the field, and compelled 
 the Spaniards and Savoyards to abandon the siege of Casale, and 
 
 1 give up Susa and some other territories to themselves. This was iu 
 the spring of 1629. Ferdinand thereupon sent a large force (30,000) 
 into Italy, which, co-operating with the Spaniards, overran the 
 unfortunate territory, and, in July 1630, took Mantua by storm and 
 sent the Duke of Nevers into exile. 
 
 This was the state of affairs and of the imperial relations ^vith 
 France when the Diet of Katisbon opened. The Diet was called for 
 several reasons : first to organise the defence of Germany, by settling 
 the complaints of the League and of the sufferers under the execution 
 of the edict, and so secure a unanimous effort against the King of 
 Sweden, whose attitude and ability were threatening, although, from 
 his poverty and the distance of his dominions, both parties in Ger- 
 many had hitherto treated him with little respect, and Ferdinand 
 had no cause to fear him. A second great object with the Emperor 
 was to secure the election of his eldest son as King of the Eomans. 
 
 The Diet met on July 9. The Electors of Saxony and Branden- 
 burg absented themselves, not liking to vote against the election ; 
 all the other electors were present. After some preliminary dis- 
 cussions, a protest on behalf of Saxony against the edict, and an 
 attempt on the Emperor's part to stifle the complaints against the 
 maintenance of so large a force in the territories of the princes, the 
 business of the Diet became nothing more or less than a violent 
 attack upon Wallenstein. In this both Protestant and Catholic 
 
 ' joined. The Emperor had clothed him in far too great authority ; 
 his pride and arrogance rendered him the disgust of the whole 
 human race. The oppressions and exactions of which he and his 
 army had been guilty, the devastation of Mecklenburg and Pomerania, 
 the miseries of the distressed dukes, miseries which they had cer- 
 tainly not deserved, and which were inflicted against equity and the 
 law of the Empire, were grounds of accusation that told almost as 
 much against the Emperor as against his faithful servant. They 
 were pressed by the envoys of Saxony and Brandenburg, Mecklen- 
 burg and Wiirtemberg. Then Maximilian took up his parable. 
 The deliberations of the Empire were not free whilst Ferdinand main-
 
 THE SWEDISH INTERVENTION 325 
 
 tained an army of 150,000 men ; the army must be reduced ; 
 Wallenstein must be dismissed ; the execution of the edict must be 
 put off for fifty years if it necessitated such armies and such men ; 
 and when the complaints of Germany were satisfied it would be time 
 to think about electing a King of the Romans. The electors, who 
 would gladly have chosen Maximilian himself, re-echced the senti- 
 ment. Ferdinand v/as very angry — furious. He had been successful 
 in the north, successful in the south ; Bethlen Gabor was dead ; the 
 Church was restored in Bohemia ; all the mischief that had been 
 done in the last seventy years was remedied ; and now he was to be 
 thwarted like this. Rather he would turn his armies on Bavaria 
 and be avenged on that treacherous friend. 
 
 There was a French ambassador at Ratisbon, the Capuchin 
 •Joseph, RidroKeu's confidant ; come to prevent the election of the 
 King of the Romans, to obtain the dismissal of Wallenstein, the 
 cession of Mantua, and to do whatever harm he could do besides to 
 Germany and the imperial house. Father Joseph stirred up Maxi- 
 milian on the one side, and soothed down the Emperor on the other. 
 Let him prevail on Wallenstein to resign ; he could be easily 
 reappointed on an emergency ; a small reduction of the great army 
 would satisfy the elector ; the King of Sweden was not a man to be 
 feared ; and the alliance of Lewis XIII. might be to all intents and 
 purposes secured by the decision of the Mantuan controversy in 
 favour of the Duke of Nevers. Doubtless Father Joseph was 
 deceiving all parties, he never intended to ally France with Germany. 
 He was, if not in actual conference with Gustavus Adolphus, con- 
 niving at his expedition and anxious for its success ; he wanted to 
 set Bavaria against Austria, but he cared no more for the one than 
 the other. 
 
 Ferdinand, determined to sacrifice all to the prospects of his son, 
 after a long struggle with himself, yielded. He dismissed 18,000 of 
 his best cavalry, and reduced his army nominally to 39,000 men. The 
 League fixed theirs at 30,800. He asked Wallenstein to resign his 
 command ; and Wallenstein, to the astonishment of the world, 
 complied. He had been warned by the stars that he would be dis- 
 missed for a time but restored shortly Avith greater glory than ever. 
 And next the Emperor consented to give up Mantua to the French 
 on the understanding that they should cease to give any countenance 
 to the Protestant party in Germany or to the enemies of the Empire 
 outside. The treaty, which was repudiated by the Spanish ambas- 
 sadors, was concluded on October 13. The cause of the Elector 
 Palatine was pleaded at the Diet by the English ambassadors in vain. 
 The solemnities closed by the coronation, on November 7, of the 
 Empress Eleanora.
 
 820 LECTURES ON EUEOPEAN HISTORY, lol9-]G48 
 
 Ferdinand had scarcely to wait for the end of the Diet to discover 
 how he had been deceived. Gustavus Adolphus was carrying all 
 before him, and was unquestionably in league with Eichelieu. The 
 veteran troops whom he had disbanded were enlisting under the 
 banner of Gustavus. He had dismissed and probably mortally 
 offended his best general, the man whose designs were his own only 
 made more splendid by his exploits and glorified by his enthusiasm. 
 And the Archduke Ferdinand was not elected King of the Eomans. 
 Richelieu had checkmated him in his full career. The contempt 
 with which the Germans on both sides regarded Gustavus Adolphus 
 is sufficiently shown by the fact that they went on deliberating at 
 Ratisbon, and that Ferdinand disbanded so large a part of his army, 
 after the Swedish expedition had begun to move ; nay, after it had 
 actually occupied a part of the soil of Germany. Yet they must have 
 known well that Gustavus was a man of power and ability, or it would 
 hardly have been such an object with the Emperor to replace 
 Sigismund on the Swedish throne or with Wallenstein to take Stral- 
 sund and to acquire the command of the Baltic. It is probable that 
 both sides regarded the Protestant cause as so far lost that nothing 
 that Gustavus could do would save or resuscitate it. They may 
 be pardoned for not foreseeing how great things he would do. 
 
 We have to inquire who Gustavus Adolphus was. Gustavus 
 Vasa, King of Sweden, who rescued that kingdom from the sway of 
 Denmark in 1523 and was one of the first kings in Europe who 
 became Protestant, left three sons : Eric XIV., who reigned from 
 1560 to 1568 and was a mad Protestant ; John, who reigned from 
 1568 to 1592 and was a strong Roman Catholic ; and Charles, Duke 
 of Sudermania, who was a wise and moderate Protestant. On the 
 death of John his son Sigismund succeeded him ; he was a Catholic 
 like his father, and was elected King of Poland in 1587. His uncle 
 Charles, who, as leader of the National or Protestant party, had 
 wrung from John a sort of religious equality for the Protestants, 
 finding that Sigismund was determined on restoring Romanism, 
 dethroned him in 1604 and reigned seven years as Charles IX. 
 Gusta\Tis Adolphus was his son ; he succeeded him in 1611 at 
 the age of sixteen. Gusta\'us was a prince of very great promise, 
 and had already before his father's death been declared of age, an 
 honour Avhich his personal bravery and skill in arms had earned him. 
 He possessed in Axel Oxenstiern, the Chancellor of Sweden, who both 
 in his early years and after his death directed the government of the 
 country, an able, honest adviser. His reign began with a series of 
 struggles, in each of which he was victorious. By the advice of 
 Oxenstiern he attached himself to the nobles of Sweden, with whom 
 his father had been on bad terms, and so secured himself against
 
 THE SWEDISH INTERVENTION 327 
 
 internal troubles. The wars with Denmark and Poland he had 
 inherited, and in them he got good training. The war with Den- 
 mark was a chronic state of things with Sweden ; that with Poland 
 was owing of course to the religious and family relations of the tv/o 
 monarchs. 
 
 From the beginning of his reign he had been strongly inclined to 
 assist the Protestant party in Germany ; he had offered help at 
 different times and been rather snubbed than thanked. The Germans 
 did not want foreign interference in their internal affairs ; they were 
 not inclined to take as leader one whose very existence as a, king was 
 ignored by the Emperor, nor one whose deadly enemy was so high in 
 the Emperor's favour as the King of Poland was ; but even more 
 strongly the jealousy of Christian of Denmark interfered to keep him 
 in the background. In 1624 he had offered aid to the Lower Saxon 
 League, and had even entered into competition with Christian for 
 the leadership ; but as this leadership involved the surrender to him 
 of some Baltic towns, it was objected to and Christian preferred, with 
 the luck which we reviewed in the last lecture. Gustavus was 
 chagrined at the repulse, but he saved his forces whilst Christian 
 was losing his, and generously assisted at the end of the war in 
 1628 in helping the Stralsunders to hold out successfully against 
 Wallenstein. I need not go into detail as to his contests with 
 Denmark, Russia, and Poland ; it is sufficient to say that he made in 
 1613 a treaty of peace with Christian ; that in 1617 he obtained a 
 truce of forty years with the Czar of Muscovy, with large cessions of 
 territory on the east of the Baltic ; and that having beaten his 
 cousin Sigismund out of Livonia and Prussian Poland, he had made in 
 September 1629 a truce of six years with him also, thus rendering 
 himself, at the head of an attached people and well-disciplined army, 
 able to take on himself the burden of the defence of the Protestant 
 cause. 
 
 This truce with Sigismund was contrived by the French minister ; 
 by Eichelieu himself, no doubt, who a year later, at the Diet of 
 Ratisbon, contrived to rob Ferdinand of the fruit of his Italian 
 victory and to make him disarm in the presence of his most 
 dangerous enemy. Although RicheKeu saw that Gustavus would be 
 a very useful thorn in the side of Germany, he had by no means 
 fathomed the greatness of the man : he would use him, but be shy of 
 supporting him, and by his treatment of him showed it. Gustavus, 
 who was a proud man as well as a wise one, did not care about being 
 patronised, and accordingly made no bargain with the French until 
 his assistance became of sterling value to them. 
 
 He began his crusade very much on his own responsibility, 
 although he had assurances of goodwill from England, Holland, and
 
 328 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1619-1648 
 
 the Hanseatic League. Protestant Germany did not welcome him. 
 Catholic Germany did not foar him. He wrote to the electors com- 
 plaining of the ignominy with which the Emperor had treated him 
 in refusing him the title of King, and explaining the reasons for the 
 war. Before he left home, he assembled the States of Sweden and 
 obtained from them their consent to accept his little daughter 
 Christina as his successor. Then, with an army of 15,000 men, he 
 set sail at Elfsnabben, and on June 4, 1630, landed on Ruden, a 
 small island between Riigen and Usedom, not far from the mouth of 
 the Oder, in what was then Pomerania. The Germans were at this 
 time, you will remember, on their way to the Diet of Ratisbon. The 
 imperial general in those parts was Conti, who had with him an 
 army of 17,000 men. On July 20 Gustavus occupied Stettin, the 
 capital of Pomerania. The old Duke Bogislafif was the last of his 
 race : and the succession was claimed by Brandenburg. But 
 Bogislafif had no love for Brandenburg, and, although in great fear 
 and dread of the Emperor, concluded an alliance with Gustavus which 
 placed Pomerania, land and army, under the command of the King of 
 Sweden as long as the war lasted. As soon as he had got into 
 Stettin, Conti advanced to meet him ; but neither party was anxious 
 for a battle : Conti garrisoned the fortresses inland, and Gustavus, 
 ha\'ing waited for reinforcements, expelled the garrisons from most 
 of the strongholds on the coast and blockaded Demmin, Greifswald, 
 and Colberg. He then threatened Mecklenburg and harassed Conti 
 with superior force until, in disgust at not being properly supported 
 by the Emperor, he resigned. 
 
 Count Schaumburg, Conti's successor, was still more unlucky. 
 The winter was approaching before he took the command, and his 
 first measure was to withdraw a large part of his army into winter 
 quarters. Gustavus, whose men regarded a German winter as a very 
 mild season indeed, used the opportunity afforded him of securing 
 his hold on Pomerania still more certainly. He drove back the 
 imperial army at every point, turned the garrisons out of the cities, 
 and advanced southwards nearly as far as Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 
 which he would have occupied had he been able to secure his retreat 
 in case of the Emperor bringing an overwhelming force against him. 
 The Elector of Brandenburg, however, who was angry at his occupa- 
 tion of Pomerania, refused to allow him to enter and garrison 
 Kiistrin, which would have enabled him to do this, and Gustavus in 
 consequence seized the town of Brandenburg and levied heavy 
 contributions. 
 
 His successes during the winter were so great that RicheUeu had 
 no longer any reluctance in making alliance with him. A treaty was 
 signed at Barwalde, Gustavus's camp near the Oder, on January 13,
 
 THE SWEDISH INTERVENTION 329 
 
 the object of which was stated to be the defence of the common 
 friends of France and Sweden, the liberty of trade, the security of 
 the Baltic and the Ocean ; and the demolition of the forts erected on 
 the coasts and in the territory of the Grisons. France was to pay to 
 Sweden an annual subsidy of 1,200,000 francs ; Gustavus to 
 maintain an army of 60,000 foot and 6,000 cavalry. No change was 
 to be made in the state of reHgion if the allied cause triumphed ; 
 Maximilian and the other leaguers who might wish were to be 
 allowed to be neutral ; and the alliance was to be for six years. The 
 month after this treaty was concluded, Tilly took the field in 
 Brandenburg and the real fighting began. ""*" 
 
 Again, however, we must turn to the question of Gustavus 's 
 reception in Germany, and the further point how far he was legally 
 and morally justified in taking the position that he did. I have 
 mentioned several times that both parties very unduly despised 
 Gustavus Adolphus. The Emperor had, indeed, on hearing of his 
 arrival, issued (August 8, 1630) a threatening letter against him, 
 insisting on his withdramng from German soil, and menacing him 
 with the whole vengeance of the Empire if he persisted ; but Gustavus 
 could afiford to smile at that ; and in spite of his threats the Emperor 
 was so bent on the purpose for which he had called the Diet that he 
 weakened himself most materially, and continued to do so after the 
 successes of Gustavus became formidable. Wallenstein was recalled 
 from the north, and dismissed from command, and the 18,000 cavalry 
 were disbanded, whilst Gustavus was dri\dng Conti before him and 
 steadily occupying Pomerania as the basis of future operations. 
 
 *0n the other hand, the Protestants were quite as cool. The 
 Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg showed no sign of welcome ; 
 their attitude was in fact rather hostile than otherwise. Brandenburg 
 wanted Pomerania ; his ministers were in the imperial pay, he was 
 jealous of Gustavus personally ; he might use him, and he would 
 wait for his opportunity. Saxony was faithful to the Emperor and 
 to the policy of the Albertine line, which was to keep up their own 
 Lutheranism, but to depress everyone else's ; to hold fast by the 
 Empire, and as a reward for their fidelity to purchase toleration ; to 
 keep their own house safe, and let the rest of the world fare as it 
 might. Both the electors, too, had the idea that by keeping aloof 
 from the contest they might pluck advantage out of the strife ; 
 wait until it was clear who would win and then throw their force on 
 to the victorious side. If the Protestants won, they would thus 
 secure the lead amongst their fellow-religionists ; if the Emperor 
 won they might make a merit of abstention from the war, and by 
 adhesion to him purchase continued toleration. Doubtless they saw 
 that abstention on their part made the victory far more difficult to 
 
 I 

 
 380 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1619-1648 
 
 the winning party which they were waiting to join : and that such 
 duplicity was certain to damage them with both, sides, but they 
 would not honestly risk their independence on the single issue. 
 They were not strong enough, as they were not generous enough, to 
 stake that on the success of either party. 
 
 The attitude of Brandenburg and Saxony determined that of the 
 rest, the shattered remnant of the Protestant states. Hesse declared 
 for Gustavus, but Hesse lay too far from the scene of action to help, 
 and had not strength to stir alone. The only two princes who 
 attempted anything before the spring of 1631 were Francis Charles of 
 Saxe-Lauenburg, who with a small force occupied Ratzeburg and for 
 a moment threatened the duchy of Mecklenburg ; but was speedily 
 defeated and taken prisoner by Count Pappenheim ; and Christian 
 William of Brandenburg, the ex-administrator of Magdeburg, who, 
 having got entrance into his old city, roused the burghers to renewed 
 resistance. The Magdeburgers had never acquiesced in the supremacy 
 of Wallenstein in the north ; they had paid him money and bought 
 him ships, but they would not receive his garrisons, and had success- 
 fully held out against his execution of the Edict of Restitution. Now 
 they openly declared for Gustavus, and by their position on the Elbe 
 presented a most formidable obstacle to any attempt on the part of 
 the imperialists to dislodge the Swedes. They were, as we shall see, 
 the first victims in the struggle. 
 
 Thus much, then, was all that Germany did, nearly all she could 
 do, to welcome her deliverer. What with despair and ruin on one 
 side, apathy and jealousy on the other side of the Protestant party, 
 Gustavus seemed likely to have the war to himself, and Gustavus 
 behaved as if he thought so. As a consummate general, he made 
 sure of his ground at every step ; he knew his dangers, he did not 
 overestimate his powers ; he knew his enemies, their skill, experience, 
 and resources ; he had counted the cost before he went down to the 
 battle. He was one of the greatest masters of the art of war that 
 ever existed. He introduced into warfare the two great changes 
 that mark the difference between medieval and modern tactics. He 
 gave up fighting in great masses, which the cannon-balls cut through 
 and demolished at once, substituting light columns and shallow 
 lines of soldiery, who could re-form immediately after receiving the 
 enemy's fire; and he introduced the practice of flying artillery. 
 Before his time the guns, in preparation for battle, were set in per- 
 manent position, and as the complexion of the struggle varied, or the 
 attitudes of the parties changed, became useless. With these two 
 principles he won his great battles. 
 
 But we were to ask — How can the invasion of Gustavus Adolphus 
 be justified on legal and moral grounds ? We must answer, I think,
 
 THE SWEDISH INTERVENTION 
 
 331 
 
 that the case is an exceptional one, a very exceptional one in all 
 history, in which the result alone could justify the undertaking. 
 Gustavus had, as against the Emperor, only the barest legal excuse 
 for an attack. His territories were not in real danger. Sweden was 
 in no peril now from the machinations of Sigismund, and might 
 rest safely on her own powers of defence, so well proved in the wars 
 of Russia, Poland, and Denmark, even were the Emperor to lend his 
 forces to the King of Poland for the recovery of his inheritance. It 
 was, then, only because the Emperor had refused him the title of 
 King, and otherwise treated him contemptuously, that he had 
 ground, of a legal character, of complaint against him. 
 
 What is to be said on the other head ? Gustavus Adolphus was 
 an earnest and intelligent Protestant ; not a blind bigoted Puritan 
 making mountains out of molehills, straining at gnats and swallow- 
 ing camels, covering his own rabid hatred of his adversaries with the 
 cloak of hypocritical zeal ; but a Protestant who firmly believed in 
 the truth of God's revelation, and as truly believed that he saw in 
 the purpose and policy of the Jesuits a conspiracy to blot vital 
 Christianity out of the world. Had Gustavus in this belief been 
 unsuccessful, the world would have regarded him as a mad enthu- 
 siast ; higher and nobler minds would have admired and wondered 
 at him as a hero and a martyr, but would not have called him a 
 wise man. It is only our knowledge of the transcendent ability and 
 perfect honesty of Gustavus that leads us to allow him moral 
 justification. Had he been ever so enthusiastic, ever so hopeful, he 
 would not have been justified in going to war, if he had not seen 
 that he had a fair chance of being successful ; had he not trusted, 
 humanly speaking, to his own skill and resources. He left nothing 
 to the chapter of accidents ; he left nothing to luck ; he did not 
 reckon, more than an experienced general is justified in doing, on 
 the mistakes of his enemies. 
 
 This being so, we contemplate his purpose. He saw Germany 
 prostrate at the feet of the Jesuits, the enemies — as he thought, and 
 as, unhappily, too many of their acts justified him in thinking them, 
 — of God and man. If the liberty of religion were extinguished in 
 Germany, it would scarcely be able to exist elsewhere : the Church 
 of which he was a living member was perishing ; in time the storm 
 must destroy his own native Church as well. So he undertook the 
 part of a deliverer, ready to lay down his life, not in vain, not for 
 mere sentiment, not from blind enthusiasm, but with the determina- 
 tion to save Germany and the Protestant faitHr"" "~" 
 
 We cannot, I think, refuse him justification ; not the very highest 
 meed of praise. At the same time we cannot but see that he 
 succeeded where nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand 
 
 1/
 
 332 LECTURES ON EUEOrEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 kings or generals would have failed, and would have condemned them- 
 selves in the failure. Whatever we may think of the Jesuitism that 
 he turned back in its full tide, or of the Protestantism for which he 
 fought and died, whether it were worth the sacrifice or not, we 
 
 ' cannot read his character and story without seeing that he is one of 
 those men whose acts have wrested round the course of this world ; 
 that he was a champion and a deliverer, true, wise, pure, and noble, 
 
 I such as the world has never seen before and may never see again. .. 
 
 LECTUEE VI 
 
 THE VICTORIES AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLrHUS 
 
 We have now reached the winter of 1630. We have seen Gustavus 
 employed in securing Pomerania, and laying a basis for future opera- 
 tions ; his army increasing and his enemies melting before him, 
 and himself now bound by alliance to France. We have now to 
 take up and connect the two strings of his very wonderful history, 
 the story of his successes against the armies of the League and of 
 the Empire, and of the way in which he by compulsion or persuasion 
 roused the Protestant princes to energetic action. The whole story 
 of the remainder of his life lies between January 1681 and November 
 1632 : a little less than two crowdedly eventful years. 
 
 In January 1631, Gustavus was encamped near the Oder ; 
 Pomerania was not entirely secured ; Magdeburg was the only city 
 in Germany that held for him. The Elector of Brandenburg refused 
 to allow him to occupy Spandau or Kiistrin, and until that was done 
 he could not march upon Frankfort. The Elector of Saxony would 
 not let him cross the Elbe at Dessau, and therefore he could not 
 join the Magdeburgers, or, if it were necessary, join in their defence. 
 The force of Schaumburg, however, was diminished to less than 
 half of what it had been, and, that disposed of, he might despise the 
 selfish neutrality of the princes. It was tinder these circumstances 
 that Tilly undertook the command of the imperialists. Maximilian 
 of Bavaria and the Catholic League had not accepted Gustavus's 
 offer of neutrality. Maximilian would have undertaken the chief 
 command if he had been suffered. But the Emperor wanted it for 
 his son ; and the election was decidedly compromise, Tilly being 
 chosen so that the victory might fall to neither of the rivals. 
 
 In February Tilly began his march northwards. By February 
 also the Protestant princes were roused up to do something on their 
 own account. They met at Leipsic on the 8th, and after forming a
 
 THE VICTOEIES AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 333 
 
 new confederation which was to be neutral in the present warfare 
 between Sweden and Austria, after resisting the entreaties of 
 Gustavus that they would act like men and cast in their lot with his, 
 they sent a petition and list of gravamina to the Emperor. Fer- 
 dinand temporised with them for a time, and nothing came of the 
 negotiation. The progress of Gustavus was, on the whole, too rapid 
 to fall in with the steady movements of the imperial chancery. It 
 is curious to read how one set of the princes, the most interested 
 one would have thought, were debating, whilst the others were 
 fighting ; the Calvinist and Lutheran theologians disputing at 
 Leipsic ; the League in solemn conclave at Dinkelsbilhl ; and 
 MaxuniUan of Bavaria making up a treaty for eight years for himself 
 with France : of neutrality, if France should go to war with the 
 Empire. This treaty was signed on May 30, five months after 
 Richelieu had thrown over the Emperor and allied himself with 
 Gustavus. On April 6 also the treaty of Cherasco was signed 
 between Ferdinand and the Duke of Mantua, which enabled the 
 Emperor to recall 24,000 men from Italy. 
 
 Whilst this was being done, Tilly was persuaded that he saw an 
 opportunity. He had under him 20,000 men. He heard that 
 Gustavus had started on an expedition to Mecklenburg and that he 
 miaht overwhelm him vv'liilst his forces were divided. Gustavus 
 was indeed gone off in the Mecklenburg direction and was besieging 
 Demmin, on the frontier of Pomerania and Mecklenburg ; but the 
 movement was but a feigned one, intended to draw Tilly into a 
 disadvantage. The old general left 8,000 men in Frankfort, stormed 
 New Brandenburg, which Gustavus had occupied early in the winter, 
 and hastened to the defence of Mecklenburg. Before he reached 
 the frontier he learned that Demmin had surrendered and that 
 Gustavus was in fuU march on Frankfort. A race to Frankfort 
 followed, in which Gustavus won : took the city by assault and 
 massacred the garrison. 
 
 Tilly, seeing that his forces could not be maintained on the Oder, 
 retired before him and threv/ himself on Magdeburg. At the end 
 of March, Tilly besieged Magdeburg, and on May 10 he took it. 
 Gustavus Adolphus did not relieve it. He could not do so. It was 
 impossible for him to sacrifice his whole plan of the war to save the 
 unfortunate city ; but he did his best. To secure his base it was 
 necessary that the Elector of Brandenburg should entrust him with 
 Spandau and Kiistrin, and that the Elector of Saxony should let him 
 cross the Elbe at Dessau. The two Electors were in their dream of 
 the new neutral confederation, and they refused. By threatening 
 to march upon Berlin, Gustavus compelled Brandenburg to put 
 Spandau in his charge until the siege of Magdeburg was raised, and
 
 834 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 on May 4 he received it. But Saxony still held out, and on the 
 10th Magdeburg surrendered. The place was sacked with every 
 circumstance of the most barbarous and most a'ppaUing cruelty. 
 Tilly refused to prevent his men from glutting their lust and desire 
 of vengeance ; and the most flourishing city of North Germany was 
 left a desert ; help being within reach, but hindered by the selfish 
 poUcy of the men who should have been the first to rise in its 
 defence. 
 
 From Magdeburg, Tilly marched, threatening the same treatment, 
 against the Landgrave of Hesse. Ferdinand regarded the capture 
 of the unhappy city as a triumph ; sent orders to Leipsic to insist 
 on the princes breaking up their wretched confederation ; and 
 summoned a meeting of deputies to assemble at Frankfort-on-the- 
 Main in August to arrange for the execution of the Edict of 
 Restitution. Pappenheim was left by Tilly as his lieutenant in 
 Magdeburg. Gustavus was not yet quite in a condition to avenge 
 it. No sooner was the siege over than the Elector George William 
 demanded the restoration of Spandau. Gustavus humoured him ; 
 he fixed June 11 for the surrender ; but on that day he appeared 
 \vith his army at Berlin : George William was glad to purchase 
 mercy by the surrender of Spandau, Brandenburg, and Rathenow, 
 a free passage through the electorate, and a contribution of 30,000 
 crowns a month. Gustavus then rushed back to Pomerania to take 
 Greifswald, but it surrendered before he reached it. He had thus 
 Pomerania and Brandenburg safe, and could now approach the 
 Elbe : this he did with rapidity, took Havelberg and threatened the 
 imperialists at Magdeburg. But the boldness of this move brought 
 Tilly back ; and Gustavus retired to Werben, where he encamped. 
 There he protected Mecklenburg from attack ; restored the dukes 
 whom Wallenstein had dispossessed and whom Ferdinand had put 
 under the ban of the Empire. At Werben also, on August 12, he 
 concluded a treaty with the Landgrave William of Hesse by which 
 he took charge of his forces and fortresses, and promised him 
 security and reparation. Whilst he was there he received very large 
 reinforcements from Sweden under his queen Eleanora, and from 
 England under the Marquis of Hamilton. 
 
 Gustavus was now waiting for the return of Tilly : Count Fugger 
 was sent against Hesse, and Tilly encamped at Wolmerstadt. There 
 he was attacked by Gustavus and suffered a severe check. He 
 retaliated by attacking the camp at Werben, but here he was 
 checked also, and began to discover that for the first time in his life 
 he had met his equal in the art of war. Intensely exasperated, he 
 determined to wreak his vengeance on Saxony, or at least to compel 
 the Elector to take up arms against the Swedes. But John George
 
 THE VICTORIES AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 335 
 
 was so thoroughly frightened by his threats that he threw himself 
 into the arms of Gustavus, entreated his protection, and offered 
 whatever terms he chose. Tilly was besieging Leipsic. Gustavus 
 prescribed to the unworthy Saxon the same terms that he had offered 
 to the faithful Hessian, and the treaty was made on September 1. 
 Immediately after Gustavus crossed the Elbe at Wittenberg, united 
 his army with the Saxon one, and proceeded to the relief of Leipsic. 
 The battle of Breitenfeld, a German mile from Leipsic, was 
 fought on September 7. Tilly fought on the old principles, great 
 masses and fixed artillery, with new men, raw recruits many of them. 
 Gustavus fought on the new principle, with veteran soldiers ; lines 
 six men deep, and field artillery. Tilly advanced from the south 
 from Leipsic, himself commanding the centre ; Pappenheim led the 
 left wing, and Fiirstenberg the right. Gustavus approached from 
 the north, himself opposed to Tilly, and the Saxon army to Fiirsten- 
 berg. The whole wing under Pappenheim outflanked the Swedish 
 army. Gustavus had nine thousand horse and 13,000 foot : Tilly 
 had about 40,000 altogether. Fiirstenberg beat the Saxons : 
 Gustavus beat Pappenheim, sent a large detachment to help the 
 Saxons, and then turned the fixed guns of Pappenheim's wing upon 
 Tilly. The reserves of Gustavus's army then attacked. Tilly had 
 no reserves ; he was terribly beaten ; narrowly escaped capture, and 
 was wounded in three places. He was rescued by Eudolf Maximilian 
 of Lauenburg, who shot the giant Swede, Frederick the Long, when 
 he had nearly overpowered him, and carried him off to Halle. In 
 this battle, on the imperial side 7,000 were slain, 5,000 prisoners and 
 all the guns were taken ; only 2,000 men out of the 40,000 could be 
 brought together after it. The Swedes lost 700 ; and the Saxons 
 2,000. 
 
 This was the first pitched battle fought by Gustavus since he 
 landed, and it is memorable both in political and military history. 
 It brought Germany to its senses, and taught Europe that it had at 
 last come to possess a great king. France was frightened at the 
 triumph of its friend and ally. Ferdinand, always greater in 
 adversity than in prosperity, was nerved to new efforts. The 
 Protestants saw that their time was come ; the leaguers, that there 
 must be no holding back. 
 
 Gustavus had now succeeded in consoHdating the territory that 
 was left behind him. Pomerania, Saxony, Mecklenburg, and Branden- 
 burg were all bound to him by treaties that secured to him com- 
 munications with the Baltic and the way home to Sweden. He had 
 succeeded in turning jealous and selfish neutrals into the instruments, 
 if not the supporters, of his policy. The smaller princes were 
 crowding round him for protection. But the further he got from
 
 33G LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Sweden the more difficult it was to maintain his own army : he had 
 to make the Germans fight for themselves. Before he left Saxony 
 he settled the plan of further proceedings. The Elector John George 
 he sent at the head of the Saxon army into Bohemia, Lusatia, and 
 Silesia, to hold for the Protestants what he had once held for the 
 Emperor, to atone for his treacherous selfishness, perhaps to place 
 an impassable barrier from henceforth between himself and Ferdinand. 
 
 This done and his own authority established in Merseburg and 
 Halle, he set out for the Main ; receiving at every step of his journey 
 petitions for new alliances and protection, and embodying in a new 
 force the armies of the little States he passed through, gi%ing to 
 each its sphere of action and charge to keep. At Erfurt he met 
 the Duke of Weimar and incorporated him. From Erfurt he passed 
 into Thuringia, carrying all before him without any real resistance. 
 Schweinfurt submitted as he passed. Wiirzburg surrendered at 
 once, and the citadel a few days after, before Tilly, who was raising 
 forces for its defence, had time to succour it. Thence Gustavus 
 advanced along the IMain to Aschaffenburg. On November 1, 
 Hanau submitted. On the 16th, Gustavus entered Frankfort, and the 
 Emperor's Diet of deputies, which had assembled there in August to 
 treat of the execution of the edict, vanished before him. Here he 
 received the submission of the Landgrave George of Hesse-Darmstadt, 
 the head of the house opposed to the faithful William of Cassel, and 
 obtained from him a guarantee for the safe passage of his army 
 across the Main in the possession of Eiisselsheim, which he garrisoned 
 (November 19). 
 
 He now approached the Palatinate, which was still held by the 
 Spaniards. At Oppenheim he crossed the Ehine ; Mentz surrendered 
 on December 13 ; Mannheim on the 29th. The ecclesiastical 
 princes of the Main and Ehine fled everywhere before him, and 
 everywhere he received new petitions for protection from the free 
 cities and small Protestant states in every part of Germany. Not 
 less successful were the generals whom he left behind him in the 
 execution of his plans. John George of Saxony occupied Prague 
 and restored Protestantism in Bohemia before the winter ; Tott, in 
 Mecklenburg, secured Eostock and all else that was not yet taken ; 
 Baner, the Magdeburg country ; Bernard of Weimar, the Brunswick 
 territory; the Archbishop of Bremen and the Duke of Horn, 
 Franconia. Brunswick made alliance with him. The vast imperial 
 armies of which a year before the leaguers had been complaining were 
 nowhere. 
 
 Tilly seems never to have recovered the battle of Leipsic. After 
 his vain attempt to relieve Wiirzburg, and another as vain to attack 
 Nuremberg, he posted himself at Eothemburg, and retired thence
 
 THE VICTORIES AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 337 
 
 upon the Danube. The Spanish army, having garrisoned Heidelberg 
 and Frankenthal, evacuated the Palatinate. The Duke of Lorraine, 
 who was leading 12,000 men to join Tilly (he had determined to 
 throTv' off the burden of French protection and side with the Emperor), 
 saw his forces disperse without a battle. Rapidly and steadily Gus- 
 tavus pushed on : he had secured the passage of the Neckar by taking 
 Wimpfen ; then he went along the Rhine to Worms. Daring the 
 short winter holiday that he gave his army he stayed about Mentz 
 and Frankfort. At Mentz he received the English ambassadors, who 
 congratulated him on his victories ; at Frankfort in February 1632 
 he had a visit from the Elector Palatine Frederick, now in the 
 twelfth year of his exile. 
 
 The whole Catholic world was now in alarm. It was not merely 
 the success of Gustavus, but the utter and entire collapse of their 
 own triumphant armies that terrified them ; the failure of the 
 invincible Tilly ; the loss of Bohemia before the tipsy old John 
 George ; the defection everywhere of the cities and people of the 
 states whose rulers continued faithful to the League. The ground 
 that had been won by the Counter-Reformation was lost, although, 
 as the result showed, not permanently. The Bishop of Wiirzburg 
 betook himself with his story to the French court and told it so well 
 that, if it had not been for Richelieu, Lewis XIII. would have thrown 
 over his alliance with Gustavus. As it was, Richelieu had some 
 difficulty in arranging terms ; he compromised, however, by offering 
 to mediate, to prevail on Gustavus to grant neutrality to the 
 League, as the French on their part had done to Maximilian of 
 Bavaria, and to content himself with the protection of his allies and 
 the humiliation of Ferdinand. 
 
 The leaguers were too wide awake now to think of this. 
 Maximilian saw that he must either stand or fall for the present with 
 the house of Austria, and joined in the deliberations that were taking 
 place at Vienna for a new confederation against the Swedes. The 
 great question to be deliberated was the appointment of a new 
 general. Tilly, it was said, was worn out and a failure : he had 
 been great in handling an army, but a man was wanted who could 
 make one. And men's thoughts at once centred on Wallenstein. 
 But Wallenstein had many enemies : although amongst his 
 own creatures he had some faithful and adoring friends, his enemies 
 were the men in power. Maximilian, at the head of them all, was 
 jealous of Wallenstein's fame, unwilling to serve under him, and 
 diametrically opposed to everything that was characteristic in 
 Wallenstein's policy. Ferdinand himself saw that it would be 
 dangerous to trust one whom he had so completely sacrificed ; and 
 he wished, as before, that his son the King of Hungary should have 
 
 z
 
 338 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 the command as the likeliest way to secure his election to the 
 Empire. In this plan he was supported by the envoys of Philip IV. 
 But the majority of the German counsellors would have no one but 
 Wallenstein, if Wallenstein could be had. And Wallenstein would 
 condescend to no terms beneath the dignity of a sovereign prince. 
 He held back for a time; at last, when the Emperor had shown 
 himself sufficiently submissive, he relented. 
 
 The conditions of the engagement were at first that he should 
 raise an army, and then the Emperor should determine who should 
 lead it. Under this arrangement he raised within three months a 
 disciplined force of 40,000 men. Then Ferdinand agreed on a 
 further treaty. Wallenstein was to be declared general-in-chief of 
 the imperial and Spanish armies, with no limit to his authority ; 
 Ferdinand and his son were not even to set foot in his camp ; he 
 was to have absolute power in nominating officers, in exacting 
 contributions, in disposing of the confiscated estates of the enemy ; 
 no safe-conduct was to be granted, no project of peace considered 
 without his knowledge or consent. When the war was over he 
 was to be rewarded either out of the imperial estates or out of 
 the confiscations, to be reimbursed for his expenses and to be 
 secured in Mecklenburg ; whilst Ferdinand was to bind himself to 
 make Prague his chief residence as soon as Bohemia was conquered. 
 
 Whilst these arrangements were being completed, and Wallen- 
 stein was directing his first blows against the Saxons in Bohemia, 
 the season for war began and Gustavus was proceeding southwards. 
 The proposition for neutrality having failed, Gustavus determined to 
 attack Bavaria, and to attack it before Wallenstein could effect a 
 junction with Tilly, as he was sure to do as soon as his force was 
 large enough to leave Bohemia safe in charge. Tilly was at Nord- 
 lingen ; he too, as soon as March came, began to stir. His army 
 now numbered 20,000 men, and they were well furnished, as they had 
 not been in the preceding year, with ammunition and provisions. 
 He advanced on Schweinfurt, to cut off, if possible, Gustavus's 
 communications. But the King was prepared for this. He sent 
 Oxenstiern to the Rhine to stop the Spaniards, and centred his 
 own force at Aschaffenburg, under Baner, Horn, and Bernard 
 of Weimar. Whilst he was at Aschaffenburg, Tilly could not get to 
 Schweinfurt ; he was obliged to fall back, after threatening Nurem- 
 berg, towards the Danube again ; he crossed the Danube to join the 
 Elector on Bavarian soil and encamped on the Lech. 
 
 It was there that Gustavus saw he must take him before Wallen- 
 stein could join him. He proceeded as rapidly as possible from 
 Aschaffenburg to Nuremberg, and from Nuremberg to Donauwerth 
 which he stormed. From Donauwerth he marched on Ingolstadt,
 
 THE VICTORIES AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 339 
 
 which he besieged, but, finding the resistance stronger than he ex- 
 pected, he returned to Donauwerth, crossed the Danube there, and 
 passed to the Lech, on the other side of which Tilly was posted. 
 He was fortunately able to command the passage of the Lech by the 
 aid of his artillery. After a terrible struggle he effected it. Tilly 
 made every effort to prevent it, but he Avas mortally wounded in the 
 fray, and Aldringer, the second in command, was also disabled. 
 Maximilian, left to himself, saw that the struggle was unequal, and 
 led back the army to the protection of Ingolstadt. Thither Tilly 
 was carried, and there he died of his wounds, reiterating with his 
 last breath that Eatisbon must be secured or all was over. All 
 was over in fact in Bavaria ; Ratisbon commanded the entrance 
 into Austria. 
 
 This is the end of Tilly. He was seventy-three years old ; a 
 wonderful warrior ; an honest, temperate, unselfish old man ; but an 
 unrelenting, unscrupulous persecutor, and a general without fear and 
 without remorse. That he was a Jesuit and the instrument of 
 Jesuits is scarcely a fair reason for exaggerating his faults, although 
 it may account for their being more mischievous in their effects 
 upon the world. But as a man he should not be judged on those 
 grounds. Great as was the harm that he did, wrong as you may 
 believe his principles, and cruel his whole system of warfare, he was not 
 exactly an enemy of the human race. He was a man of strong con- 
 victions, and of a hard sort of religion, more like Puritanism than 
 Popery ; and, bad as he may have been, he had some good points 
 which men more praised and admired have been without. He was 
 faithful, and unselfish. 
 
 The defeat of Tilly on the Lech was not, as a success, to be com- 
 pared with the victory of Breitenfeld, but it was a signal triumph, 
 most especially as it laid Bavaria at the feet of Gustavus ; and he 
 saw himself the conqueror of the estates of the prince who, of all the 
 German potentates, had done most harm to the Protestant cause. 
 In triumphal procession he passed on to Augsburg ; Landshut and 
 Freising opened their gates to his army, but he went on direct to 
 Munich, the southern limit of his conquests. His treatment of 
 Bavaria was different from his treatment of the other States he had 
 passed through : he does not seem to have contemplated a perma- 
 nent occupation, or to have tried to secure the country behind him 
 as he had done before. Ingolstadt was still holding out, and Ratis- 
 bon, which he as well as Tilly saw should rightly be the next 
 object of attack, held out successfully against Horn, his general 
 whom he had sent to besiege it. On May 7, he entered Munich with 
 the Elector Palatine in his company. The Swedes would fain have 
 revenged on Munich the sack of Magdeburg, but Gustavus forbade it : 
 
 z 2
 
 340 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 he allowed the citizens to ransom their town for 300,000 thalers, and 
 suffered no plunder or outrage to take place. 
 
 He did not stay long in Munich. Maximilian was invading 
 Franconia, and the defence of Nuremberg was a more important 
 object than the devastation of Bavaria ; Gustavus accordingly re- 
 traced his steps and took up his position again in Franconia. 
 
 By this time Wallenstein was able to devote himself to the attack 
 on Gustavus. Up to this moment he had been employed in 
 Bohemia, where John George and his minister and General Arnheim 
 were getting tired of war, and w^ere not perhaps altogether indisposed 
 to treat with Wallenstein. By keeping them in play and increasing 
 and disciplining his army, Wallenstein let the time run on until 
 Gustavus had conquered or at least overrun Bavaria. He had no 
 particular wish to save Maximilian's territory, and did not hurry to 
 join Tilly. But when Tilly was dead and Bavaria occupied, and 
 Gustavus on his way back to consolidate his hold on Franconia, 
 Wallenstein bestirred himself, drove the Saxons out of Bohemia, and 
 followed them into Lusatia ; retook Prague and took Egra also — a 
 very strong position at the point where the Upper Palatinate, 
 Bohemia, Saxony, and Franconia meet. From Egra he threatened 
 Nuremberg. At Lutitz, near Egra, he met the Elector Maximilian, 
 and joined his forces with his own. 
 
 The army under his command amounted to sixty thousand men, 
 and with these he marched on Nuremberg. But Nuremberg was 
 ready for him, and finding that he had no chance of taking it he re- 
 moved to Zorndorf, where he entrenched his camp and watched the 
 proceedings of Gustavus. For nearly two months, from June 30 to 
 August 21, the two great generals watched one another, both anxious 
 to draw the adversary out of his strong position, but both deter- 
 mined not to be drawn. During this time Gustavus collected forces 
 from all the provinces where his armies were scattered ; and his 
 generals went on taking place after place on the Khine and in 
 Thuringia. 
 
 At last, on August 24, Gustavus attacked Wallenstein' s camp, 
 leaving his own in the charge of the Nurembergers. The attack was 
 long and pertinacious, but Wallenstein was neither to be drawn nor 
 to be driven ; after every regiment in the army had assaulted in turn, 
 Gustavus had to withdraw Avithout a victory and with very consider- 
 able loss. He kept his ground for a fortnight longer, and then 
 removed from Nuremberg, leaving a strong garrison. This state of 
 things had lasted seventy-two days ; and both parties had endured 
 what was more like the horrors of a siege than the dangers of 
 ordinary warfare in the field. 
 
 When Gustavus broke up his camp to go again into Bavaria,
 
 THE VICTORIES AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 341 
 
 Wallenstein went northwards to punish the Electors of Saxony and 
 Brandenburg on their own ground. The intention of Gustavus in 
 lea\'ing Nuremberg for Bavaria seems to have been to try to draw 
 ofif Wallenstein from the exhausted country, which was mainly 
 Protestant also, and to remove the theatre of war into the neighbour- 
 hood of the hereditary States of the Emperor. It certainly seems 
 a change from the plan hitherto adopted, so full of purpose and so 
 brilliantly executed ; but it must be remembered that Gustavus had 
 not yet met either such an army or such a general as Wallenstein, 
 and that the only struggle in which they did encounter one another 
 was a drawn game. Both had been cautious about attempting a 
 pitched battle. It may be that both savv^ the issues were too great 
 to be risked for the sake of a speedy decision ; that neither could 
 afford to give the other the slightest advantage in the way of 
 beginning. 
 
 The two great armies then broke up. Gustavus went to Bavaria, 
 and sent Bernard of Weimar to defend Franconia and the line 
 of the Main. Wallenstein undertook Franconia pre\'iously to 
 attacking Saxony, and sent Maximilian to defend his own dominions, 
 and Clam-Gallas to Bohemia. His first object was to prevent the 
 Saxons from joining Duke Bernard, and to drive out the Swedish 
 garrisons. 
 
 Gustavus's second inroad into Bavaria failed of its purpose ; it 
 might be too bold to say that it was a mistake. He again crossed 
 the Danube at Donauwerth, having taken Eothenburg, Dinkelsbuhl, 
 and Nordlingen on the way, and on September 27 recovered Rain on 
 the Bavarian side of the Lech. Thence he was recalled by the 
 urgent entreaties of John George of Saxony. 
 
 Wallenstein would not be drawn off into Bavaria. After rava- 
 ging Culmbach and attacking Coburg, he hastened into Meissen. At 
 Altenburg he met Clam-Gallas and Hoick, who had done their 
 work on the Elbe : thence he marched on Merseburg, where he met 
 Pappenheim returning from the ravaging of Lower Saxony and 
 Thuringia with 40,000 men ; together they besieged Leipsic, and took 
 it on October 22. Wallenstein now knew that Gustavus was return- 
 ing northwards ; he determined if possible to prevent him from join- 
 ing the Saxons, and hastened, after the capture of Leipsic, to send 
 Pappenheim to Halle. 
 
 Gustavus was now very near. He had left a part of his army to 
 occupy Maximilian, and joined Duke Bernard at Arnstadt ; thence, 
 following the course of the Saale, they marched towards Leipsic, 
 and approached the imperialist army, which was moving from 
 Weissenfels towards the Elster, from the direction of Naumburg. 
 
 At Liitzen the two armies came in sight of one another ; and
 
 342 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 both knew that a battle was inevitable. But the Swedes were tired 
 after a long day's march, and evening was conje ; they rested 
 opposite to one another all night. Wallenstein, reluctant to the last 
 to fight, although very considerably outnumbering his adversary, 
 consulted his astrologers, and, finding the stars hostile to Gustavus, 
 determined to give battle. The battle of Liitzen was fought on 
 November 6. There Gustavus fell and Wallenstein was defeated. 
 The King of Sweden again drew up his army on the new plan ; two 
 thin lines, one of them to act as reserve; plenty of field guns 
 and those arranged scientifically in order with the fighting men. 
 Wallenstein stuck, as Tilly had done, to the old system : four com- 
 pact masses in the centre, and the cavalry on the wings ; but he had 
 in a measure intrenched his position in the night, with ditches and 
 redoubts, and threw on the Swedes the burden of attack. The 
 Swedish infantry, in the thick fog of a specially foggy November 
 morning, attacked the intrenchments and were cruelly driven back 
 by a strong fire from the musketeers. When they were giving way, 
 Gustavus came in person to the rescue, brought up his cavalry on 
 the right wing and passed the ditch, driving in the enemy upon their 
 ovm cavalry. In the midst of the victory he learned that the left 
 wing was being overwhelmed by Pappenheim, who was coming up 
 from Halle ; riding hurriedly to the rescue with Duke Francis 
 Charles of Lauenburg and three attendants, he got into the fog, and 
 found himself close upon a party of Austrian cavalry. There he was 
 shot in the arm and breast, mortally. Duke Bernard of Weimar had 
 presence of mind to conceal the fact, and told the Swedes that their 
 king was taken prisoner. They determined to rescue him, threw 
 themselves on the imperialists and drove them back with an irre- 
 sistible charge. Pappenheim arrived with new forces, but the 
 Swedes, exhausted as they were, received them, and a panic followed. 
 Pappenheim was mortally wounded ; his army believed him to be 
 slain and fled in dismay. In spite of Wallenstein's efforts, he 
 recognised the fact that he was beaten ; and left the field in the 
 night. 
 
 So Gustavus fell ; the victory he won in his death being nearly 
 as great as any he won in his life. I shall not favour you with any 
 more moral reflexions about him. I stated my opinion of him in my 
 last lecture. He had done a very great work. Much still remained 
 to be done ; and not a little of what he had done had to be done 
 again, but it was his first doing of it that made the second possible. 
 And now he had laid down his life for the cause. He had counted 
 the cost before he began the war, and always had in view a death on 
 the battlefield as the likely end of his career. He knew that he had 
 not lived, and would not die, in vain. His death, however, was far
 
 THE VICTORIES AND DEATH OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 343 
 
 3- 
 
 from the end of the strife : of the Thirty Years' War we have /? 
 not yet reached the central year. But the heroes are quickly drop- 
 ping off. Another lecture must bring us to the end of Wallenstein : 
 thenceforward we shall, I fear, have more of politics, less of adventure. 
 
 LECTURE VII 
 
 THE WAR FROM THE BATTLE OF LUTZEN, 1632, TO THE DEATH OF 
 
 WALLENSTEIN, 1634 
 
 One of the most convincing proofs of the great warlike abilities of 
 Gustavus Adolphus is found in the fact that, short as his career as a 
 conqueror was, he had trained up a school of generals who were able 
 to fill up his place as soon as it was vacant. Many of these, more- 
 over, were German princes of whom it cannot be said that they had 
 learned their lesson whilst he was learning his. Baner and Horn 
 and some of the others may have served under him in his earlier 
 wars, but Bernard of Weimar, the Counts of Salm, the Palatine of 
 Birkenfeld, and a great number of others who come prominently for- 
 ward as we proceed with our story, were Germans, who may indeed 
 have fought and studied the art during the early stages of the war 
 which has now reached the middle of its course, but cannot be said 
 to have had a chance of learning the virtues of generals until they 
 came to be associated with him. 
 
 The supply of generals, and the wonderful gift of warlike skill 
 which they seemed to have exemplified, are indeed characteristic 
 features of this war in common with some of the other great military 
 periods of the history of Europe. Alexander the Great trained a 
 school of great generals, and so did Napoleon Bonaparte : Gustavus 
 stands, in ability though not in power, at a very short distance behind 
 these. Notwithstanding the frequency of wars, there had not been 
 during the preceding century anything like these men. Charles V. 
 was a great warrior, and in the early part of his reign he had two or 
 three brilliant generals in Italy ; but for the greater part of it he 
 stands almost alone. After him comes Maurice of Saxony ; in the 
 next generation there are Maurice of Nassau and Spinola ; but then 
 we come to Tilly, Wallenstein, and Gustavus, with their many 
 pupils. 
 
 It is seldom indeed that, on the sudden fall of a great leader, 
 his place is instantly supplied. This was done in the case of 
 Gustavus, at least in some respects. Bernard of Weimar, on whom 
 the command devolved at Gustavus's death, was never for a moment
 
 344 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 wanting lo his position ; whilst Oxenstiern, Gustavus's chancellor, 
 who had been his prime minister since he came to the Swedish 
 throne, took upon himself to keep together the reins of the Protestant 
 and anti- Austrian policy which he had helped his master to devise. 
 Bernard won the battle of Liitzen on the day of Gustavus's death ; 
 and Oxenstiern, as soon as he had made safe the crown on the head 
 of the little Christina, came down from Sweden into Germany to 
 re-create the Protestant confederation. Greatly dismayed as the 
 whole party was at the loss of the prince who had embodied the 
 hopes of one half in his brilliant successes and had led the other half 
 so much further than they ever had intended to go in opposition to the 
 Emperor, such was Oxenstiern's adroit management that he kept them 
 for the time at least up to the mark, and shamed those who would 
 have flinched into something like resolution. 
 
 If we look back now for a moment on the state of things in Ger- 
 many at the time of Gustavus's death, we shall see, I think, that his posi- 
 tion was by no means what it was when he had beaten Tilly at Leipsic. 
 He was still a victorious leader of an army, a host of armies that had 
 never been beaten, but he had passed the zenith of his triumphs when 
 he first met Wallenstein. Wallenstein had not beaten him, but had 
 distinctly foiled him, and, evading defeat, had raised the Catholic 
 powers again from the prostration in which the battle of Leipsic 
 had laid them. The period of Gustavus's success was the period of 
 Wallenstein's retirement : the time when the mighty army, before 
 which all the other leaders of the Protestants had gone down, had 
 dissolved in the mysterious way which left Tilly without a reserve to 
 fall back upon at Leipsic, and laid Bavaria open to Gustavus after 
 the crossing of the Lech. 
 
 Whether Gustavus, if he had lived, would have proved in the end 
 too strong for Wallenstein may well be questioned. On the one side 
 you have the most perfect skill, the most enthusiastic spirit of daring, 
 and the most carefully constructed plan of campaign ; on the other, 
 scarcely less skill, scarcely less daring, and, instead of the construc- 
 tive power, the most consummate faculty of handling an army in the 
 field. Whilst Gustavus gives each of his great disciples a share in 
 the management of the plan which his own genius devises, and so 
 makes them realise most fully the unity of the combination and their 
 own responsibility for the result, Wallenstein's armies seem to act 
 as one man under his yet more marvellous power of impressing his 
 own will upon the masses of soldiers. Although both Gustavus and 
 Wallenstein seem to have been worshipped by their common soldiers, 
 Wallenstein is, more than Gustavus, the soldier's general ; and 
 none of Wallenstein's disciples came accordingly so near their 
 master's fame as did those of Gustavus. Further, however, Wallen-
 
 THE WAR FROM LUTZEN TO THE DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN 345 
 
 stein was, during the greater part of his career, supreme ruler of his 
 army, whilst Gustavus had to create an army from among the 
 subjects of a great number of princes who were jealous of him and 
 begrudged him everything. He had in this respect greater difficulties 
 to contend with than Wallenstein had. The comparison of the two 
 leads to the conclusion that, in point of military skill, the palm 
 cannot safely be awarded to one as against the other, as on all the 
 occasions when they came in contact it was a drawn game between 
 them ; save at Liitzen, where Bernard had really, after Gustavus's fall, 
 to fight a new battle against Pappenheim, in which chance, if we 
 may so speak, seems largely to have befriended him. 
 
 Germany, then, had seemed at the opening of the year 1632 as 
 completely prostrate before Gustavus as it had been some years pre- 
 viously before Ferdinand. As then the appearance of Gustavus had 
 altered the aspect of affairs, so now did the recall of Wallenstein ; 
 but before the struggle could be fought out both Gustavus and 
 Wallenstein disappear. At the moment of Gustavus's death 
 Germany was by no means under his control. He had overrun 
 nearly the whole of it, but had not attempted to hold what he had 
 won ; he had not succeeded in taking Ingolstadt or Ratisbon, 
 so that his conquest of Bavaria could not be secured by the 
 occupation of the fortresses. Franconia he was holding with his 
 armies, but Alsace lay open to the hostility of the Duke of Lorraine, 
 the Palatinate was indifferently defended against the Spaniards ; 
 and, further north than that. Lower Saxony lay open to them 
 through Westphalia and the archbishopric of Cologne. Saxony and 
 Brandenburg were felt to be insecure supporters behind ; both of 
 them jealous of the supremacy of the Swedish king. Saxony as the 
 head of the Lutheran interest, and Brandenburg as the claimant of 
 Pomerania. In Bohemia, Wallenstein at his first movement had 
 driven the Saxons — who were perhaps half willing to be driven, and 
 seem never to have fought heartily except in Saxony and for 
 Saxony — out of Bohemia. 
 
 The battle of Liitzen was so far decisive that Wallenstein quitted 
 the field of war immediately after and retired again into Bohemia, 
 leaving the Protestant armies, which could fight in winter as well as 
 in summer, to divide again and return to the tasks they had been 
 occupied with when the alarm of Wallenstein's advance on 
 Franconia had brought Gustavus Adolphus back from his second 
 invasion of Bavaria. The battle of Liitzen was fought on the 6th of 
 November, Wallenstein during the night left the position which he 
 had so stoutly defended, and all his artillery on the field, and 
 retired upon Leipsic, whence, having left a small garrison in the 
 citadel, he returned to Bohemia, where he passed the winter ; and
 
 846 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 where, after his retreat was secured, he punished very severely the 
 officers to whose cowardice he attributed the defeat at Liitzen, and 
 munificently rewarded those who had signalised themselves by valour 
 or address. He remained in Bohemia until May 1633, when he again 
 threatened the Upper Palatinate and Saxony. 
 
 The Protestant leaders proceeded, as soon as they were assured of 
 their enemies' retreat, to return each to the field of work from which 
 he had been summoned, or to undertake a new one whilst the victory 
 was yet before men's minds. Horn marched into Alsace ; the 
 Saxons quickly recovered Leipsic, and then, with the army of Duke 
 Bernard, compelled the remainder of the imperial army, which was 
 occupying Chemnitz, to surrender. Two or three other places in 
 the electorate which were still in the hands of the enemy were 
 subsequently taken, and by Christmas the whole of the country was 
 free from them. As soon as this was done, Bernard with the 
 Swedish army returned to Franconia ; Baner went to Swabia, and 
 other generals into the Lower Palatinate, Westphalia, and the Ehine 
 country. 
 
 It is a somewhat dreary task to pursue the movements of these 
 generals into detail, especially after we have accustomed ourselves 
 to gather the interest of the war round a single person or in the 
 unity of a single campaign ; but as the year 1633 was a most eventful 
 one we must try to do something of the kind ; taking the more 
 insignificant persons first and falling back upon Bernard and 
 Wallenstein last. 
 
 Horn, I said, was sent to Alsace ; Baner into Swabia against the 
 Bavarian forces. The successes of the Bavarians against Baner 
 quickly caused Horn to leave Alsace and assist his fellow general. 
 He crossed the Rhine and took Kenzingen and Freiburg in 
 Breisgau ; at Rothweil he received 2,000 Wiirtembergers as a 
 reinforcement ; at Geckingen he joined Baner, and together they 
 marched on the Bavarians, who had entered Swabia from the south- 
 east and had occupied Memmingen and Kempten. At Kempten 
 they routed the Bavarians, and immediately after freed the duchy 
 of Wiirtemberg from invasion. 
 
 It was now March, and Horn joined Bernard at Augsburg on 
 the 12th of that month. After a few joint operations against 
 Bavaria, Horn was again detached into the Upper Palatinate, where 
 he spent most of the summer. In the autumn he returned westward, 
 and, having in vain besieged Constance, re-entered Alsace, which had 
 been reoccupied by the imperial army in January, after Horn's 
 march into Swabia, and where Otto Lewis, the Count of Salm, 
 generally called the Ehinegrave, had been since June waging a 
 somewhat unequal warfare against them. Horn, having crossed the
 
 THE WAR FEOM LUTZEN TO THE DEATH OF "WALLENSTEIN 347 
 
 Bhine at Strassburg, joined the Ehinegrave at Colmar. The news, 
 however, of an imperial army advancing under the Duke of Feria 
 from Italy prevented much more being done in Alsace ; the whole 
 force was summoned to meet Bernard at Stockach on September 25, 
 and the remainder of Horn's proceedings for the year falls in with 
 those of the general-in-chief. 
 
 The two Rhinegraves, Otto Lewis and Philip, had occupied 
 themselves all the summer with a small force, but with considerable 
 success, in holding the strongholds of the margraviate of Baden and 
 shutting in the imperial garrison at Breisach. 
 
 Into the Lower Palatinate Christian, Count Palatine of Birken- 
 feld, was sent early in the year. The unhappy Frederick, ex- Elector 
 Palatine and ex-King of Bohemia, had, as I should have mentioned 
 before, died at Mentz on November 29, 1632 ; he had long been ill, 
 but the news from Liitzen is said to have broken his heart. We take 
 leave of him as one of the most mistaken men in all history. 
 Christian of Birkenfeld was a member of a junior branch of the 
 house which had split up into an unusual number of fragments ; he 
 was a pupil of Gustavus, who had made him a general of cavalry. 
 His campaign is signalised by the capture of Heidelberg, which he took 
 by capitulation on May 24 : this terminated the hold of the Catholic 
 League on the Palatinate. The Bavarian and Spanish garrisons were 
 ejected, and the Duke of Lorraine alone threatened, but the Duke 
 was beaten at Pfaffenhof by the Count Palatine on August 1. 
 
 In Westphalia George of Liineburg and the Landgrave William 
 of Hesse occupied, during the spring and summer, most of the 
 towns of the bishoprics of Osnabriick and Paderborn ; and the 
 imperialists under Beninghausen were severely beaten at Oldendorp 
 on June 28. Kniphausen, another general of the Protestants, took 
 Osnabriick in September, and Duke George besieged Hildesheim, 
 which, however, held out until July 12, 1634. 
 
 These are, I think, the most important movements of the year, 
 except those of Duke Bernard and Wallenstein. During the whole 
 of the time Oxenstiern, moreover, was attempting to strengthen the 
 confederation in a series of congresses, to which we must return 
 by and by. 
 
 Duke Bernard's proceedings were not very complicated. 
 Having, as we saw, rid the electorate of Saxony from the invaders, 
 he returned to Franconia ; Bamberg was surrendered to him without 
 a blow, and Hochstadt followed the example. From Hochstadt he 
 advanced towards the Danube ; Horn joined him on March 12 at 
 Augsburg, and they took measures together for securing the Upper 
 Palatinate. After Horn was detached for this service, a conspiracy 
 was discovered amongst the troops in Franconia, which was quelled
 
 348 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 by Bernard with great ability, and partly in consequence he claimed 
 for himself the fulfilment of a promise made him by Gustavus that 
 he should receive the investiture of the duchy of Franconia, with the 
 bishoprics of Wiirzburg and Bamberg. The claim was admitted on 
 June 12. On July 18 the Swedish ambassador released the estates 
 of Franconia from the oath taken to Gustavus, and handed over the 
 ducal authority to Bernard, who on the 19th, at Wiirzburg, received 
 the homages. 
 
 Thus dignified as Duke of Franconia, Bernard prepared to invade 
 Bavaria ; took Eichstadt, and attempted, in the hope of being 
 seconded by internal treason, to seize Ingoldstadt. In this, however, 
 he failed : and the approach of the Duke of Feria to the aid of 
 Aldringer, the Bavarian general, led him to concentrate all his avail- 
 able forces near the Lake of Constance. This march of the Duke of 
 Feria, who was coming up through the Valtelline with 12,000 foot 
 and 2,000 horse, was a part of the design which Ferdinand, under 
 the pressure of Maximilian, had formed, of conducting at least a 
 portion of the military transactions of the Catholic party indepen- 
 dently of Vv'allenstein. Informed of the advance of this formidable 
 force, but unable to see that it would be the interest of the Catholic 
 powers to avoid a struggle, Bernard collected his forces at Stockach, 
 near the north-eastern horn of the Lake of Constance. Horn and the 
 Palatine of Birkenfeld met him there on September 25. But the 
 Duke of Feria, instead of approaching them, turned off towards the 
 Danube ; and when they had given him time to make his way 
 towards the hereditary estates of Austria, Bernard felt himself strong 
 enough to attempt his long-postponed march on Ratisbon. Advancing 
 cautiously through Swabia, he took Neuburg, Ingolstadt, and at last 
 Ratisbon, on November 5. Straubing fell three days later, and then 
 he crossed the Isar into Southern Bavaria, hoping to meet Wallen- 
 stein. But Wallenstein, as usual, was unwilling to help Bavaria, 
 and advanced no nearer than the Upper Palatinate, where he had 
 defeated the Swedes at Steinau on October 18. Bernard, hearing 
 that he had retired, regarded the campaign as at an end, and took 
 up his winter quarters, as usual, in Franconia. 
 
 What, we next ask, had Wallenstein been doing since the battle 
 of Liitzen ? He took the field in May : determined, apparently, to 
 ensure his hold on Bohemia before attempting anything further. 
 He assembled his army between Pilsen and Egra, on the Saxon and 
 Palatinate frontier, and began that extraordinary game which, as we 
 shall soon see, proved fatal to himself. Having a very insufficient 
 force, and little artillery, he found it necessary to avoid an engage- 
 ment, and endeavoured to gain time by negotiating with Arnheim, 
 the Saxon general, for armistices, and even for peace.
 
 THE WAK FROM LUTZEN TO THE DEATH OF "WALLENSTEIN 349 
 
 Arnheim, who, we saw before, was not enthusiastically faithful to 
 the Swedish cause as he regarded it, and who had served under 
 Wallenstein, was imposed on by these propositions, and only found 
 out that they were feigned when Wallenstein's object was gained. 
 Having been so often deceived, all he could do was to determine to 
 be imposed upon no more, which he did. When Wallenstein's 
 purpose was answered and his forces increased and equipped, he sent 
 Hoick, a Dane and one of his best lieutenants, with 7,000 men to 
 watch Duke Bernard ; then dashed into Silesia, where Arnheim was 
 waiting for him. To get rid of Arnheim, he detached Count Gallas 
 to attack or feign to attack Saxony with 10,000 men. Arnheim 
 quitted Silesia to defend Saxony, and Wallenstein seized his 
 opportunity, overwhelmed the force of Swedes under Count Thurn 
 at Steinau, on October 18, and compelled them to surrender all the 
 strongholds of that province, Great Glogau, Liegnitz, and Wohlau. 
 Thence he occupied Lusatia, took Frankfort and Landsberg in 
 Brandenburg, and prepared to strike a blow at Pomerania which would 
 cut the power of the Swedish confederation at its base, and might 
 recover Mecklenburg for himself. 
 
 It was in the midst of this design that he heard of Bernard's 
 successful doings in Bavaria and received the orders of the Emperor 
 to hasten to the relief of Eatisbon. Determined, however, on his 
 own line of action, he contented himself with sending Count Gallas 
 with 10,000 men, and these to act only on the defensive. Another 
 imperative command compelled him to march south in person, but 
 he simply made a show of trying to recover Cham, which Bernard 
 had taken, and, before he had succeeded in taking it, was recalled 
 by the news that the Saxons had besieged Frankfort and were going 
 to invade Silesia. He immediately returned to Pilsen, and, as the 
 winter was close at hand, sent his troops into quarters. The wisdom 
 of his proceedings we must examine when we come, as we shall 
 directly, to his fall. 
 
 So, however, the year 1633 closes, and we have yet to look at the 
 political movements going on amongst the allies. Of these move- 
 ments Axel Oxenstiern is the presiding genius : he takes up the 
 political as Duke Bernard does the military place of Gustavus 
 Adolphus. He had lost no time after the battle of Llitzen in 
 endeavouring to supply that place. As soon as he saw Sweden 
 prepared to accept the succession of the little Christina, knowing 
 that the battle with Denmark and Poland, if it must be fought at all, 
 must be won on the soil of Germany, he came to Germany, and, as 
 the head of the Swedes, called together at Heilbronn, on February 28, 
 1633, a congress of the four circles which had become most devoted 
 to Gusta\nis, those of the Upper and Lower Ehine, Franconia, and
 
 350 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Swabia. The estates met on March 3, and in a series of conferences 
 which lasted through the spring, the old relations were thoroughly 
 reconstructed. Notwithstanding the intrigues of the Elector of 
 Saxony, who was partly deluded by Wallenstein's diplomatic 
 manoeu\Tes and partly by his own jealousy of the Swedes, Oxenstiern 
 succeeded in binding the four circles in a league for carrying on the 
 war in alliance with Sweden until the Elector Palatine and the 
 Dukes of Mecklenburg should be restored, the liberty of religion and 
 the rights of the princes secured, and the expenses incurred by 
 SAveden in the Protestant cause reimbursed. The confederates 
 bound themselves further to make no several or special agreements 
 with the enemy, and to place the direction of their movements in 
 the hands of Oxenstiern himself as the representative of Sweden. 
 This arrangement was completed on April 13. 
 
 On the 9th a treaty had been made with France continuing the 
 alliance until the close of the war. In this France showed herself 
 even more ready than before to take part with the Protestant princes, 
 the successes and enthusiastic spirit of Gustavus having proved 
 rather alarming to Kichelieu. In February the alliance between 
 France, Saxony, and Brandenburg had been renewed. Christian of 
 Denmark stood aloof from this league and tried hard to make peace 
 with Ferdinand. He was, however, now too much impoverished to 
 make his assistance worth having, and the negotiations came to no- 
 thing : the Danish estates opposed his change of politics, although 
 the Emperor was willing to bribe him with a promise, which could 
 never have been intended to be kept, of the Lower Saxon bishoprics. 
 The confederation of Heilbronn was renewed and confirmed in 
 September 1633. The Swiss were invited to join it, but they wisely 
 declined. The Elector of Brandenburg, after thinking long about it 
 and seeing that Wallenstein would not be likely to spare him whether 
 he joined it or not, acceded at length, and several small princes in 
 Westphalia and Lower Saxony also gradually came in. The Elector 
 of Saxony was the chief Protestant who stood aloof. 
 
 On the imperial side there was less harmony and much more 
 intrigue. To Maximilian and the Catholic princes the present 
 supremacy of Wallenstein was intensely exasperating: he claimed 
 the supreme command and collected round himself all the warlike 
 material that Catholic Germany could supply ; and he neither at- 
 tempted anything decisive nor would even strike a blow for the de- 
 liverance of Bavaria. His own plan of campaign he was far too 
 proud to lay before them, and his conduct gave ground even for 
 suspicions of his honesty. He had become far too powerful to 
 continue to be a subject, and his attitude in Bohemia, if he were 
 unfaithful to the Emperor, was such as to ruin the imperial cause
 
 THE WAR FROM LUTZEN TO THE DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN 351 
 
 altogether in that kingdom and so to wreck the cause of the League 
 in Germany : he was acting there as a sovereign prince, in constant 
 communication with Arnheim and the Saxons, who only lately had 
 been occupying Bohemia as enemies and were still in arms against 
 the Emperor, and one subject of discussion between them was the 
 preservation or restoration of the rights of the Bohemian kingdom. 
 His tolerance and liberality, moreover, were in direct opposition to 
 the persecuting policy and poverty, not to say meanness, of 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 The complaints of Wallenstein's havighty demeanour, his con- ] 
 tempt for the Catholic princes, and his mysterious conduct were 
 carried to Ferdinand constantly, almost from the moment at which 
 Wallenstein was prevailed on to resume the command and re-create 
 the imperial army. x\nd Ferdinand, although he could have no 
 real ground even for suspicion against Wallenstein, was disposed to 
 listen to any plan that promised to place his son, the King of 
 Hungary, at the head of the army. The desire of doing this and the 
 constant attempts of Maximilian to rouse him from mere depen- 
 dence on Wallenstein, were the cause of his summoning the Duke of 
 Feria with his large army from Italy in September, and probably 
 also of the Duke of Feria's avoidance of a battle with Bernard, Horn, 
 and Berkenfeld and his rapid movement into Austria. 
 
 Wallenstein responded to this act of distrust by one of dis- 
 obedience or what looked like it, for it must be remembered that it 
 was an infringement of the terms on which he had been reappointed. 
 He refused to come to the help of Ratisbon, and, having advanced to 
 Cham, retired without punishing the foe. A better motive than 
 mere sulky obstinacy did, however, certainly actuate Wallenstein 
 during all this, and might, if he had condescended to explain, have 
 made all things straight with the Emperor, if not with the leaguers. 
 Wallenstein saw that the power of the Swedes must be struck at its 
 root. Pomerania and Mecklenburg seized and made sure of, the 
 supplies of men and provisions that came by the Baltic would be 
 cut off, and the war, thrown upon the internal resources of Germany, 
 must end as all such wars had ended before. 
 
 It was unfortunate that his own stake in confiscated Mecklenburg 
 suggested to his enemies the idea that his movements in that direc- 
 tion were caused by his mere greed of dominion. We may be very 
 certain from the pains which we saw Gustavus Adolphus take to 
 secure his base in the North, before he would move even into Saxony, 
 that Wallenstein's idea of cutting off that base was the wdsest that 
 could have been formed, whether or not it were suggested by his 
 longing for an independent sovereignty for himself. He had been 
 kept in Bohemia all the spring by want oi-artillery and of soldiers,
 
 352 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 and to gain time had entered into delusive negotiations with the 
 Saxons ; nay, it is even possible that he had hopes of persuading 
 them to a neutrality which would have enabled him to leave Bohemia 
 safe whilst he marched northwards. 
 
 When he had at length made his preparations and was vic- 
 toriously reclaiming all that the Saxons and Swedes had won, he 
 was recalled to defend Bavaria ; and he not unreasonably regarded 
 this order as an act of distrust and an infringement of his rights, 
 and as a fatal check to his great plan. When he found that Bernard, 
 instead of staying in Bavaria, had gone back to Franconia to watch 
 him, his disgust at the Emperor's conduct was no longer restrained, 
 and his words and even his acts became such as to render him still 
 more excusably than before an object of suspicion at Vienna. 
 Ferdinand seems to have thought that he might be worried into 
 resigning, and accordingly communicated to him in a roundabout 
 way the design for superseding him. But Wallenstein did not take 
 the hint ; and the Emperor found that he must give a more direct 
 indication of his wish. He sent him orders to break up his army, to 
 send 6,000 horse into the Netherlands, another large body of troops 
 to Passau to defend Bavaria, and himself to march on Eatisbon, and, 
 having recovered it, to spend the winter on the enemies' soil : that 
 is, in Swabia or Franconia. 
 
 It was already winter and Wallenstein was at Pilsen, his soldiers 
 in their quarters. It is now, I think, that Wallenstein first begins 
 to treat in sincerity with the Protestants. Unfortunately, his former 
 diplomacy had disposed them to regard all such overtures with 
 the greatest suspicion ; and they declined to listen to them. At 
 the same time he laid the state of affairs before the colonels of 
 his army, and tried to withdraw them not so much from their 
 allegiance to Ferdinand, as into his own design of resisting dis- 
 missal. The colonels, believing that his dismissal was aimed 
 against them, and would have the effect of robbing them of all the 
 rewards they had earned, signed, to the number of fifty- two, a 
 formal requisition to him not to resign his command, and bound 
 themselves to remain faithful to him, even to shed the last drop of 
 their blood in his service. This was done on February 12, 1634. 
 
 Although, however, the colonels and the soldiery in general 
 seemed to enter into his design of resistance, Gallas and Aldringer, 
 knowing that his disgrace was determined on, took measures of their 
 own. Octavio Piccolomini, who had been one of his most intimate 
 friends, carried the news of the requisition to Vienna, and Ferdinand, 
 under the joint pressure of Maximilian of Bavaria, the Spaniards, 
 and the Jesuits, alarmed, moreover, by the falsehoods tha,t Piccolomini 
 liberally introduced into his report, ordered that Wallenstein should
 
 THE WAR FEOM LUTZEN TO THE DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN 353 
 
 be arrested and deprived of his command. Gallas was nominated in 
 his place, and Piccolomini was ordered to seize him, dead or alive. 
 
 He immediately returned with his instructions ; Gallas took the 
 command and made himself sure of Prague, Budweis, Leitmeritz, 
 and Tabor ; Pilsen and Egra were still in the hands of Wallenstein. 
 But Wallenstein was now almost helpless : he had sent to Vienna 
 to explain the requisition of the colonels, and learned from thence 
 how fatal a weapon he had placed in the enemy's hands. He sent 
 Tersky, his most intimate friend, to seize Prague, which Gallas had 
 already occupied, and himself hastily proceeded to Egra, where he 
 renewed his proposals, through Duke Francis Albert of "Lauenburg, 
 to Bernard of Weimar, offering to surrender both Egra and Pilsen 
 and to join the Protestants with the army which he still trusted. 
 Bernard was afraid to believe him ; he sent to Frankfort to Oxen- 
 stiern withrthe same offers ; but before an answer could come his fate 
 was decided. On February 25, 1634, Wallenstein was assassinated 
 at Egra by several Scottish and Irish officers, whom Gordon, the 
 governor of Egra, had persuaded to join his plot. Tersky and Kinsky, 
 his two faithful friends, were killed before the assassins could reach 
 Wallenstein's chamber. The man who murdered him was an 
 Irishman named Devereux. 
 
 So Wallenstein died, and another of the great heroes of the time 
 leaves the stage — a man of transcendent ability, but of character so 
 wayward and peculiar that his successes are even more wonderful \ 
 than his powers. Of the guilt, the foul dishonour, of his murder 
 there can be no doubt. The chief blame falls, of course, on Gordon 
 and the conspirators ; the next on Piccolomini, and the next on 
 Ferdinand. We must believe that the Emperor both misunderstood 
 Wallenstein and was deceiyed by Piccolomini ; huf the commission 
 to seize him, alive or dead, was a cruel reward for all that Wallenstein 
 had done for the Catholic cause and for the house of Austria. 
 
 •5r 
 
 LECTUEE VIII 
 
 THE INTERVENTION OF FRANCE IN THE WAR 
 
 The only political result of the death of Wallenstein was the drawing 
 more closely together the Catholic powers, to whom his supremacy 
 in the imperial armies had been a subject of disgust and contention. 
 It enabled the Emperor to place his son, the King of Hungary, in 
 command ; it satisfied the Pope, as well as he could be satisfied 
 with anything that he hated so much as the Empire ; it pleased 
 
 A A
 
 354 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Spain, which was now ready to take an active part in support of the 
 common honours of the two branches of the house of Hapsburg, 
 and it put it in the power of the Emperor to satisfy'Maximilian and 
 his allies of the old party of the League who wanted to have Bavaria 
 and the territories of the other Catholic princes properly defended, 
 or who did not understand Wallenstein's counter-scheme to Gus- 
 tavus's military policy, and thought South Germany wantonly or 
 wilfully sacrificed to the North. In a more ulterior way it possibly 
 served to prevent the Emperor from getting that entire autocracy in 
 Germany which Wallenstein probably contemplated obtaining for 
 him, and with it the extinction of Protestant opinions in central 
 Europe. 
 
 It is impossible, of course, to speak with any certainty on a 
 design so visionary as it seems now, and the very authenticity of 
 which is problematical ; but it is manifest from many reasons that 
 the Protestant party was becoming exhausted, and that a victorious 
 campaign under Wallenstein would have laid them more completely 
 prostrate than ever. Wallenstein's successors were able generals, 
 but did not entertain his far-seeing political designs ; had he lived to 
 carry them out, it is even possible that the radical difierence between 
 himself and the Emperor on religious toleration might have undone 
 them when at the point of fulfilment, and that the Jesuits, seeing 
 this, conspired with his other enemies for his downfall. 
 
 At the moment of his death the situation was simply this : the 
 army which he had commanded had gained great successes in 
 Bohemia, Lusatia, Silesia, and the Mark of Brandenburg, and was 
 threatening at no great distance Pomerania and Mecklenburg. 
 Duke Bernard, on the other side, had taken the strongholds that 
 protected Bavaria and Upper Austria, and had quartered a large 
 force in Eatisbon as well as occupied his former quarters in Fran- 
 conia. The position was somewhat critical, for a decided defeat on 
 either side would have laid the centre of the enemy's strength open 
 to immediate attack. Bernard might at any moment advance upon 
 :^, Vienna. Wallenstein doubtless, as soon as he was ready, would have 
 cut off the Swedish base of operations in Pomerania. His death, 
 however, opened the door to new and very different counsels. 
 
 The Protestant armies were at the opening of 1634 thus 
 posted : — Bernard was at Eatisbon with 10,000 men : Horn was in 
 Swabia, holding all the country to the west of Augsburg. Baner, 
 with the Saxons, was threatening the recovery of Lusatia ; the 
 Ehinegrave was active in Alsace, the larger part of which also was 
 occupied by the Swedes ; and in Westphalia a struggle on a small 
 scale was proceeding between the imperial forces and the Hessians. 
 Almost immediately after Wallenstein's death the estates of the
 
 THE INTEKVENTION OF FRANCE IN THE WAR 355 
 
 circle of Lower Saxony joined Oxenstiern's confederation at 
 HeilbronST"'"-"-*"'*'"'"''''''"*'^"^'^^ 
 
 -*'Ttee action of the war begins in March, and it was at first very 
 much in favour of the Protestants. In Swabia Horn advanced from 
 Ravensburg, took Biberach, Kempten, and Memmingen, and defeated 
 the imperialists at Wangen before the end of March. In Alsace, 
 the Ehinegrave, on March 2, defeated the Austrians at Warweil, and 
 on April 1 took Freiburg in the Breisgau ; Philippsburg also 
 surrendered to him. In Bavaria the reverse was the case ; the 
 Bavarians recovered Straubing on March 22. In Silesia, Lesley 
 took Landsberg and defeated the Swedes under Gotz in their attack 
 upon Oppeln. Baner, however, further north succeeded soon after 
 in recovering Frankfort on the Oder, and would have done more if 
 the Saxons had not mistrusted him. Arnheim, with the Saxons, 
 recovered Glogau ; Baner, with the Swedes, entered Bohemia and 
 threatened Prague. 
 
 Sufficient activity was being shown in all quarters of the field of 
 war. On the Catholic side, the Cardinal Infant, Ferdinand of Spain, 
 son of Philip III. and Archbishop of Toledo, now twenty-five years 
 old and the man of the family, had collected a force of Milanese, 
 which on his way through Germany he was to utilise in favour of 
 the Emperor before he took it to the Netherlands ; and the King of 
 Hungary, with the aid of Wallenstein's old officers — who, having lost 
 their master, had determined to do the best they could for the 
 Emperor — having put down the momentary dissatisfaction among the 
 soldiers that was caused by Wallenstein's assassination, had got his 
 large army into fighting order. 
 
 To King Ferdinand the recovery of Ratisbon was the first great 
 object to be gained. The King of Hungary was not afraid of the 
 loss of Bohemia, which Baner and Arnheim were threatening. He 
 knew the difficulty which Oxenstiern was now experiencing in 
 keeping the Protestants together, and trusted to the jealousy between 
 Baner and Arnheim to neutralise any strong measures that might 
 be taken in Bohemia. Unfortunately, the jealousies were not 
 confined to these two. The Elector of Brandenburg had got a new 
 cause of offence in Oxenstiern's refusal to betroth the little Queen 
 Christina to his son ; the Elector of Saxony was again half Austrian, 
 now that Oxenstiern had restored the Calvinistic Count Palatine ; 
 nay, worst of all, Horn and Bernard of Weimar were contending 
 about the command of the army in the South. Ferdinand acted as 
 if he knew all this ; left 10,000 men under Colloredo to defend 
 Prague (a very insufficient force indeed, if he had not something not 
 far removed from treachery to depend on) ; and with the Cardinal 
 Infant marched on Ratisbon. 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 They left Bohemia by Egra, crossed the Danube at Straubing, 
 which the Bavarians had retaken, as we saw, in March, and advanced 
 to the siege of this most important city. Bernard had left it 
 strongly garrisoned ; but in the event of a siege it must of necessity 
 fall, before a force so much superior as that which was brought 
 against it, unless it could be relieved in time. The principal man 
 in the defence was Count Thurn, our old friend of the Bohemian 
 revolution, who had his own luck and now disappears from history. 
 The besieging army numbered 30,000 : the King of Hungary was 
 \ aided by the counsels of Gallas and Piccolomini ; and the Duke of 
 
 \« Lorraine was there with the forces of the League. After seven 
 ^ assaults and an enormous loss of life on the part of the besiegers, 
 ■ Eatisbon was taken on July 26. Bernard and Horn were not in 
 
 time to save it : their competition for command and their variance 
 of opinion on the plan to be followed during the campaign kept 
 them asunder. When at last they had joined at Augsburg, and had 
 attacked Landshut on the way to Eatisbon, the news of the capture 
 reached them. 
 
 This was the loss of the greatest advantage that had been gained 
 
 since the death of Gustavus. But it was far from being the worst 
 
 blow that fortune had in store for the confederates. Bernard and 
 
 Horn retired upon Augsburg, to arrest the progress of the enemy 
 
 by guarding Donauwerth : the imperial army advanced on Nordlingen. 
 
 The intelligence of an invasion of Bohemia did not distract them 
 
 from the end in view. Ten thousand men were detached to keep 
 
 the Saxons in play, but the vacuum was more than supplied by the 
 
 I arrival of the Spaniards under the Cardinal Infant. Ferdinand 
 
 I marched on Nordlingen with 40,000 men. Before Bernard reached 
 
 f Donauwerth he had crossed the river and stormed the town ; on 
 
 ^' August 16, he was before Nordlingen, the great stronghold of the 
 
 , Protestants in Swabia. For the relief of this town, they had to 
 
 strain every nerve ; the Ehinegrave was summoned from Alsace, 
 
 Bernard and Horn reconciled their differences and prepared for a 
 
 decisive battle. But the Ehinegrave lost time on the way : he had 
 
 just taken Eheinfelden and was on the point of taking Breisach ; he 
 
 had to stay to destroy his own works for fear they should be seized 
 
 by the enemy, and he arrived too late. 
 
 V The battle was fought on September 6, 1634. Ferdinand was ready 
 
 for the attack : he drew off his force from the siege, set his guns in 
 
 order for battle, and stood on his defence. Bernard appears, in 
 
 opposition to Horn's advice, to have urged the immediate engage 
 
 ment before the Ehinegrave arrived. The Protestants attacked, and 
 
 at first with appearance of success : but they met with a very stout 
 
 resistance, and fell back with enormous loss. Then the Imperialists
 
 THE INTERVENTION OF FRANCE IN THE WAR 357 
 
 took their turn. Eight thousand Swedes and Germans had fallen in 
 the struggle, two thousand in the flight, and four thousand were 
 taken prisoners. Horn, after performing miracles of valour, was 
 taken, Bernard escaped bnt- very narrowly. The imperial army 
 triumphed with a loss of but two thousand men, and they took all 
 the baggage, stores, and artillery of the allies. The town surrendered 
 the next day. 
 
 The battle of Nordlingen is one of the great battles of the war ; 
 it was to the Protestants what the battle of Leipsic had been to the 
 League, and its political results were hardly less important in a 
 contrary way. The Protestant armies could bear defeat as little as 
 the imperialist armies could sustain their triumph : the same rule 
 appears throughout the contest. The Catholic party comes out 
 strong in adversity, the Protestant party in prosperity : defeat rouses 
 and unites the former, whilst it paralyses and divides the latter. 
 
 If it had not been for France, the battle of Nordlingen would 
 probably have ended the war, for the Emperor was heartily tired of 
 it, and was willing, by concessions to the Lutherans, to pacify the 
 larger part of the Protestants ; the Calvinist element might then be 
 demolished in detail. As usual, however, Germany's extremity was 
 France's opportunity. The imperial generals were not slow in 
 following up their advantage. The confederates were so completely 
 beaten that it was no longer necessary for the enemy to keep his 
 forces together. The Cardinal Infant proceeded by Aschaffenburg 
 and Cologne on his march to the Netherlands ; the Duke of Lorraine 
 by the Breisgau, to his own country. The army of the League, under 
 Werth, occupied the Upper Palatinate ; and a part of the Bavarian 
 force the line of the Main. The King of Hungary pursued the Ehine- 
 grave and drove him across the Rhine, then took possession of the 
 cities of Swabia and Franconia, and Heilbronn, the seat of the con- 
 federate Diet, amongst them. The stronger places held out. 
 Heidelberg was twice besieged and twice relieved in the course of the 
 winter, once by Bernard and once by the French. The confederate 
 council took refuge in Frankfort ; and Nuremberg and Augsburg 
 prepared for resistance. 
 
 But the action of the Protestants was paralysed, and their losses 
 in men and material were not easy to make up. Ferdinand wintered 
 in Swabia, in the duchy of Wiirtemberg, the stronghold last year 
 of the Protestants in South Germany. A very few isolated successes 
 only can be set against these reverses : these were chiefly in the 
 north of Germany; in Lower Saxony, the princes who had 
 been the last to join the confederation were wavering in their 
 allegiance under the treacherous dealing of John George of Saxony ; 
 the neutrality of Brandenburg ; the earnest pacific eflbrts of
 
 358 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1648 
 
 Christian of Denmark, and the wavering disposition of the Dukes of 
 Brunswick. Nothing could be more hopeless than Oxenstiern's view 
 of aftairs when he called the allies to Frankfort. The force that still 
 remained was the army of Baner in Lusatia ; that of the Ehine- 
 grave in Alsace ; the remnant of the cavalry under Bernard, and what 
 little force was kept in the field by William of Hesse and George of 
 Liineburg. 
 
 The confederates laid on Sweden the blame of all their troubles : 
 as after the battle of Miihlberg, as after the battle of Prague, they 
 sought each the easiest way of escaping from an alliance which was 
 5 now certain to destroy them. Still Oxenstiern maintained a bold 
 spirit ; bitter as it must be to let France reap the benefits of Gustavus's 
 victories, that must be the next move in the game. Philippsburg 
 was at once handed over to Louis XIII., and an engagement was 
 proposed by which, if France would enter heart and soul into the 
 ^ struggle, Alsace should follow. But before France had made up her 
 I mind, the great defection of Saxony had robbed the anti-imperial 
 party of one more great chance. John George of Saxony had been 
 early in 1634 intriguing with Wallenstein, and ever since Wallenstein's 
 death had been growing more and more lukewarm. Again Lusatia 
 was set before him as a reward of his complaisance, and his conscience 
 as the head of the Lutheran party was propitiated by the hint that 
 the Edict of Eestitution should not be executed in his dominions. 
 The King of Denmark pressed him to make peace ; the battle of 
 ^ Nordlingen had a still more conclusive influence. Before the end of 
 » November 1634 a project of treaty was drawn up at Pirna, which in 
 the following January was laid before the Saxon estates. The next 
 month an armistice was effected, and on May 30, 1635, the peace of 
 Prague was concluded. The peace of Prague was negotiated by John 
 George not merely for himself, but for the whole of the Lutheran 
 powers of Germany if they would accept it ; the Calvinist houses, 
 especially the Elector Palatine's, having no more share in the 
 advantages of it than they had had eighty years before under the 
 peace of Passau. The terms are w^orth study. The most important 
 are these : the abandonment of the Edict of Restitution so far as the 
 Lutherans are concerned, and with it, of course, the abandonment of 
 the principle of the Ecclesiastical Reservation ; all mediate eccle- 
 siastical property appropriated since the peace of Passau— that is, all 
 Church estates which had been feudally held of the princes, as was 
 frequently the case with monastic property — was to remain to the 
 possessors, and all immediate property— that is. Church estates feudally 
 held of the Emperor, which had been seized since November 11, 
 1627 — was likewise so secured, subject to rearrangement, however, 
 within the following forty years. The worship of the Confession of
 
 THE INTERVENTION OF FRANCE IN THE WAR 359 
 
 Augsburg was to be allowed in the Empire generally, save in 
 Bohemia and the hereditary estates of Austria. A general amnesty 
 was to be issued, and all conquests made since the landing of Gus- 
 tavus Adolphus were to be restored, but the Dukes of Wiirtemberg, 
 William of Hesse, and the Margrave of Baden were excluded from 
 the amnesty. Thus reconciled, the Germans were to unite in ex- 
 pelling foreigners from the German soil. Lusatia was to be held by 
 the Elector as a fief of Bohemia ; Magdeburg was given to his 
 second son ; Halberstadt was left to the Archduke Leopold. If the 
 Elector of Brandenburg would join, he was to be secured in the 
 Pomeranian succession. 
 
 By this treaty it will be seen that Ferdinand resigned a great deal ; 
 all, in fact, that he had claimed in 1628, and that had brought down 
 Gustavus Adolphus on the Empire. An acceptance of the treaty on 
 a large scale would isolate the Swedes and give to the war hence- 
 forth the character of a war between France and the Hapsburg house, 
 provided that France would openly go to war with the Empire. 
 What was quite as dear to the Emperor's heart, it would enable him 
 doubtless to secure the election of his son as his successor. 
 
 Whilst the imperial counsellors were intriguing for and nego- 
 tiating this arrangement, the armies were not relaxing their efforts 
 against the Palatinate and the remaining allies of the Swedes on the 
 French frontier. No battle of any importance was fought, but the 
 strongholds changed hands or were besieged and relieved. On March 
 26 the Spanish army seized Treves and carried off the Elector, who 
 had placed himself under French protection, a prisoner. Philipps- 
 burg, so lately handed over to the French, had fallen into the imperial 
 power in January. But the seizure of Treves was the starting-point 
 of a new phase in the struggle : war to the death between France, with 
 all the allies she could procure, and the house of Hapsburg in Spain, 
 the Netherlands, and Austria. 
 
 The alliance of Oxenstiern with Louis XIII. had never been inter- 
 rupted, and it was therefore unnecessary that it should be renewed ; 
 but the battle of Nordlingen did necessitate new efforts on behalf of the 
 confederates, from which Richelieu did not shrink. A new arrange- 
 ment was accordingly negotiated during the time that the Emperor 
 and the Elector of Saxony were debating the peace of Prague, and, 
 by a treaty between Oxenstiern and Richelieu, the French agreed to 
 declare war against Spain, to subsidise the Swedes with 500,000 
 livres, and to furnish a force of 12,000 men to assist the confederates 
 in Germany. The Swedes on their part were to surrender Alsace, 
 except Benfeld, with Philippsburg and Speyer, to assist in recovering 
 the towns in Alsace which were now in Austrian hands, for the 
 French, and to grant the privileges of a neutral to any Catholic
 
 360 LECTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 power in Germany that should claim the protection of France. These 
 terms, which had been in the process of settlement sjnce November, 
 were set before the allies at Frankfort by Oxenstiern on March 11, 
 1635, and only accepted by them under his most earnest entreaty. 
 Bernard was at the same time made general-in-chief of the German 
 army. 
 
 On comparing the terms of the treaty of Paris with those of the 
 peace of Prague, we cannot, I think, look without astonishment at 
 the condition to which Germany was reduced. On the one hand, the 
 Emperor, the most bigoted Catholic, was agreeing with the protector 
 of the Lutheran party to drive the foreigners, Catholic and Pro- 
 testant, out of Germany ; and on the other, Louis XIII., as great a 
 Catholic, as great an oppressor of the Calvinists in his own 
 dominions as Ferdinand was of the Lutherans and Utraquists in his, 
 joining with the Swedes and the Calvinists of Germany in an attack on 
 the Catholic house in its three great seats of dominion on condition 
 of receiving as reward a great slice of German territory. The 
 national party, for such we may fairly regard the Protestants as being, 
 was di\dded between an emperor sworn to destroy Protestantism and 
 a king whose services were to be purchased by the alienation of a 
 German country. Out of such combinations, or from men capable 
 of such combinations, what good end could be expected ? In the 
 view of such want of principle, such hypocritical selfishness, it 
 is a relief to look at even uncompromising bigots like Ferdinand 
 and Maximilian, men who never lost sight of their purpose, mistaken 
 as it might be, who were capable even of sacrifice for their religion 
 such as it was, and were above the mere greed of territory in com- 
 parison. We could not look for two Gustavus Adolphuses in a 
 generation. 
 
 The war now changes its character very much ; it loses most of 
 the features which the policy of Gustavus had impressed upon it, and 
 becomes what it had been in the earlier stages — a struggle in which, 
 besides the religious interest, the imperial and national German 
 interests were largely and confusingly intermingled. 
 
 France was not prevailed on thus ostensibly to enter the field 
 until she had spun her web of alliances very close. On February 8, 
 1635, Richelieu had concluded a treaty with Holland for the con- 
 quest ^ and partition of the Spanish Netherlands. On July 11 at 
 Ptivoli the Dukes of Savoy and Parma joined in a design for the 
 conquest of the Milanese. The vast resources which the great 
 minister had been labouring to create for France were all now utilised : 
 two fleets and four armies. One army was for the Netherlands, 
 26,000 men ; another for Italy, of 14,000 ; a third, under the Duke 
 of Rohan, of 4,000, to secure the Valtelline, that Austrian and
 
 THE INTEEVENTION OF FRANCE IN THE WAE 361 
 
 Spanish troops might not pass to and fro to each other's assistance ; 
 and a fourth, under La Force, to help Bernard and the confederates 
 on the Ehine. 
 
 Of the two competing claims on the adhesion of Germany, the 
 peace of Prague, although not the most promising, drew in the 
 larger number of the smaller powers. The imperial cities were 
 weary of the war which exhausted their resources, destroyed their 
 trade, laid them open to exactions from both sides, and to dangers 
 for which their constitutions did not afford any real remedy. 
 Although they were hot for the Reformation, and probably more 
 sincerely so than any of the princes, although they had tasted less 
 of the plunder, and really cared more for the liberty of conscience, 
 still they were bodies of men to whom peace was more natural 
 than war, and who would be justified in placing themselves, upon 
 adequate conditions, on the side of that one of the two powers 
 which proved itself most able to guarantee peace. This, for many 
 reasons, was the imperial side. 
 
 The conclusion of the peace of Prague between Saxony and the 
 Empire was followed, therefore, at no great length of time, by the 
 adhesion of some of the greatest cities. Frankfort, the first, joined 
 on July 14. Nuremberg seems to have held back until June 1636. 
 The Elector of Brandenburg had already embraced it : the princes 
 of Anhalt and most of the members of the States of Lower Saxony 
 followed. The confederation of Heilbronn was finally dissolved 
 in the month of September ; and one by one all the princes who 
 were not formally excluded by the treaty itself gradually came in. 
 The war thus became one, not between the Emperor and League 
 against the Swedes and the confederation, but between France and 
 Sweden assisted by the excluded princes on the one side, and the 
 Emperor and King of Spain assisted by the princes who had taken 
 advantage of the treaty and the remainder of the League. 
 
 The peace of Prague and the treaty of Paris thus mark one of 
 the chief changes in the character of the war, and one of the epochs 
 at which the memory may rest in accumulating details. The 
 military details of 1635 are sufficiently intricate : everywhere and 
 continually fighting appears to be going on, and without much to 
 impress the memory. We may divide it according to the locality 
 of the struggle. 
 
 (1) In Italy, where the Duke of Rohan was to occupy the 
 Valtelline, and Crequi and the Duke of Savoy to operate against the 
 Milanese, little was done, and that little was unfavourable to 
 France. The Duke of Rohan, with the assistance of the Grisons, 
 occupied the Valtelline and so prevented any attempt on the part 
 of the Austrians to succour the Spaniards ; but the Spaniards were
 
 362 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1.519-1048 
 
 strong enough to fight their own battle. The Duke of Savoy and 
 Cr^qui had continual misunderstandings with one another, and so 
 laid themselves open to the enemy. And the Spaniards not only 
 were able to hinder them from doing anything decisive, but actually 
 succeeded in compelling the Duke of Parma to relinquish the 
 French alliance and to give up Sabionetta. This little episode runs 
 into the year 1636. 
 
 (2) In the Netherlands the French had greater success, but the 
 evils of the unnatural alliance between Richelieu and the Prince of 
 Orange prevented their being carried so far as they might. After 
 taking Tirlemont and Diest the allies besieged Louvain ; but the 
 brave little city held out so pertinaciously that it wearied both the 
 patience and the unanimity of the besiegers : a diversion by the 
 Spaniards on their own soil called off the Dutch, and the French, 
 who had sufiered heavily, had to retire without capturing the place ; 
 followed by a Spanish expedition which ravaged Picardy and 
 threatened the still more formidable invasion which was effected in 
 the next year. 
 
 (3) In Germany itself the struggle was now chiefly confined to 
 the Rhine and the Palatinate. There, on the imperial side, Gallas 
 and the Duke of Lorraine were opposed to Duke Bernard and the 
 Swedes, Cardinal de la Valette, and the French. By the recovery 
 of Philippsburg in January 1635 and the capture of Worms they 
 were able to make their way into Lorraine, where the Duke had 
 still some adherents and was able to maintain himself. They took 
 Heidelberg and Dilsburg, swept the Palatinate, and blockaded 
 Mentz, which, notwithstanding the efforts of the allies to relieve it, 
 was taken on October 24. Frankenthal fell in October ; Konigshof, 
 the last place held by the Swedes in Franconia, early in December. 
 Louis XIIT. put himself again at the head of his army and 
 called out a feudal levy throughout France. In the meantime 
 Baner was defending the Swedish acquisitions in North- Eastern 
 Germany against the Saxons with but scanty success. He defeated 
 them with a loss of 7,000 men at Diemitz in October, and after- 
 wards took Havelberg ; but the imperialists took Stargard, and in 
 the obscurity of the petty struggles of that remote region it is 
 not easy to discern that either side had much advantage. The 
 army of Gallas, on its return from Lorraine, established itself at 
 Worms. 
 
 In the midst of all this confusion, it is somewhat puzzling 
 to be told that Duke Bernard, who had lost all his treasure at 
 Kaiserslautern, was in treaty with the Emperor for reconciliation, 
 and had actually to be bought off by the French by the promise of 
 Alsace as an hereditary state and a large subsidy. This transaction
 
 THE INTEKVENTION OF FRANCE IN THE WAR 363 
 
 is dated in October, and a treaty arranging for a truce of twenty-six 
 years between Sweden and Poland was made in September. These 
 seem to consolidate the Swedish chances a little more ; but the 
 latter was purchased by the surrender of the conquests which 
 Gusta^'^ls had made in Prussia. 
 
 The frequent negotiations between France and the Swedes seem, 
 however, to show that Richelieu was awaking to the great importance 
 of the alliance, and that it was now courted on the French side 
 rather than on the Swedish. Oxenstiern himself was weary of war, 
 and inclined to despair of success ; Baner alone, of the Swedish 
 generals, maintained the spirit and skill of Gustavus ; Bernard was 
 wavering. The three treaties to which I refer especially are two 
 already mentioned, that of Compiegne, between Louis XIII. and 
 Christina, on April 28, 1635, and that with Bernard October 26 ; and 
 a third, the actual conclusion of which falls in 1636, the treaty of 
 Wismar, March 20, involving a confederation to last three years, on 
 the old terms of France subsidising the Swedes. 
 
 The warfare of 1636 is, so far as Germany is concerned, not less 
 puzzling than that of 1635. The attack on France engrossed the 
 attention of the world, and probably most of the force that was 
 available on the Austrian and Spanish side. Three armies attacked 
 France ; one in Picardy, which was led by Thomas of Savoy, took 
 La Capelle and St. Leger-le-Catelet in July, and Corbie in August, 
 advancing so near Paris that the Court fled to Orleans and EicheHeu 
 even talked of resigning. To meet this Louis XIII. again took up 
 arms, and as usual with e£fect ; he recovered Corbie in November, and 
 drove the enemy out of the country before the winter. A second 
 army, under Gallas, passed the Rhine at Breisach, and, joining the 
 Duke of Lorraine, invaded Burgundy, where they besieged St. Jean 
 de Losne a little half -fortified place at the confluence of the Ouche 
 and the Saone, but were forced to retire without taking it, after 
 a siege of three weeks, by the weather, famine, and pestilence. 
 A third Spanish army made an ineffectual attack on Guienne. So 
 much is tolerably clear. 
 
 In Germany, Baner in the autumn did some great things. With 
 a little army of 12,000 men he recovered the Swedish supremacy in 
 Brandenburg and Pomerania ; defeated the Saxons and imperialists 
 at Wittstock on September 24 ; drove them through Hesse, took 
 Erfurt, entered Meissen and besieged Leipsic. Wrangel, co-operating 
 with him, scoured the March of Brandenburg, took Frankfort, and 
 besieged Kiistrin. The Saxons had, however, taken Magdeburg, in 
 spite of Bauer's efforts to save it, on July 3. 
 
 Duke Bernard was in Alsace, which he now regarded as his 
 own, just as he had before regarded Franconia ; the Cardinal of La
 
 864 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Valette, son of the Duke of Epernon, having joined him. Together 
 they took Saverne, and helped to drive Gallas out of- Burgundy. In 
 WestphaUa Lesley recovered Minden, April 26 ; and the Landgrave 
 William of Hesse compelled Lambri to raise the siege of Hanau. 
 This is pretty nearly all. 
 
 More important civil transactions were, however, going on. The 
 Pope was attempting a mediation ; he sent Cardinal Ghinetti to 
 Cologne to propose terms of peace. The French showed some signs 
 of acquiescence, but now the Swedes held back : and this particular 
 negotiation, like that former one which had been held at Cologne in 
 the war of emancipation of the Netherlands, dragged on for several 
 years. On September 5, 1636, the Emperor called a Diet at Ratisbon, 
 partly to dehberate on the mediation of the Pope and the King of 
 Denmark, principally to secure the election of his son as King of the 
 Romans. This was accomplished at last. The votes of Saxony and 
 Brandenburg had been secured by the peace of Prague ; the Elector 
 of Treves was in prison at Vienna ; Bavaria and Cologne were safe, 
 as was also the Elector of Mentz. The election was completed, the 
 Palatine house alone protesting, on December 22. 
 
 Ferdinand II. survived the attainment of this, one of his great 
 political aims, only six weeks ; dying at Vienna on February 15, 1637. 
 His death, as we shall see, marks another stage. As for his 
 character, we have, I think, seen as much as we need of it already. 
 We have, I trust, done ample justice to his great ability, his thorough 
 honesty of purpose, and his firmness in adversity : we have re-echoed 
 the sentiments of all historians as to the misdirection of his aims, 
 his bigotry, his unscrupulous intolerance, his subservience to the 
 Jesuits. If we were Jesuits we should probably say that he was a 
 good man and a good king. As we are not, we will content ourselves 
 with saying that if it had not been for the Jesuits he would have 
 been a good man and a good king. He was a man of pure life, kind 
 and gentle in every private relation, and inflexibly just everywhere 
 but where his religion was concerned. There we must allow he was 
 a tyrant. Judged by his own principles — and I question whether we 
 as men have a right to judge a man morally by any other than those 
 which he himself maintains — the balance is considerably in his 
 favour.
 
 LECTUEE IX 
 
 NINE YEARS OF WAR, 1637-1645 
 
 We have still before us eleven years of the thirty over which the 
 war extends ; and it is very desirable that the present course of 
 lectures, of which only four now remain, should cover the whole 
 ground. This can only be done by confining ourselves to the 
 chronological statement of the events of the war as closely as 
 possible until we can bring them to a conclusion, and then turn back 
 to comment on their general bearing, and on the politics of the 
 states engaged in them. And this, I think, we shall be enabled to 
 do without much crowding, for, so far as the political combinations 
 go, we have now — with the exception of one change, that which placed 
 the Lutheran party again in opposition to the Emperor — exhausted 
 them. The principal characters soon die off, and, although the war 
 continues with little flagging and little more energy than before, it 
 presents us with no grand events or sudden revolutions of fortune 
 until we approach the close. 
 
 Ferdinand II. died, not at the point at which his successes had 
 reached their maximum, but before that decline began, gradual and 
 scarcely intermitted, which compelled his son to conclude the peace 
 of Westphalia. During the whole period that follows, negotiations 
 for peace were proceeding, under the mediation of Denmark at 
 Hamburg, and under that of the Pope at Cologne ; and yet there is 
 no real intermission of fighting. The battles and sieges are nearly 
 as wearisome as the negotiations. Ferdinand III. was in some 
 respects a wiser man than his father : that is, he was more tolerant 
 religiously and less ambitious ; but he was not in any respect, except so 
 far as his ability as a general goes, so strong a man as Ferdinand II., 
 and he had, moreover, to contend with the exhaustion of power 
 which his father's pertinacious policy had involved. He was, like his 
 father, a good and honest Catholic, but he was not so great a man 
 by any means. At the beginning of his reign, in the opening of 
 1637, we find that Baner is the great and leading sj)irit in the 
 Swedish host, and Duke Bernard has rather sunk his character of a 
 German hero in his desire to found an hereditary state, under the 
 auspices of France, in Alsace. In Germany generally the peace of 
 Prague has caught the Lutheran princes, William of Hesse being the 
 chief exception ; and the Palatine family are unable to make them- 
 selves heard except by feeble protests, the Papal negotiators at 
 Cologne being unwilling to admit their envoys to learn the terms of 
 peace.
 
 366 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Tl 
 
 'he Swedish generals in the North, Wrangel in Pomerania and 
 Baner in Lower Saxony, Brandenburg, and Lusatia, begin the year with 
 some conspicuous successes : Baner, in January 1637, had made his 
 way so far south as to besiege Deipsic. In March, however, the death 
 of poor Duke Bogislas of Pomerania necessitated the settlement of the 
 question that had been so long moved. The Elector of Brandenburg 
 made his claim as heir ; Baner responded by producing the treaty by 
 which the possession of the duchy had been secured to Sweden at all 
 events to the end of the war. He accordingly refused to vacate his 
 position. The Elector at last heartily joined the Emperor, and 
 Gallas was sent with the imperial force to compel the surrender. 
 Hatzfeld and Gortz, who had been acting with considerable success 
 on the Elbe, joined Gallas and succeeded in driving Baner out of the 
 Mark into Pomerania itself. In June the Saxons with the imperial 
 forces cleared Lusatia of the Swedes, drove Wrangel across the 
 Wartha, took Landsberg, and prepared to drive Baner to extremities. 
 In spite of a brilliant diversion by an attack on Silesia, Gallas over- 
 whelmed Wrangel and got possession of all Pomerania to the west 
 of the Oder, except Anclam, Stettin, and Stralsund. The autumn 
 was now come, and having garrisoned the forts that were in his 
 hands, he retired into Saxony for the winter. 
 
 In the West, Bernard, having in April renewed his treaty about 
 Alsace with France, joined his forces with the French under Du 
 Hallier and crossed the Ehine. The imperialists under V/erth attacked 
 him in his camp unsuccessfully ; but after a few skirmishes which 
 are not worth the name of battles he retired into Lorraine. 
 
 The great gain of the imperialists in this season w^as the capture 
 of Ehrenbreitstein, which was starved into surrender in June. The 
 other event of the year was the death of William the Faithful, land- 
 grave of Hesse-Cassel, on September 24. His heir was a child ; the 
 guardianship was disputed by his mother and the head of the rival 
 branch, the Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt, who was imperialist ; the 
 dispute paralysed the action of the little state for a long time, but the 
 mother at last succeeded in vindicating her right and carried out to 
 the end of the war the principles and policy of her husband. 
 
 So far for Germany. Outside of Germany, the French were 
 successful in recovering from the Spaniards the conquests they had 
 made the previous year in Picardy, and in repelling the invasion on 
 the south. They, moreover, beat the Duke of Modena, who was 
 commanding in Italy for the Spaniards ; and their ally, Duke 
 Bernard, kept a tight hold on Lorraine. On the other hand, they 
 lost the adhesion of the Duke of Parma, who was obliged to renounce 
 the treaty of alliance ; they lost their possession of the Valtelline, the 
 Duke of Eohan being ordered out by the Grisons, and the com-
 
 NINE YEARS OF WAR, 1637-1645 367 
 
 munication between the Spanish and Austrian territory reopened. 
 The Elector of Treves was released from imprisonment on condition 
 of renouncing his league with France ; and the Duke of Savoy, dying, 
 left a disputed guardianship of his son, in which the imperial party 
 represented by Prince Thomas of Carignan and the Cardinal of Savoy 
 were able to neutralise the efforts made by the Duchess Christina, 
 who was Louis XIII.'s sister, to assist France. On the whole, 
 although the French had some brilliant successes, the balance of 
 gain on the year is in favour of Ferdinand. 
 
 The following year, 1638, may be distributed in much the same 
 way but with a different result. Again we have Baner and Gallas 
 in the north-east, Bernard and Werth on the Rhine, and the French 
 fighting on the Pyrenees and in the Netherlands. In February, in 
 Pomerania, the imperialists are successful. Gartz and Warnemiinde 
 fall into their hands, and Mecklenburg is seriously imperilled. In 
 July Baner recovers all that had been lost, and after retaking 
 Wolgast in September drives Gallas into the Magdeburg territory and 
 thence into Silesia and Bohemia. 
 
 (2) Duke Bernard had some wonderful successes. He began the 
 year by the siege of Rheinfeld ; after one reverse at the hands of 
 Werth and Savelli, he won a great victory over them on March 5, 
 taking them both prisoners. After the battle he captured the town, 
 and after it Roteln and Freiburg in Breisgau. In July he beat the 
 Bavarians at Witteweir ; and he crowned his successes by the 
 capture, in December, of Breisach, which had so long formed the 
 strength of the imperial position on the Upper Rhine. This done, 
 he wintered in Burgundy. 
 
 (3) The success of France against the Spaniards continued. 
 The Prince of Conde won battles in Navarre ; the Archbishop of 
 Bordeaux burned the Spanish fleet (August 22). The Capuchin 
 Joseph, Richelieu's confidant, died. A new school of French gene- 
 rals was springing up, whose exploits are as confusing as their 
 effects are evanescent. The interesting scenes of the war are on the 
 same ground as those of last year, Pomerania and Alsace ; but the 
 victories that were won in 1637 correspond to defeats in 1638 : the 
 attackers and defenders change places, and the luck is reversed. 
 I should not omit a bold attempt of the heir of the Palatinate, 
 Charles Lewis, to recover his inheritance in February 1638. He 
 invaded Westphalia with Swedish and English succours, but was 
 beaten by Hatzfeld at Lemgo in October. 
 
 In 1639 we have at least a definite and rememberable course of 
 events. Baner and Bernard seem to have hit upon a plan for co- 
 operation on the old principles : Baner to invade Bohemia, Bernard 
 Bavaria ; and so to advance in concert on the hereditary states.
 
 368 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 With this intention Baner inarched out of Saxony in April, entered 
 Bohemia, driving the Austrians before him ; defeated them at 
 Brandeis on May 20, and approached Prague ; finding, however, that 
 the people did not rise as he had expected them to do, he withdrew 
 into Moravia to wait for the movement of Bernard. Poor Bernard, 
 however, was near his end. His one exploit of the year was the 
 siege of Thann, which held out until late in the spring. His fatigues 
 and anxieties seem to have worn him out. He fell sick of a fever at 
 Neuburg, and died there on July 8 ; at the zenith of his chances, 
 perhaps, although not of his successes. The French were sparing no 
 pains to make him entirely their own ; they wanted Bernard, but 
 still more they wanted Breisach. Invitations to Paris poured in 
 upon him, and even offers of marriage if he would ally himself with 
 the great cardinal. His illness compelled him to send an agent with 
 excuses ; Richelieu tampered with the agent for the betrayal of 
 Alsace ; and the knowledge of this treachery probably aggravated 
 Bernard's complaint. 
 
 On his death-bed he left Alsace to his brothers, of whom William, 
 the reigning Duke of Weimar, was reconciled with the Emperor. 
 But the French, whose subsidies had contributed largely to the 
 conquest of the country, refused to recognise the claim. The dukes 
 could not of course rely on imperial aid for the recovery of a territory 
 conquered from the imperial house. So, by hook or by crook, France 
 succeeded in getting the whole of Alsace into her power. 
 
 In Bernard the anti- Austrian cause lost its greatest enemy. 
 Henceforth Baner remains, for the little time he lives, the great 
 general of the party ; but Baner is a very different man from 
 Bernard, whom his admirers would place but a little below the rank 
 of Gustavus Adolphus. In him, then, the war loses one more of the 
 few objects of interest that light up this generally dreary portion 
 of it. 
 
 The French employed this year six armies : La Meilleraye in the 
 Netherlands ; De Feuquieres on the Luxemburg frontier ; Marshal 
 Chatillon in Champagne ; Conde in Languedoc ; Longue^dlle in 
 Italy ; La Valette in Piedmont. On the death of Bernard, Longue- 
 ville took up his standing-ground in Alsace, but his victories belong 
 to the next year. Piccolomini defeated Feuquieres ; La Valette and 
 Prince Thomas played a drawn game in Piedmont, but the town of 
 Turin fell into the hands of the prince in August, the citadel remain- 
 ing to the French. Little else was really done. Poor Charles Lewis, 
 on whose behalf nominally the war was raging, put in a foolish claim 
 to the succession of Duke Bernard, but the French were not going 
 to stand that ; they arrested him and sent him to Vincennes ; and he 
 was not released until he had surrendered his pretensions to Alsace.
 
 NINE YEAES OF WAR, 1637-164.5 869 
 
 We thus come to the year 1640, marked by the death of the old 
 Elector of Brandenburg and by a marked change of management in 
 that part of Germany under his successor Frederick William, the 
 Great Elector and founder of the Prussian monarchy. Another 
 thing that makes the year generally important is the successful 
 attempt of Portugal to emancipate itself from the rule of Spain, and 
 the revolt of Catalonia, which the exhaustion of the Spanish treasury 
 had compelled the king to tax, contrary to the privileges of the 
 country. These events materially weakened the imperial alliance, 
 and opened the way for advantages of which Eichelieu lost no time 
 in availing himself. 
 
 The year generally was one of conferences. The congress for 
 the Danish mediation was working at Hamburg, the Papal one at 
 Cologne : the Emperor was holding Diets, at Nuremberg and at 
 Eatisbon, and negotiating with the Landgravine of Hesse on one side 
 and Baner on the other. The raising of funds was now becoming to 
 the Emperor a greater difficulty than ever. The fighting, however, 
 although slackened, was not intermitted. Early in the year Baner 
 was driven out of his conquests in Bohemia and Moravia, and retired 
 upon Meissen. The Duke of Longueville came down the Ehine and 
 not only took possession of Bernard's place in Alsace but drove the 
 Bavarians into the duchy of Wiirtemberg, and, taking towns all 
 along as he descended, carried war into Westphalia. But the 
 negotiations that were in progress rather tied the hands of the 
 German princes. On the side of Italy and France, the siege of Turin 
 occupied a good part of the year ; it surrendered to the French in 
 September. The Spaniards were, moreover, beaten at sea. 
 
 The political mark of the year is made by the signs of an 
 approaching break-up of the status established after the treaty of 
 Prague. The Landgravine of Hesse- Cassel, finding it impossible to 
 get what she thought justice from the Emperor, determined to throw 
 herself on the side of the Swedes, and the Dukes of Brunswick, un- 
 able to get the security they wanted for their hold on the bishopric 
 of Hildesheim, followed the example. The conduct of the Diet at 
 Eatisbon, which was the first general Diet held since the war broke 
 out, did not mend the Emperor's position. The estates were loud 
 in their professions of a desire for peace. Ferdinand repre- 
 sented, soundly enough, that the only way towards peace was an 
 alliance of all Germany against France and Sweden, which the 
 peace of Prague also involved. They accepted the peace of Prague 
 as the basis of a settlement, but they begrudged money for the 
 providing an army ; only Bavaria and Austria consented to make 
 anything like an adequate grant. The seats of the peace conferences 
 were brought nearer : the papal one moved from Cologne to Miinster, 
 
 B B
 
 370 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 the Danish from Hamburg to Osnabriick ; contrary to the Emperor's 
 wish, for this move placed them nearer and more under the influence 
 of France than they had been. He was compelled also to allow 
 deputies from all the states of the Empire to attend on their 
 deliberations. 
 
 The historians mention further as a sign of the times the 
 publication of a work by Chemnitz, the Chancellor of Stettin, on the 
 constitution of the Empire, in which the authority of the Holy 
 Roman Caesar is treated with little ceremony, and the theory 
 advanced that Germany is rather an aristocratic confederation than 
 a basis or remnant of universal empire. The book was probably 
 inspired by the Swedes, but the doctrine gained ground among the 
 jurists of the Protestant states, and produced, no doubt, some 
 important effects on the form which the peace ultimately took. 
 
 The year 1641 opens with a rousing incident. The Diet was 
 still sitting at Eatisbon, the Emperor there in person, when Baner 
 pounced down upon it and scattered it in the wildest confusion. He 
 had collected men in Saxony, where we left him, 15,000 altogether ; 
 had added a French contingent under Guebriant, of 6,000 ; and 
 started at Christmas for the South. From Erfurt he marched by 
 Hof right down upon Eatisbon ; the Danube was frozen, and so the 
 walls of the city could be reached on all sides ; Ferdinand had a very 
 narrow escape from capture ; and but for an opportune thaw the place 
 would have been taken. On the arrival of the imperial forces, the 
 Swedes and French retired. Guebriant went back to the Ehine ; 
 Baner to Bohemia, closely pursued by Piccolomini ; through Bohemia 
 to Saxony, and so into the bishopric of Halberstadt. At Halberstadt 
 Baner died ; his illness was produced by intemperance : the date of 
 his death is May 10. 
 
 Torstenson, another pupil of Gustavus, whose reputation is not 
 inferior to Baner's own, succeeded him in command. A little before 
 Duke George of Liineburg, who was besieging the imperial garrison 
 at Wolfenbiittel, also died : his brother and successor, Augustus, 
 went over to the Emperor. Before the siege of Wolfenbiittel was 
 raised the Bavarians and Austrians sustained a severe defeat from 
 the Swedes on June 19. After the appointment of Torstenson to 
 the command of the Swedes there was a great deal of fighting in 
 Northern Germany, in which, with a few exceptions, the imperialists 
 had the advantage. Torstenson wintered in Liineburg, Piccolomini 
 in Hesse and Southern Brunswick. I may here remark again that 
 some of the greatest successes of the Swedes were obtained by their 
 practice of commencing operations in the depth of winter, whilst the 
 imperial forces were safe in winter quarters. In January 1642 
 Torstenson left his winter resting-place and came down like a thunder-
 
 NINE YEARS OF WAR, 1637-1645 371 
 
 bolt on Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, carrying all before him. The 
 imperial generals, Piccolomini and the Archduke Leopold, who were 
 diverted for the moment by an irruption of the French under 
 Guebriant into WestphaKa, hastily mustered their forces for the 
 defence of Austria, for Vienna itself was threatened, and, but foi' 
 the sturdy defence of Brieg in Silesia, must have fallen before it 
 could be relieved. 
 
 Before these two generals with superior force Torstenson fell back 
 through Silesia into Saxony, and, having at the beginning of 
 November reached Leipsic, awaited the attack on the plain of 
 Breitenfeld, where Tilly had experienced his first great defeat. 
 Again the ground was lucky for the Swedes : on November 2 the 
 Austrian force was completely beaten ; 10,000 men on that side were 
 killed or taken prisoners. Leipsic was taken and the Archduke con- 
 ducted his shattered force back to Bohemia. 
 
 This is the great feature of the year. It is marked in France by 
 the busy continuation of the war in Navarre, the discovery of the plot 
 of Cinq-Mars with Orleans and the Spaniards, for the deposition 
 of Eichelieu ; and by the death of Richelieu himself. The successes of 
 Gu6briant in North-west Germany, which I mentioned as dividing 
 the attention of the Austrian commanders during Torstenson's march 
 on Silesia, were also considerable. On January 17, he beat the army 
 under Lamboy and Mercy at Kempen ; took both the generals and 
 5,000 of their troops prisoners, and gained possession in consequence 
 of the whole Electorate of Cologne. 
 
 The events of 1642 go thus sadly against Austria. The year 
 1643 opened, as usual, by a rapid movement of the Swedes into 
 Silesia; followed by their retreat before the imperial army, with 
 a sudden change of tactics. Here we again touch on tenable ground. 
 The Emperor had been long negotiating with Christian of Denmark, 
 who was beginning to recover strength and loved the Swedes as little 
 as ever ; an alliance was accordingly made. Christian was to attack 
 the Swedes in their own land and so, if possible, draw them away 
 from Germany. But the Swedes were more than a match for 
 Christian both in war and diplomacy ; instead of waiting for news 
 from Sweden, Torstenson marched from Silesia into Holstein and 
 absolutely conquered Denmark at a blow ; only Gliickstadt and 
 Krempen held out against him ; whilst Horn, who had been exchanged 
 after the battle of Rheinfeld for Werth, devastated the islands. 
 
 Christian, having once ruined himself and his kingdom for the 
 Protestant ascendency, did it a second time for the Catholic. The 
 Emperor felt bound to do what he could for his ally, and, whilst 
 Torstenson was in Denmark, sent his army to cut off his return ; but 
 he was unfortunately weakened by his change of commanders. The 
 
 B B 2
 
 372 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Cardinal Infant, Governor of the Netherlands, died in 1641 ; the 
 Archduke Leopold was called away from the Austrian army to 
 succeed him ; and in his place as generalissimo the Emperor appointed 
 Gallas, Avhos'e conduct and successes up to this time certainly seemed 
 to warrant the nomination. Unfortunately, it was offensive to the 
 two next best leaders, Piccolomini and Hatzfeld, who resigned their 
 commissions and entered the service of Spain and Bavaria. With 
 them apparently Gallas's luck deserted him, for he never did anything 
 great again ; and he was especially unfortunate in this expedition. 
 It reached Holstein in the winter, and advanced early in 1644 to 
 shut up Torstenson in Jutland. But Torstenson was too quick 
 for him ; he seized Eendsburg, thereby preventing Gallas from 
 entering Denmark at all ; and then, taking the offensive, promptly 
 drove him back into Lower Saxony, where, at Magdeburg, he reduced 
 him to the most wretched condition. 
 
 The army of Gallas, worn out by unusual exertions, demoralised by 
 constant repulses and disappointments covering the whole of the 
 year 1644, was scarcely any longer worth Torstenson's consideration. 
 He left the management of it to his lieutenant Konigsmark, and 
 marched off with the bulk of his army into Silesia again. Poor 
 GaUas in November made an attempt to get his forces past Konigs- 
 mark into Austria again, but he was beaten at Yutterbuck, on the 
 Saxon and Brandenburg frontier, a few miles north of Wittenberg, 
 and only scattered detachments ever reached home. 
 
 During this time the French undertook the conduct of the war on 
 the Rhine, wisely confining their attention to that frontier, and, 
 under the more cautious policy of Mazarin, keeping their forces 
 within reach of Paris. Guebriant, after his victory at Kempen early 
 in 1643, found himself chiefly opposed by the Bavarian army. After 
 moving and countermoving through Franconia, he attempted to 
 penetrate the duchy of Wiirtemberg, and besieged Eothweil, but he 
 was killed in the siege, and his army, under Rantzau, after capturing 
 the place, was beaten at Duttlingen by Mercy, the Bavarian general, 
 with a loss of 6,000 men and all the artillery, on November 25, 1643. 
 The battle of Rocroi, won by the Duke of Enghien, afterwards the great 
 Conde, over the Spaniards under Francisco de Mello, on May 19, 1643, 
 had struck a fatal blow at the already declining power of Spain, which 
 far more than balanced these occasional victories. As Rantzau was 
 regarded as incompetent, the Viscount of Turenne was called from 
 Italy to command the French army in Germany, and with Enghien 
 and Grammont to consolidate the results of the battle of Rocroi. 
 
 Although the victory at Duttlingen had somewhat refreshed the 
 spirits of the Austrians, the condition of affairs at the opening of 
 1644 was very discouraging. The great and already famous French
 
 NINE YEAES OF WAR, 1637-1645 373 
 
 generals were on the Ehine ; Gallas was losing army and fame in 
 the unhappy expedition to Denmark ; and now another old influence 
 hostile to the Hapsburg house all at once rose to life on the side of 
 Hungary. Torstenson and the French diplomatists had negotiated 
 an alliance with George Ragotzki, the Prince of Transylvania, which 
 threatened to renew the terrors of the days of Bethlen Gabor. For 
 the moment Ferdinand thwarted him ; concluded a truce for twenty 
 years with the Turks, on whose assistance Ragotzki had reckoned, 
 and drove back with a handful of veterans the inroads of the Tran- 
 sylvanian cavalry. But the evil was only put o£f for a time ; and the 
 next year Ragotzki contributed in no small measure towards the 
 imminent ruin of Austria. 
 
 Thus distracted, Ferdinand had little chance of assisting 'the 
 Bavarians against Enghien and Turenne in 1644. The former 
 fought bravely as long as they could ; in May they besieged Freiburg 
 in Breisgau, and, in spite of an attempt of Turenne to raise the siege, 
 they took it on July 28. But a few days after Mercy was attacked 
 in his intrenched camp near the same city by the united French 
 army, and completely beaten. In the strength of this victory the 
 French took Philippsburg and Mentz, Mannheim and Speyer. At 
 one moment, then, Gallas's army was perishing in Saxony ; Mercy 
 escaping at full speed from Enghien, in Swabia ; and the very 
 existence of Austria proper was threatened by Ragotzki. So ends 
 the year 1644. 
 
 The next year seems almost to extinguish hope. On all three 
 sides Austria was beaten or helpless. Take the French first. 
 Enghien left Turenne in command after the conquest of the 
 Palatinate, and his forces were held together with difficulty, badly 
 paid and badly provisioned. He was obliged by Mercy to retire 
 from the vicinity of the Neckar and wait for reinforcements. These 
 were brought up by Enghien in person, and with them he fell on 
 Mercy at Nordlingen on August 3, 1645. This was one of the greatest 
 battles of the war ; but, unlike the first battle of Nordlingen in 1634, 
 it was a great defeat of the Cathohcs. Mercy, after an heroic defence, 
 was killed, and Turenne remained master of Franconia ; a vast 
 number of prisoners were taken, and Bavaria permanently disabled. 
 
 The French general, agreeable to the policy of the last year, did 
 not advance any further into Germany, but devoted himself to the 
 recovery of the electorate of Treves. That city was taken and 
 restored to its Elector on November 19. The same month that the 
 battle of Nordlingen was fought, and Bavaria, the oldest ally of the 
 Emperor, paralysed. Christian of Denmark was compelled by the 
 successes of Konigsmark to renounce the imperial alliance. This 
 general, after scattering the army of Gallas at Yutterbuck, had
 
 374 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 returned to the task of humiliating Denmark, seized all the cities 
 of Lower Saxony, Bremen and Verden for instance, where Danish 
 authority had been so studiously established; he had then taken 
 Leipsic, Torgau, and Meissen, and compelled the Elector of Saxony 
 to sue 'for an armistice, and then joined Torstenson in Moravia. 
 Christian's peace with Sweden was concluded on August 13, 1645, 
 and on the most humiliating conditions. 
 
 Worst of all Ferdinand's misfortunes, however, now was his 
 position at home ; where, without more than the remains of an army, 
 he lay open to the attacks of Torstenson and Konigsmark on the 
 north and Eagotzki on the east. His scanty force, the remains of 
 Gallas's army, had been placed under Hatzfeld, Gallas being dis- 
 graced, and with a Bavarian contingent had fought a battle at 
 Jankow (February 24, 1645) between Tabor and Prague, in which the 
 imperial army was quite destroyed and Hatzfeld captured. The 
 victorious Swedes occupied all Moravia and came down on the 
 Danube above Vienna. Ferdinand rushed back from Prague to 
 defend Vienna, but found the enemy in possession of the approaches : 
 he had to go to Eatisbon, the Empress and the court fled to Gratz, 
 and a siege of Vienna was imminent. Eagotzki was now over- 
 running Hungary (May), and, by contributing large reinforcements 
 to Torstenson, enabling the Swedes to make the most effectual use of 
 their veteran forces. 
 
 All things looking so hopeless, it is somewhat astonishing to find 
 how very easily the tables were turned. Ferdinand did anything but 
 despair. Fortunately he had time to collect, under the Archduke 
 Leopold and Gallas, forces enough to keep the Swedes north of the 
 Danube. On May 20 he recovers the bridge at Vienna. He patched 
 up a peace with Eagotzki (July 26, 1645), who was already tired of his 
 allies and ready to play the part of Bethlen Gabor. Thus relieved 
 from fear of Turks and Transylvanians, Ferdinand was able to levy 
 a considerable force in Hungary ; with this he relieved Bavaria ; and 
 was actually able to take the offensive against Torstenson, who had 
 been besieging Brunn when he might have taken Vienna. Torstenson 
 retired before the Archduke, and, after passing into Bohemia, was 
 obliged by illness to resign his command (December 4) in the course 
 of the winter to Wrangel, whom we have seen already commanding 
 with Baner in Mecklenburg and Pomerania. 
 
 This extraordinary effort of Austria, seeming to be in extremis, 
 oppressed on every side, is certainly one of the most curious effects 
 of the war. Unlike her condition in 1618, when, although for a 
 moment powerless, her resources were unexhausted and her allies 
 fresh, she was now impoverished, depopulated, weakened in every 
 respect, and saw her allies either ruined for her sake, like Bavaria
 
 NINE YEARS OF WAR, 1637-1645 375 
 
 and Denmark, or preparing to desert her. No doubt the illness of 
 Torstenson helped to save her ; but Torstenson was always an 
 invalid, and yet in spite of his infirmities had exhibited a power and 
 energy during the last two years in no wise inferior to what Gus- 
 tavus and Bernard had shown before him. Next to this we must 
 place the exhaustion of the powers of the other combatants ; for, 
 although France was in the field and strong, her purpose was now 
 not so much to drive the Hapsburgs to despair as to secure the 
 frontier of the Rhine for herself and to compact her conquests ; and 
 in the interior of Germany the long war and disorganisation con- 
 sequent upon it had produced their natural effects. 
 
 It was not that the Thirty Years' War was an especially bloody 
 one ; its armies were never very large ; the largest of them would 
 scarcely be called an army at the present day or in the nomenclature 
 of nineteenth-century warfare ; and often they were very small. The 
 battles were fought far more by tactics and skill of handling than by 
 numbers. Yet the result of what was now twenty-seven years' 
 disturbance of every relation of society had had its natural effects. 
 The land, where it was not thinned of its inhabitants, was overrun 
 and devastated by the mercenaries who fought on both sides and 
 plundered alike friend and foe. On the side of Hungary, which 
 since the death of Bethlen Gabor had enjoyed comparative peace, 
 matters were not quite so bad : and Ferdinand was able thus, as his 
 successors have so often done, to use Hungary for the salvation 
 of Austria. 
 
 I think we may say that in this lecture we have imitated 
 Ferdinand's example. We have cut through an enormous mass of 
 afflicting details and at last begin to see daylight. The back of the 
 work is fairly broken ; and we may, fully recognising that we are not 
 out of the wood, reckon on finishing the fighting part of the war 
 in another lecture. If we can do this we may yet redeem our 
 promise of getting a glimpse at least of the political aspects of the 
 period, and of the contemporaneous condition of the other States 
 which have a history of their own outside and independent of this 
 great and engrossing struggle. 
 
 LECTURE X 
 
 THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAK, 1646-1648 
 
 We have brought down our survey now to the end of 1645. We 
 remember that peace negotiations have been going on at Miinster and 
 Osnabriiek for several years ; that the Emperor has gradually lost
 
 376 LECTUEES ON EUKOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 some of the most important allies that he made by the treaty of 
 Pj..^„xie — the Elector of Brandenburg, already long intriguing 
 against him, and John George of Saxony and Christian of Denmark, 
 compelled by the successes of Torstenson and Konigsmark to make 
 separate treaties of peace ; that the last ally of any importance left 
 to the Emperor is Maximilian of Bavaria ; that Wrangel has just 
 succeeded Torstenson in command of the Swedes, and that Turenne 
 is the general to whom France now confides her interests in the 
 protracted struggle ; that the Archduke Leopold and Gallas are 
 again at the head of the imperial armies ; that Wrangel and the 
 Swedes are wintering in Bohemia, Leopold and the imperialists 
 watching them on the Danube. 
 
 Fortunately for us, the campaign of 1646 is an intelligible one. 
 Wrangel's design is to join the French near Mentz, and then concert 
 action with Turenne. His own army is diminished and worn out 
 with the fatigues of the last year, whilst the imperial one is being 
 rapidly recruited. It is necessary for his own preservation to effect a 
 union with the French, The Archduke's purpose is to prevent the 
 junction and to take the two foes separately. Accordingly, very 
 early in the year, Wrangel left Bohemia and proceeded through 
 Meissen in the direction of Westphalia to meet Konigsmark first, 
 then to descend to Bacharach, where Turenne was expected to cross 
 the Ehine. After occupying Hoxter on April 24, and Paderborn 
 on May 5, he effected at Wetzlar the junction with Konigsmark, who 
 had also entered Westphalia, taking Lemgo and some other towns, 
 and thence he turned south into Hesse, where the Archduke was 
 waiting to intercept him on the way to Bacharach. 
 
 The Swedes were not strong enough to risk a battle ; they accord- 
 ingly took up their position at Amoneburg and waited for news. 
 The Archduke posted himself with his army in the neighbourhood of 
 Wetzlar. Turenne, however, seeing that a junction with the Swedes 
 from the side of Mentz would be impracticable, had crossed the 
 Rhine at Wesel, north of Cologne, and was marching round into 
 Hesse from the north. The move was successful, and the junction 
 was at last effected at Giessen on July 31. It was now the turn 
 of the imperialists to avoid a battle : they withdrew to Ilmenstadt, 
 and let the joint armies pass southwards. 
 
 The allies now descended on the Main, took Aschaffenburg, 
 ravaged Franconia and Eastern Swabia, crossed the Lech at Rain 
 September 11, and entered Bavaria, besieging Augsburg and taking 
 everything else by the way. The Archduke, who was equal on this 
 occasion to his reputation, saw that no time was to be lost. He cut 
 across from Hesse to the Upper Palatinate in order to save Ratisbon. 
 This he succeeded in doing, aided partly by the reluctance of the
 
 THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAR, 1646-1648 377 
 
 French to depart too ar from the Rhine ; he also raised the siege of 
 Augsburg on October 12. The disagreement between Wrangel and 
 Turenne as to further operations soon afterwards closed the 
 campaign, earlier than usual. 
 
 Wrangel wintered in Swabia. The imperial army spent the rest 
 of the year in recovering the places in Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia 
 which Torstenson had occupied in 1645 ; in spite of Wittenberg, the 
 lieutenant of Wrangel, who was sent with a strong detachment to 
 prevent them. During this year Enghien was employed in the 
 Netherlands, where he took Dunkirk on August 10. The war in 
 Spain and Tuscany was less favourable to the French than before. 
 In August this year the Emperor had his eldest son Ferdinand 
 crowned at Prague king of Bohemia. 
 
 The year 1647 opens with some new and important events : the 
 first and most serious to the Emperor being the defection of his uncle 
 Maximilian of Bavaria, We have had a good deal to say about 
 Maximilian already ; we have given him, I think, always his just 
 credit as an able, sincere, moderate, and honest, though to a great 
 extent a mistaken man. We have seen how he represents the 
 religious element on the Catholic side, in contrast to the dynastic 
 element, which was so largely mixed with the rehgious in the 
 Austrian family. He was the head of the League ; never a thorough- 
 going imperialist, thoroughly German, as well as faithfully Catholic. 
 He had, in spite of the divergence of opinion, adhered steadily to 
 Ferdinand II. Even when in 1631 he had set himself to obtain the 
 dismissal of Wallenstein, and so laid Germany open to Gustavus 
 Adolphus, it was not that he was led by treachery towards Austria, 
 but because he feared the subjugation of Germany ; and he did his 
 best to supply, where it could be supplied, the place of Wallenstein. 
 He had made great sacrifices on the Catholic side, had seen his 
 capital in the hands of the Swedes and his country three or four 
 times ravaged. He also stood to win largely if the imperial side 
 should be victorious ; the confirmation of the transfer of the 
 electoral dignity and the territory of the Upper Palatinate was what 
 he looked for as but a portion of his due. This being so, we may be 
 sure that nothing but weariness and despair compelled him to enter 
 into terms with the French, as he did in January 1647. 
 
 The negotiations for peace went on for two months, and it was 
 agreed upon at Ulm in March. By this pacification, Maximilian 
 recovered Rain, Donauwerth, and some other important places ; 
 surrendered to the Swedes Ueberlingen and Memmingen in Swabia, 
 and to the French several important towns in the Wiirtemberg and 
 Baden countries ; he also bound himself to recall his troops from 
 the imperial service. This defection was a very serious blow to
 
 378 LECTURES OM EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Ferdinand, who could not afford to dispense with his last ally or with 
 his best soldiers ; and he had other losses at the same time. 
 Gallas, who was his most experienced general, died at Vienna in 
 April, and the Archduke Leopold, his brother and best adviser, was 
 summoned to take the governorship of the Netherlands and save the 
 Spanish inheritance there from the attacks of Cond6. Ferdinand 
 supplied as well as he could the place of Gallas by the appointment 
 of Melander, a Hessian convert, a Calvinist by religion ; and himself 
 prepared to take an active part in the coming campaign. 
 
 This year the war begins earlier than usual. Wrangel, after 
 wintering in Swabia, began to take the towns that were still held by 
 imperial garrisons ; and Turenne in March began to ravage Wiirtem- 
 berg. The pacification of Ulm only saved, of course, the places that 
 were claimed by Bavaria ; and both generals, without transgressing 
 that agreement, found abundance of employment. Turenne took 
 Tiibingen, then marched north and took Aschaffenburg and Hoch- 
 stadt ; next he approached Mentz and put the city to ransom. The 
 Elector, who alone of the three was now on the Emperor's side — 
 Treves being thoroughly French and Cologne included in the 
 Bavarian pacification — paid an enormous sum to save the town. 
 Turenne next attacked Darmstadt. The Landgrave was driven on 
 both sides : on one by Turenne, at Darmstadt ; on the other by 
 Wrangel at Schweinfurt. He also had to give in, when he had no 
 more chance of resisting. 
 
 By this time, however, the Emperor was ready for action. The 
 loss of the Bavarian soldiery he replaced as well as he could by large 
 levies of recruits whom he trained himself. Unfortunately, in 
 attempting to retain the services of the Bavarians contrary to their 
 master's obligations, he further offended Maximilian ; but the diffi- 
 culty on that score was only a short one, for Maximilian found his 
 new patrons altogether unmanageable. The Emperor took the field 
 in July. Then Wrangel, having taken Schweinfurt, was besieging 
 Egra. The Emperor did what he could to save it, but it was taken 
 on July 7, almost in his sight, he being posted at Falkenau. After 
 the capture he marched to attack the Swedes ; but Wrangel by a 
 hasty move surprised him, and he had to fly for his life, the sentinels 
 who were on guard before his tent being taken prisoners. As soon, 
 however, as the force was rallied, he made head with some success 
 against them, and fought two or three small battles with his ancient 
 good fortune. 
 
 It may be questioned how long he could have maintained the 
 struggle alone. Just at this moment Maximilian returned to his 
 side. The demands of the French and the Swedes had proved too 
 much for him. Not content w^ith the terms, scarcely less than
 
 THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAR, 1646-1G4S 879 
 
 ignominious, of the treaty of Ulni, they demanded of him the 
 surrender of his claims on the Upper Palatinate, and this he deter- 
 mined to resist. He proposed a reconciliation with Ferdinand : he 
 was to have the electorate and his endowment in the Palatine 
 inheritance secured to him, and he would return to his old party. 
 The agreement was not long in transaction ; on September 7 it was 
 signed at Munich, and Wrangel retired before the united armies into 
 the north of Germany. He there occupied the bishoprics of Halber- 
 stadt, Minden, and Hildesheim, and quartered for the winter in 
 Brunswick. Melander followed him as far as Hesse and occupied 
 Marpurg; but the Swedes were strong enough to leave the land- 
 graviate of Cassel in the hands of its proper owners, Konigsmark 
 being detached to the assistance of the Landgravine. 
 
 This year Ferdinand obtained for his son the succession to 
 Hungary ; he was crowned as Ferdinand IV. on June 16. The 
 Archduke Leopold was successful in the Netherlands, recovering Ar- 
 mentieres in May and Landrecies in July, against Marshal Gassion. 
 Gassion was killed at Lenz on September 27, and his death, necessi- 
 tating the recall of Turenne from Franconia just at the same time 
 that Maximilian changed sides, contributed to shorten the campaign 
 in Germany. In Spain the Prince of Conde found himself unable to 
 pass Lerida, the usual limit of French conquest ; and in Italy the 
 revolution at Naples, part of the programme of which was to place 
 the Duke of Guise on the throne, turned out a fiasco. 
 
 And thus we come at last to 1648, and the war seems no nearer 
 its end than at any given point in the last eleven years. All 
 parties very much weakened, but by this time so much accustomed 
 to war that it is more trouble to give it up than to continue it ; none, 
 moreover, really satisfied with affairs as they are ; no one having 
 succeeded in getting what he wanted when he began; all having 
 suffered so much that none cared to avoid suffering a little more ; 
 all having seen so many changes that it seemed no great exercise 
 of patience to await another turn of the wheel. Spain and the 
 United Provinces were, however, anxious, for peace with one 
 another : ' war between them had been going on, with but a twelve 
 years' truce, ever since the revolt after Alva's administration, 
 above seventy years ; and peace was arranged between them on 
 January 30, 1648. But this peace promised rather to be a help 
 towards the continuance of war in Germany, as the Dutch armies 
 and treasure, liberated from their constant employment in defence of 
 their liberties, might naturally be expected to become a serious 
 obstacle to French plans with regard to the north-east frontier. 
 
 ' The Dutch wished to p-eserre the mtegrity of the Spanish Netherlands 
 and feared their annexation by France. — A. H.
 
 380 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Exhausted, however, as all parties are, the year 1648 is full of 
 incident. The Thirty Years' War, we may say, is game to the last ; 
 fighting goes on until after the peace is signed, and by a singular 
 coincidence the struggle ends where it began, within the walls of 
 Prague, thirty years before. We left Wrangel wintering in Bruns- 
 wick. Early in the spring he marches south : he must have 
 marched south so often that we wonder how he ever found a new 
 place to march to. This time he comes down, as he had done in 
 1646, upon the Main, takes Windsheim on March 2, and joins 
 Turenne. The imperialists awaited them on the Danube between 
 Neuburg and Ingolstadt ; but they were obliged to retire as the 
 Swedes advanced, and to fall back upon Augsburg. On the march 
 Konigsmark and Wrangel fell upon Melander at Zusmarshausen 
 and defeated him. He himself was killed. The army was saved 
 by Montecuculi and Duke Ulric of Wiirtemberg. The battle 
 of Zusmarshausen was fought on May 17. After the victory the 
 alHes crossed he Lech into Bavaria, drove the imperialists across the 
 Isar and the Inn, and ravaged the country cruelly. Piccolomini, 
 however, speedily redressed the balance ; collected the remains of the 
 army, and beat the Swedes at Dachau on September 15. They then 
 retired into Swabia, Turenne towards the Palatinate. 
 
 Whilst these things were doing, Konigsmark was executing the 
 brilliant move that gives distinctness and memorability to the last 
 year of the war. He was moving on Prague : not with a large force, 
 but with one formed of the veterans who had learned speed and 
 success under Gustavus, Bernard, Baner, Torstenson, and Wrangel. 
 Whilst Wrangel was approaching the Danube Konigsmark turned 
 through the Upper Palatinate into Bohemia, and, although he took 
 places enough on his way to make retreat possible if it were necessary, 
 he arrived at Prague on July 15. At Prague there was, as usual, suflS- 
 cient political disaffection to make his arrival welcome to at least one 
 party. Ernest Odowalski was the person whose overtures had induced 
 Konigsmark to make the attempt ; he had met him at Eakonitz and 
 undertook to act as guide. In the night Odowalski led the attack on 
 the walls of the little town in which the arsenal and citadel were. 
 As the arrival of the Swedes was entirely unexpected, for Konigsmark 
 had given out that Pilsen was the object of his attack, intending to 
 put the garrison of Prague off their guard, the victory was won with 
 little bloodshed. The bridge between the Little Town and Old 
 Prague was seized and one tower on the further side was also 
 secured, but the force within the city was too large for Konigsmark 
 to attack, and for the time he satisfied himself with the possession 
 of the citadel and arsenal. 
 
 The defence of Old Prague was conducted by Count Colloredo,
 
 THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAE, 1G46-1648 881 
 
 the governor, who had escaped across the river during the night 
 attack. He mustered the troops, drilled the citizens, brought in 
 additional troops, and made the best use he could of the little 
 artillery that he had. 
 
 Wittenberg arrived early in August to help the besiegers ; and he 
 undertook the attack on the New Town of Prague from the Ziskaberg ; 
 but as he was not much better supplied with artillery than the 
 defenders, he postponed his attack until Charles Gustavus, the Palatine 
 of Deuxponts, nephew of Gustavus Adolphus and generalissimo of 
 the Swedish army, should arrive to help him. Charles Gustavus 
 brought with him an army of 10,000 men ; but the more brisk the 
 assault, the more brilUant the resistance. Conti, the engineer of 
 the imperialists, managed to foil every attempt of the Swedes to 
 avail themselves of the breaches which their cannon made in the wall. 
 At last, after a long series of failures, Charles Gustavus determined to 
 take the place by storm. Four thousand men entered a huge breach 
 made and kept clear by the Swedish guns ; when a mine was sprung 
 by which 500 of them perished. The garrison chose this moment 
 for attack, and the assailants were terribly mauled. After five hours' 
 fighting they effected their retreat. Charles Gustavus soon after 
 gave up the siege ; and on October 25, the day after he drew off his 
 forces, the news arrived of the signing of the terms of the peace of 
 Westphalia.^ 
 
 Thus suddenly, in the midst of a war which promised to all 
 appearance to go on as long as it had done already, peace came : not 
 the least startling of the phasnomena of the struggle. The parties to 
 the peace had been negotiating for at least five years, and, if they had 
 chosen, might, so far as the balance of successes afl'ected the matter 
 have made peace on much the same terms as those on which they 
 did it at last, at any point of the negotiations. It is therefore 
 unnecessary to look in the immediate circumstances of the war for 
 the causes of its closing at this particular time. The generals had 
 got into a habit of fighting which made war easier than peace ; the 
 diplomatists had got tired of arguing, and at last agreed to a settle- 
 ment that did not exactly satisfy any single party to the war. 
 
 We must now turn back and mark the principal dates connected 
 with these negotiations. The proposals for peace began to be mooted 
 as early as the year 1636, when Christian of Denmark ofiered 
 himself as negotiator between Sweden and the Emperor, and Pope 
 Urban VIII. ofi"ered to act as mediator between France and Spain. 
 The seat of the King of Denmark's negotiations was, as we have seen, 
 Hamburg ; that of the Pope's was Cologne. 
 
 ' The French had meanwliile taken Tortosa on July 13, and had won the 
 battle of Lens on Aiigust 20. — A. H.
 
 882 LECTURES ON EUKOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 But it was several years before even the preliminaries of the 
 transactions could be agreed upon. Neither of the great parties was 
 really anxious for peace. In 1638 the arrangements for safe-conduct 
 of the ambassadors, and even the choice of the place of meeting, were 
 yet undetermined. The French and Swedes annually renewed their 
 alliance and agreed neither to make peace without the other ; the 
 machinery of the double mediation was thus rendered useless. The 
 constant shifting of the chief German powers left the world in doubt 
 as to which of the two principal parties they belonged to, and by which 
 their interests were to be provided for. The princes in the assembly 
 of Nuremberg in 1640 were unable to settle amongst themselves their 
 differences in such a way as to give the faintest hope of an agreement. 
 The Diet held at Eatisbon the same year was equally undecided : it was 
 only in its adjourned meeting in 1641 that the Emperor was compelled 
 to consent to the choice of Miinster and Osnabriick as the places 
 of meeting, and not until Christmas Day 1641 that the preliminaries 
 were signed. 
 
 These preHminaries were not what is understood by the term in 
 modern diplomacy, in which it means some statement of the general 
 principles, if not also a project of the details of the peace which is to 
 follow ; but simply the necessary steps for holding the congresses in 
 which both the principles and details of the pacification will have to 
 be debated ah initio. These preliminaries then consisted of little 
 more than a provision that Osnabriick and Miinster should be the 
 places : Miinster for the negotiations between France, Spain, the 
 Catholic princes, and the Empire ; Osnabriick for those between 
 Sweden, the Protestant princes, and the Empire ; the securing of the 
 neutrality of the two cities during the progress of negotiations ; and 
 the arrangement for free intercourse and common deliberation, so 
 that the pacification when complete might be embraced in a single 
 treaty. 
 
 The day of meeting was to be March 26, 1642. Although the 
 Emperor had consented, or had been compelled by the Diet to 
 authorise his envoys to assent, to these terms, he did not like them 
 and tried to evade them ; this attempt causing a still further delay. 
 It was not in his mind to stay his hand until he had punished 
 Sweden and got the recalcitrant princes at his mercy. It was his 
 policy to make peace with France and to isolate Sweden ; or if that 
 could not be done, to make peace with Sweden and to isolate France. 
 This object was defeated by the article that determined that there 
 should be but one treaty : accordingly he disavowed his ambassador, 
 appUed at Hamburg, where the preliminaries had been signed, for 
 a revision of them, and showed every symptom of an intention to 
 break up the transaction. However, the great defeat of the Archduke
 
 THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAR, 1646-1648 383 
 
 and Piccolomini at Breitenfeld in November 1642 brought him to 
 a better mind. On April 28, 1643, the preUminaries were at last 
 ratified, and the meeting called for June 11 in the same year. In 
 the course of July the imperial representatives arrived at Miinster ; 
 the French did not appear until March 19, 1644, delayed by the 
 changes which took place in the French government after the deaths 
 of Eichelieu and Louis XIII. 
 
 During the whole of these seven or eight years during which the 
 subject was broached, there are, if possible, three distinct sets of 
 negotiations to be followed : those between the parties to the peace 
 which I have been tracing ; those between France, Sweden, and their 
 partisans in Germany ; and those between the Emperor and the 
 princes with whom he was trying to come to an agreement pre- 
 paratory to the general peace. No memory is capable of containing 
 the dates and other minutiae of these dealings, nor have I attempted 
 to note the greater part of them. Of the negotiations of France we 
 may take the bargaining with Bernard of Weimar for Alsace as a 
 specimen, and of those of Germany the negotiations by which one 
 after another the Lutheran States were brought to acquiesce in the 
 peace of Prague, or in which the Emperor tried to satisfy the Dukes of 
 Brunswick for the possession of Wolfenbiittel or the bishopric of 
 Hildesheim, or declared the terms on which he would listen to inter- 
 cession for the Palatine family, a general amnesty to offenders, or the 
 relaxation of the Edict of Restitution and such like. These must 
 not be left unnoticed, because, in reading the authorities, they are apt 
 to come in confusedly and as if they were a part of the preliminaries 
 for the general pacification, -mth which they were not really in any 
 direct way connected. We put them, then, altogether on one side ; 
 let the man who can remember them all and put them in their places 
 do so ; they have their true importance in local and personal history 
 only. 
 
 An exception must be made, however, in behalf of an assembly 
 held under imperial auspices at Frankfort in 1643 and 1644, in which 
 it was attempted to determine the status of the smaller German 
 states during the congress. Of course the Emperor claimed to 
 represent the Empire ; of course also the Protestant states 
 were well aware of what their fate must be if the Emperor were 
 entrusted with their interests as against the Swedes and French. 
 The electors might treat as parties to the peace, but how about the 
 princes who were not electors ? Were they to be left out altogether, 
 or to be represented severally ; if not severally, could they be repre- 
 sented curiatim, with a joint vote, as they were sometimes in the 
 assemblies of the Diet? In January 1645 the Emperor at last 
 consented that the princes should be represented ' ad formam
 
 384 LECTUEES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 coUe^ii,' but only as counsellors and advisers, not as principals in 
 the treaty. This difficulty arose again as soon as the congress met. 
 
 But in the meantime other difficulties arose. In' 1643 the King 
 of Denmark, one of the mediators, had thrown himself on the 
 imperial side, and had his country ravaged, and been reduced to sue 
 for peace on condition of surrendering large portions of his dominions 
 to Sweden. When on June 11, 1645, the congress actually met, 
 this quarrel was yet undecided, and only on August 13, 1645, by the 
 peace of Bromsbro was he admitted to terms. 
 
 On June 11, then, the congress began its business. At Osna- 
 briick the imperial envoys were Maximilian of Trautmannsdorf, 
 Maximilian of Lamberg, and John von Crane. The Swedish were 
 Oxenstiern himself and another Swedish lawyer. At Miinster the 
 imperial representatives were, besides Trautmannsdorf, who went 
 between both places, Count John of Nassau and Isaac Volmar : all 
 three converts from Lutheranism. The French plenipotentiaries at 
 Miinster were the Duke of Longueville, the Count d'Avaux, and Abel 
 Servien. The mediation was really transacted by the republic of 
 Venice, which was represented by Aloysio Contarini. The King of 
 Denmark had disqualified himself by going to war, and the Pope 
 disavowed any connexion with the treaty as soon as he knew what 
 the terms were likely to be. The ambassadors of Rome were, how- 
 ever, constantly present, first Ghinetti, then Machiavelli, Rosetti, 
 and Chigi, who became himself Pope in 1655 as Alexander VII. 
 Pope Urban VIII., who had lived through nearly all the war, died 
 in 1644. The interests of the League were managed by Schonborn, 
 bishop of Wiirzburg ; those of the Protestants who refused to be 
 represented by the Elector of Saxony, by Wolfgang Conrad von 
 Thumbshirn, the ambassador of the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, 
 assisted by the envoys of Celle, Brunswick, and Magdeburg. 
 
 The first thing to be done was to present the propositions of the 
 powers ; and Mylonius, the Swedish envoy, presented his proposi- 
 tion on June 11, with the approval of France. Sweden demanded 
 Pomerania notwithstanding the claims of Brandenburg, and, besides, 
 three bishoprics in Westphalia and two in Lower Saxony. France 
 demanded the absolute cession of the territories of Metz, Verdun, 
 and Toul, the three bishoprics that had been stolen nearly a century 
 ago by Henry II., as defender of the liberties of Germany ; Alsace 
 also, and Lorraine ; and the conquests which had been made in 
 Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. The ambassadors of Spain were 
 overbearing, those of the Emperor temporising. The Catholic and 
 Protestant States of Germany made proposals diametrically opposed 
 to one another : especially as touching the future of the Palatinate. 
 The Pope himself was of opinion that the Palatinate must be
 
 THE CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAR, 1646-1648 385 
 
 restored, although in a Eoman Catholic family ; but Maximilian of 
 Bavaria, the steadiest Catholic in Germany, would thus have to 
 forgo the reward of all his labours and the compensation for his 
 sufferings. On all sides there was holding back, or the assertion of 
 claims so large that the very statement of them was sufficient to 
 show that they were either insincerely put forward or were an 
 absolute prohibition of peace. 
 
 The first proposition of the Swedes, touching the integrity of 
 the Empire, raised the question how the several states were to 
 take part in the negotiations : and upon this the Cathohc princes 
 differed of course from the Protestant, and the Protestants differed 
 not less among themselves. When this was at last adjusted, the 
 assemblies at Osnabriick and Miinster were found to have adopted a 
 variety of rule about admission of the representatives of the states, 
 and that occasioned still further delay ; then the ambassadors of the 
 Electors insisted on being called ' excellency ; ' and so on. 
 
 At last, on December 11, the Protestants exhibited their grava- 
 mina, and on January 29, 1646, the Catholics handed in theirs. 
 The discussion of these occupied the congresses for two years ; 
 during which, as we saw in the first half of the lecture, some of the 
 most startling revulsions and vicissitudes of fortune took place : the 
 change of attitude on the part of Bavaria, and the rapid decline of 
 Spanish arms being the most notable. Spain, from being the most 
 opposed to a pacification, now became most anxious to complete one ; 
 and although, when the peace of Westphalia was drawn up, Spain 
 refused to join or even recognise the provisions of it, her real anxiety 
 for such peace as might be had was shown by the treaty with 
 Holland, which was concluded on January 30, 1648, at Miinster. 
 The good example was followed by the other powers ; the time 
 spent on the discussion of claims was found to be not wholly wasted. 
 
 The Osnabriick negotiations closed first, and, having been sub- 
 mitted to the authorities of Miinster, the treaty was signed on 
 August 6, 1648. The Miinster Congress continued for a month 
 later, a good deal of discussion being held on the point whether the 
 King of France as ruler of Alsace should be allowed a place among 
 the estates of the Empire. When that point was decided in a way 
 that made sure of a resumption of the dispute on a future occasion, 
 the treaty of Miinster also was signed, on September 8 ; the formal 
 signatures of the plenipotentiaries were attached to the two docu- 
 ments on October 24, and the peace was proclaimed, with great 
 blowing of trumpets, firing of cannon, and beating of drums, on 
 the following day at both Miinster and Osnabriick. The same day 
 the plenipotentiary of Burgundy — that is to say, the Spanish am- 
 bassador — protested solemnly against the treaty of Miinster ; as 
 
 c c
 
 386 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Chigi, the Papal Nuncio, did the day before against the peace of 
 Osnabriick : a protest preliminary to the declaration of the nullity 
 of the two issued by Pope Innocent X. in December. The ratifica- 
 tions were exchanged in February 1649; but the Swedes were 
 disinclined to leave Germany until all the provisions of the treaty of 
 Osnabriick had been rigidly carried out. 
 
 To arrange the execution of the special terms, a new conference 
 was opened at Nuremberg, in which Sweden was represented by 
 Wrangel, and the Emperor by Piccolomini. This began to sit in 
 May 1649, and continued its sessions until June 1650, issuing its 
 recesses for the removal of the imperial and Bavarian garrisons 
 from the towns occupied in the body of Germany in September 
 1649, and for the dismissal of the Swedes in June 1650. This done, 
 the Emperor declared all persons who should attempt anything 
 contrary to the peace to be under the ban of the Empire, a sentence 
 which was actually issued against Bremen in 1652 for a breach of 
 one of the provisions of the treaties. 
 
 I shall reserve to another lecture a review of the terms of the 
 two treaties, and such general reflexions as I may have to make on 
 the war itself. I cannot say that I regret, for my part, the fact that 
 this course of lectures has not answered exactly to the title I gave 
 it when I first planned it ; and that, whilst we have given a good 
 deal of attention to the drum and trumpet part of the story we have 
 been obliged rather to cut short the political commentary. I am 
 not sorry for this, because on the whole I think that the way in 
 which we have worked through the details will have been more 
 useful to you than any general views set forth and accepted without 
 adequate knowledge. But if any of you thinks otherwise, and that 
 we had better have stuck to the political aspects of the Thirty Years' 
 War, I will try to satisfy him in the next two lectures.
 
 TWO LECTURES SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE 
 COURSE ON THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 SURVEY OF THE EEIGNS OF LOUIS XIII. AND PHILIP IV. 
 
 In the present lecture I propose, by way of supplement to the course, 
 to run as briefly as possible through the reigns of Louis XIII. and 
 Philip IV. so far as they are contemporaneous with the Thirty 
 Years' War, and point out in them the principal facts that have 
 a bearing on the progress of that war. Very many of these we have 
 discussed already, but it is necessary just to remind ourselves of their 
 natural sequence and of their relations to other aspects of the history 
 besides the great war, in order to see how it was that at one moment 
 France held back and at another maintained the burden of the whole, 
 or at another forced on the combatants without being herself able to 
 take part in the fighting work. 
 
 Louis XIII. came to the throne of his father when a child, and 
 he never so far outgrew the habits of his minority as to originate 
 anything like national policy or to be his own minister. He was 
 brave and just and goodnatured ; but idle and devoid of moral 
 courage, always swayed by favourites or by ministers who felt them- 
 selves strong enough to be independent of his favour. His reign 
 falls into three epochs : the minority, the ministry of the Duke de 
 Luynes, and the ministry of Cardinal Eichelieu. The first lasted 
 from 1609 to 1617 ; the second from 1617 to 1621 ; and the third 
 from 1621 to 1642. Louis survived his master for six months only. 
 The remaining years of the war saw Mazarin the prime minister of 
 France. 
 
 As for the first of these three periods, as it falls outside our 
 present subject, I shall not say much : but this much is necessary. 
 Marie de M6dicis, undertaking the regency, found that it was quite 
 impossible for her to attempt to carry out the poHcy which had 
 tasked to the utmost the power of Henry IV. His three great 
 designs were first the humiliation of Spain and Austria ; secondly 
 the keeping of the Protestants and Catholics of France in peace 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 together ; and thirdly, the securing of his position as King against 
 the anarchical tendencies of the feudal or princely party, which had 
 by more than one conspiracy contrived his overthrow, plotted with 
 his enemies regardless of the claims of either religion or patriotism, 
 and presented the most formidable obstacle to the career of adminis- 
 trative reform which under the influence of Sully he had originated, 
 and without which he saw the position that he coveted and had partly 
 earned for France would be untenable. Marie de Medicis could not 
 attempt to carry out the three lines of policy together ; her great 
 object must be to preserve the royal power for her son, and for this 
 purpose to secure peace abroad as affording the best chance of 
 quietness at home. 
 
 So, as soon as Henry was cold in his grave, the French army was 
 recalled from Germany, and a close alliance with Spain set on foot, 
 and this was cemented in 1612 by a double marriage. Louis XIII. 
 was betrothed to Anne of Austria, the daughter of Philip III., and 
 his son, afterwards Philip IV., to Elizabeth or Isabella, Louis's 
 sister. The other two branches of policy soon afforded work enough 
 to the Queen Mother. The Protestants and the princes united to 
 give trouble. The princes rose in indignation against Concini, the 
 Queen's Italian minister ; the Protestants required further guarantees 
 and a greater independence in the administration of their own affairs. 
 At first the princes were bribed to submission. Conde, in 1610, 
 received a pension of 200,000 francs. But their appetite grew by 
 being indulged, and in 1614 a large party of them, comprising men 
 of both religions, at the instigation of the Duke of Bouillon, a 
 Protestant, withdrew from court and demanded the convocation of 
 the States General. 
 
 The States General assembled for the last time before the great 
 Eevolution. They proved more incUned to the King than to the 
 party of the nobles. The prince of Conde, in 1615, showed 
 symptoms of rebelling and was disgraced. In 1616, just after 
 concluding a treaty on equal terms with the King, he was arrested, 
 and his friends prepared for war. But, before the war was well 
 begun, the fall of Concini put an end to one of the chief ostensible 
 grounds of complaint. Louis and his companion de Luynes had 
 conspired against the minister, and his arrest issued in his death. 
 The power thus wrested from the Queen Mother was wielded by 
 Louis and Luynes ; but they had neither of them genius to devise a 
 better policy than that which he had carried out, and which indeed 
 was the only one possible to such weak hands. 
 
 In 1618, the year of the outbreak of the Bohemian struggle, 
 Luynes was the ruler of France. He, in 1619, released Conde and 
 by his advice put down the rising of the nobility which his own
 
 SURVEY OF THE REIGNS OF LOUIS XIII. AND PHILIP IV. 389 
 
 sudden exaltation had provoked, and a short period of quiet followed. 
 But a struggle with the Protestants, who had acted contrary to the 
 royal prohibition in assembling at Kochelle, followed : provoked, it 
 was believed, by the Papal Nuncio, and connected in some obscure 
 way with a design to restore the supremacy of the Queen Mother. 
 Louis and his minister marched into the south, overthrew the 
 religious liberty and the constitution founded upon it of the Bearnese, 
 and drove the whole Protestant party to desperation. In this war 
 de Luynes died of a fever at Montauban. The following year, the 
 most influential of their nobles were bribed to conversion, and the 
 King began a series of counter-reformation measures on the German 
 plan ; forbidding religious services and flooding the land with 
 Capuchin missionaries. 
 
 During this little time Marie de Medicis recovered some influence 
 with her son ; and by her introduction Eichelieu, already bishop of 
 Lu(jon and a cardinal, made his way into the authoritative and con- 
 fidential place that de Luynes had occupied. Eichelieu became a 
 member of the royal council April 1624 ; and immediately unfolded 
 his plan for reviving the political programme of Henry IV. humilia- 
 ting the Hapsburgs, demolishing the nobility, and reducing the 
 Protestant iviperium in impcrio to a nulHty. Up to this time 
 clearly there was no likelihood of France being able to take part in a 
 religious war, although both before and after, under comparatively 
 strong princes, she might be found persecuting at home what she 
 was nurturing abroad. 
 
 Richelieu's first move, in accordance with the treaty made by 
 Louis in January 1623 with Savoy and Venice, was to compel the 
 Papal garrison which had in the imperial and Spanish interest 
 occupied the Valtelline to retire, and restore the country to the 
 Grisons. The Huguenot rising under Soubise in 1625 prevented 
 any overt action on behalf of the German princes who were in arms 
 against Ferdinand ; but the marriage of Charles I. of England with 
 the Princess Henrietta Maria detached the English interest from the 
 Spanish side and led the way to what would have been, but for 
 Charles's own troubles, a united action against the Empire. Un- 
 happily for all parties, England next undertook the support of the 
 Huguenots at La Rochelle, drawing down on it especially the 
 vengeance which it was powerless to avert, and preventing any con- 
 cert in favour of the Elector Palatine until his chances were quite 
 gone. In 1628 Rochelle was taken, and Richelieu showed that he 
 had no intention of sparing any of his enemies, religious or political, 
 who fell into his hands. This religious struggle, which lasted from 
 1625 to 1628, coincides nearly in time wdth the ill-fated attempt of 
 Christian of Denmark to undertake the religious emancipation of
 
 390 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Germany. In 1629 Louis XIII. saw the Huguenots completely 
 humbled, and Ferdinand II. saw himself by Wallenstein's aid 
 supreme over both Princes and Protestants. 
 
 In 1630 Richelieu had made up his mind, if the successes of 
 Gustavus Adolphus should answer in any way to his pretensions, to 
 use him as an instrument for the darling designs of France. As 
 soon as he saw him in possession of Pomerania he entered into the 
 closest relations with him, and, through his confidant Joseph, com- 
 pletely hoodwinked the Emperor. The treaty of Barwalde in January 
 ] 631 is the starting-point of the share taken by France in the Thirty 
 Years' War. It was not at first an overt share. Sweden was subsi- 
 dised, but a show of peace with both Austria and Spain was preserved. 
 The troubles of Lorraine, which the Duke was anxious to deliver from 
 French control, and the intrigues of the Duke of Orleans, whose 
 incorrigible restlessness and ignominious betrayal of his friends placed 
 in Richelieu's hands a store of weapons for the demolition of the 
 nobles, afforded employment for the two or three years during which 
 France played this shy game. Oxenstiern was inclined to use France ; 
 Richelieu was intent on using Sweden ; neither trusted the other, 
 but increasing necessities brought the two continually closer. After 
 the death of Gustavus, Oxenstiern saw that French assistance was 
 indispensable: after the battle of Nordlingen, he was obliged to 
 entrust the French minister with the direction of proceedings, and to 
 consent to a dismemberment to a certain extent of the country that he 
 had come to deliver. 
 
 In 1635 begins the leadership of France in the great war ; a period 
 of whose wearisome sameness and unvarying uncertainty we have in the 
 former lectures had sufficient experience. Year after year the alliance 
 with Sweden is renewed, war is carried on in the Netherlands and in 
 Navarre against Spain, in Lorraine and Alsace against the Empire, 
 and in Italy and Savoy against both together. Great French armies 
 ravage interior Germany ; Bernard of Weimar is brought by French 
 promises and disappointed by Richelieu's manoeuvres ; and meanwhile 
 a grand school of French Marshals is trained, under whom the great 
 conquests of Louis XIV.'s reign are to be made. In 1640 the revolt 
 of Catalonia, provoked by Spanish misgovernment and fostered by 
 French intrigue and the emancipation of Portugal, made the parti- 
 tion of the Spanish heritage a much more feasible design than it had 
 seemed when in 1635 the Cardinal confederated with Holland for the 
 purpose. On all sides, however, the French arms steadily advanced 
 and the imperial fortune sank. 
 
 The year 1642, the last of Richelieu's life, witnessed the contrivance 
 and defeat of the conspiracy of Cinq-Mars. Louis, whilst besieging 
 Perpignan, discovered a secret treaty, to which his brother the Duke
 
 SURVEY OF THE EEIGNS OF LOUIS XIII. AND PHILIP IV. 391 
 
 of Orleans and the Count Duke Olivares were parties, for the over- 
 throw of Richelieu and the nominal emancipation, but real setting 
 aside, of the King himself. In this treaty were named the Duke of 
 Bouillon, son of the old intriguer who bore the title at the beginning 
 of the reign, and Cinq-Mars, Louis's personal and most confidential 
 friend. It was dated on March 13, and signed by Olivares himself 
 on the part of Spain, and on the part of the Duke by Fontrailles, his 
 agent. On June 13, Cinq-Mars was arrested at Narbonne, where he 
 was in actual attendance on the King, and on the 23rd the Duke of 
 Bouillon also was arrested at Casale, where he was in command, with 
 the army destined for Italy. The Duke of Orleans, as on the previous 
 occasions when he had been found conspiring, betrayed his associates, 
 and Richelieu saw that the King could not afford to be merciful. The 
 Duke was condemned to lose his estates and honours ; Bouillon to 
 surrender Sedan as the ransom for his liberation ; Cinq-Mars was 
 beheaded, and with him his friend de Thou, whose only offence was 
 that he had not revealed the conspiracy in which he refused to join. 
 
 It is said, probably with truth, that Cinq-Mars, who was very 
 young, had taken the idea of the conspiracy as against Richelieu from 
 some incautious words of the King himself, and that his offence 
 accordingly was that merely of a politician, not of a traitor. But if 
 this is true, it is not the less true that Orleans had conspired against 
 Louis long before, and that neither he nor Bouillon would have been 
 satisfied with the mere resignation of the Cardinal. Louis was 
 extremely weak and ought to have saved Cinq-Mars ; but the crime 
 could not be allowed to go unpunished : at its lowest estimate it was 
 an attempt to sacrifice the welfare of the nation for the aggrandise- 
 ment of a faithless and incapable individual. It is this conspiracy and 
 its punishment which perhaps more than anything else have made the 
 name of Richelieu disliked. I confess that is difficult to see how, for 
 his master's sake, he could have acted otherwise. 
 
 This is an episode in the history of the war with Spain, and indeed 
 in the siege of Perpignan. That city was taken on August 29. 
 Richelieu died, aged 58, on December 4. Mazarin succeeded to his 
 place in the royal council and was made a cardinal before the end of 
 the year. Marie de Medicis died in 1642 also ; and in May 1643 
 Louis XIII. followed them, leaving his kingdom in a position of far 
 greater importance than it had been at his accession, the royal power 
 more firmly consolidated, the territory increased by the acquisition 
 of Alsace, the frontier strengthened materially by the possession of 
 Sedan on the one side and Perpignan on the other ; "Spain humili- 
 ated in the Netherlands, and threatened with disintegration in the 
 peninsula itself ; a school of great generals springing up, trained 
 under the heroes of the Thirty Years' War. And all this he owed
 
 392 LECTUKES ON EUKOPEAN HISTOKY, 1519-1648 
 
 to Richelieu. Fertile indeed is the period in great men ; scarcely any 
 age has seen three such as Oxenstiern, Richelieu, and Wallenstein alive 
 at the same time : altogether, the mischief that they worked in Europe 
 has never been exceeded until the advent of Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 Louis XIV. was five years old when he began to reign, and only 
 ten when the peace of Westphalia settled the system of Europe for a 
 century and a half. Any speculations on the part he played in the 
 world would therefore be out of place in this course. His mother, 
 Anne of Austria, sister to Philip IV., governed France as regent, and 
 Cardinal Mazarin, who has been said to be her second husband, 
 governed her. The policy of Mazarin bore to that of Richelieu, in one 
 sense, the same relation that Richelieu's had borne to that of Henry IV. 
 It was the traditionary policy of France, as strong at the present day 
 as it was then, but modified by the character of the administrator. 
 In itself a thoroughly selfish and ungenerous one, it had, as moved by 
 Henry IV., something of the glory and grace which his early career 
 as an emancipator and deliverer had shed upon everything that 
 he took in hand. As moved by Richelieu it exchanged that show 
 of heroism and sentiment, which indeed was very hollow and unreal, 
 for the strong, ruthless, thoroughly prosaic and businesslike precision 
 which marked the Cardinal, and which, in spite of all his intrigues, 
 comes out so clearly on the face of history as to make the reign of 
 Louis XIII. comparatively easy reading. In the hands of Mazarin 
 it becomes meaner, pettier, and more timid, more scrupulous of 
 appearance, less of principle ; a cruel, selfish, aggressive policy, but 
 still a strong one, formidable both from the address of the minister 
 and also, and more really so by the skill and resources of the country 
 which internally he misgoverned. 
 
 So long as the Thirty Years' War lasted, Mazarin, treading in 
 Richelieu's footsteps, got into no great difficulties. The troops who 
 fought under Enghien and Turenne were badly paid and equipped, 
 and corruption reigned in many quarters where Richelieu had put it 
 down with the strong hand ; but the work of war was enough to employ 
 men's minds, and the complaints accumulated without overwhelming 
 the minister. The policy of Mazarin in Germany I have already 
 characterised as leading him to hug the Rhine and endeavour to 
 strengthen the hold of France on the German side, rather than to 
 penetrate into the vitals of the Empire and destroy the Hapsburgs, 
 as Henry IV. or Richelieu would have tried to do. Perhaps one 
 might conclude that Mazarin's ambition was a more entirely selfish 
 one than that of Richelieu, who, although he certainly clung to and 
 loved power for its own sake, had great views for France, which he 
 felt himself able, and to be the only man who was able, to carry out. 
 
 The year 1643 saw, five days after the young King's accession, in
 
 SUKVEY OF THE KEIGNS OF LOUIS XIII. AND PHILIP IV. 393 
 
 the victory of Eocroi, an omen of the reign that was to last for 
 seventy-two years, and to contain more of the favourite French glory 
 than any other before or after : to contain but also to survive it. 
 It witnessed also the great defeat of Diittlingen. In 1644 Enghien 
 beat Mercy in Alsace and got possession of Philippsburg in con- 
 sequence ; in 1645 the same great leader made an end of the 
 Bavarian army at Nordlingen. 1646 was marked by constant victories 
 in the Netherlands, where the power of Spain was at a very low ebb ; 
 and on the other frontiers mth equal continuity Enghien (now called 
 Conde), Turenne, and Gassion repelled the efforts of the imperialists 
 and of the Spaniards. In 1647 the revolt of Naples gave the Guises 
 one more chance of attaining the throne for which they had offered 
 themselves as candidates for nearly two centuries ; but then the tide 
 turned. The Duke was taken prisoner. The Archduke Leopold raised 
 the Spanish fortunes again in the Netherlands, but only to add glory 
 to the victory won over him at Lens by Conde. 
 
 In January 1648 the Dutch concluded peace with Spain, and in 
 October the peace of Westphalia settled the quarrels of Europe ; all, 
 at least, except those of France and Spain. This war lasted eleven 
 years longer, in all twenty-five, and closed in 1659 at the peace of 
 the Pyrenees. This peace secured Perpignan, Eoussillon, and 
 Conflans to France, on the Spanish side ; and Gravelines, Montm^dy, 
 Landrecies, and Thionville on the side of the Netherlands ; confirming, 
 or rather recognising, also the provisions of the peace of Westphalia, 
 by the renunciation of Spanish claims on Artois and Alsace. The 
 peace of the Pyrenees is a sort of supplement to that of Westphalia, 
 but the period that intervenes is one into which we cannot now 
 venture even to glance. 
 
 So much, then, for the general history of France, as it sheds light 
 on the great struggle. Before we turn to Spain, in which we shall 
 have little more to do than to repeat what we have said already, we 
 should just note the varying attitudes, during our period, of the 
 Eepublic of Holland. Holland was the natural enemy of the Spanish 
 Hapsburgs, and consequently the natural ally of France : it was, 
 except some of the Swiss Cantons, the only state in Europe which 
 professed and established the religion for which the Elector Palatine 
 risked and lost his inheritance ; it was from a military point of view 
 powerful and beginning also to be rich. It was therefore reasonably 
 to be expected that Holland would take a large part in a war in 
 which the interests of Spain and Calvinism were so large ingredients. 
 And certainly the Dutch did a great deal, though not so much as they 
 might ; they afforded asylums for the uncrowned potentates and for 
 the generals whose resources were exhausted, and they fought a hand- 
 to-hand fight for their own liberties. But I think their history shows
 
 394 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 that they had no real interest in Germany, and that their love for 
 France was merely the result of their hatred of SpaAn. It is to be 
 remembered, however, always that they were in a chronic state of 
 politico-rehgious sedition. 
 
 The treaty of the Hague, which in 1609, April 9, established a 
 truce for twelve years between the Spanish and the Dutch provinces, 
 was the first recognition in diplomacy of the existence of the 
 United Provinces on the part of Spain. It did not recognise their 
 independence, but simply their existence, and it was a mere armistice. 
 It expired in 1621. The Archduke Albert, who had governed for 
 Spain during its continuance, died the same year, and the recall of 
 Spinola from the Palatinate to continue the war with Holland 
 marks one of the earlier stages of the Thirty Years' War. In 1624 
 Spinola besieged Breda, and Maurice, who had been Stadtholder for 
 forty years, died partly of disgust at not being able to relieve it. 
 It was taken in 1625. Frederick Henry of Nassau succeeded Maurice 
 as Stadtholder. He, in 1625, joined the alliance of the Hague 
 between England and Denmark against Spain : a project which was 
 to Holland but the continuance of the natural state of things, but 
 which led to the ruin, at no long interval, of both the monarchs who 
 took part in it. 
 
 In 1631 Holland joined the confederation formed by Gustavus 
 against the Empire, but its efforts were still mainly directed against 
 Spain ; and only assisted the Swedish or Protestant cause by finding 
 constant employment for the Spanish forces within their own terri- 
 tory. Frederick Henry had as his opponent in the Netherlands — 
 after the death of the Infanta Isabella, the daughter of Philip II. 
 and widow of the Archduke Albert, which occurred in 1633— the 
 Cardinal Infant Ferdinand of Toledo, who helped to beat Bernard 
 of Weimar at Nordlingen and was altogether an able and successful 
 administrator. In 1635 Frederick Henry joined a third confedera- 
 tion, that of the treaty of Paris, with France and Sweden, as against 
 Spain ; really against Austria. In August 1637 he retook Breda. 
 In 1641 the Cardinal Infant died, and Don Francisco de Mello, 
 who was beaten at Rocroi, succeeded him. Frederick Henry died in 
 1647. The same year the Archduke Leopold was at last able to 
 undertake the government of the Spanish provinces, which had been 
 waiting for him since 1641. The peace between Holland and Spain, 
 in January 1648, at last recognised the independence of the United 
 Provinces as a sovereign state and a free country. 
 
 The reign of Philip IV. lasted forty-four years, during one half 
 of which the Count Duke Olivares was his prime minister and the 
 real ruler of the vast dominions of the Spanish crown. If Olivares 
 were really the despicably dishonest and selfish minister that his
 
 SUKVEY OF THE REIGNS OF LOUIS XIII. AND PHILIP IV. 395 
 
 enemies describe, Spain must indeed have descended very rapidly 
 the plane of decline in which she had been going since the death 
 of Philip II. Her power in Europe must have rested on the 
 reputation for wealth and strength the real sources of which had 
 long been exhausted. Philip IV. was sixteen years old when he 
 began to reign ; on March 31, 1621. The few events in which his 
 father, Philip III., and his minister, the Duke of Uzeda, influenced 
 the opening scenes of the great war, I mentioned in the early 
 lectures of this course : they consisted chiefly in his support of the 
 views of MaximiUan of Bavaria, in his conduct with respect to the 
 family claims of Spain on the Bohemian succession in case of the 
 extinction of the descendants of Ferdinand I., and in the attempt 
 made through the agency of the Duke of Feria to seize the Valtelline 
 in the Hapsburg interest. I am not sure that this amount of 
 interference is not as much as was exercised by his son in the 
 whole of his long reign. 
 
 Phihp IV. was a most indolent and pitiful person. He was not 
 without ability, but he never put it to use ; he had neither the 
 industry of his grandfather nor the personal virtues of his father ; 
 he was vicious and extravagant and his reign is on the whole one of 
 the most wretched in the annals of Spain. His first act was to 
 appoint Olivares, who had been a gentleman of his bed-chamber, 
 prime minister in the place of the Duke of Uzeda, who, with his 
 whole clan, friends and enemies, was at once disgraced. Olivares 
 was simply corrupt and unprincipled. He had certain business 
 talents which enabled him to take the trouble of governing off his 
 master's hands ; he was sharp-sighted to detect corruption where 
 the detection could be made to minister funds for the royal extra- 
 vagance ; he also was extravagant and profligate : he could form 
 designs whose very greatness, considering the state of Spain at that 
 time, is a proof of his incapacity for real political government, and 
 the result of which was in almost every instance failure. 
 
 The situation of Spain was peculiar : her nobles had been cor- 
 rupted by long prosperity, and her commerce overfed by the newly 
 discovered lands in America. When the sudden glut and momentary 
 excitement of gain and conquest were over, the Spaniards found 
 themselves to a great extent disabled from playing their proper 
 national part in Europe. Extravagance, pride, and the honour to 
 arms had been carried to a length far greater than their permanent 
 resources would at all justify ; the nation, or the political forces of 
 it, became, like the ruling dynasty, effete, whilst the prestige of 
 wealth and empire was still dazzling the eyes of monarchs like 
 James I. and supplying a false basis for the hopes of men like 
 Ferdinand II. and Maximilian of Bavaria.
 
 396 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 How little Spain as Spain was able to do in aid of the German 
 Catholics we have seen already : except an occasional diversion in 
 the Milanese, the King of Spain and Naples could help his cousin in 
 no material way. The Netherland provinces supported for the most 
 part their own wars : indeed, until the death of the Infanta Isabella, 
 in 1633, these states could be scarcely said to be more than nominally 
 attached to Spain ; and it was during these years that, by the mission 
 of Spinola into the Palatinate, most of what was done or pretended 
 to be done by Spain was done. 
 
 The first event of importance to our history in the reign is the 
 negotiation for the Spanish marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales : a 
 negotiation which was broken off in 1623, and which ought never to 
 have been begun. The political importance of it is the fact that as 
 long as it lasted it prevented James I. from interfering in Germany 
 in favour of the Palatine Elector his son-in-law, and when it was 
 broken off provoked the English people into a war for which they 
 were not prepared, the ultimate result of which was fatal to the King. 
 The next is the resumption of the war with Holland in 1621 on the 
 expiration of the twelve years' truce of which we have said enough : 
 this also went rather against the imperial and Catholic interests by 
 withdrawing the Spanish forces from the Palatinate when they were 
 most wanted, A third memorable affair is the war of Mantua, into 
 which Olivares forced his master, and the result of which was the 
 overreaching of Ferdinand II. by Richelieu in the peace of Cherasco. 
 
 Up to this moment, although Olivares's schemes had been in- 
 jurious to his allies, they had a sort of success ; the English war had 
 been anything but creditable to the English arms ; Spinola had taken 
 Breda, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of Maurice of Nassau to 
 hinder it ; and, in negotiation with Richelieu, Olivares had even ob- 
 tained a slight advantage over that most astute statesman. But from 
 the year 1628, by the time that his impudent and aggressive policy had 
 turned the arms of nearly all Europe against him, fortune seems to 
 have deserted him : and in 1630 he lost in Spinola, whom he had 
 treated with signal ingratitude, the person to whom Spain owed all 
 the reality that underlay the semblance of successes. 
 
 The beginning of the great war with France in 1635 forced Spain 
 into the position which she was loth to take, of one of the principals 
 in the great war. It was a Spanish force that arrested the Elector of 
 Treves whilst under French protection, and afforded Richelieu the 
 opportunity of bringing his schemes to their issue. I have mentioned 
 from time to time the contemporaneous campaigns in whiqh Enghien 
 carried his laurels in Spain whilst Turenne and the other rising 
 generals were training in the Netherlands and in Alsace. Much of 
 the good fortune that attended the Spanish arms in their resistance
 
 SUEVEY OF THE EEIGNS OF LOUIS XIII. AND PHILIP IV. 397 
 
 to French invasion must be attributed to the difficulties of the ground 
 on which the battle was fought. 
 
 In the year 1646 began a train of events, one of the least of the 
 consequences of which was the disgrace of Olivares. This was the 
 revolt of Catalonia. The expenses of government had been so great 
 that Philip, under Olivares 's advice, suspended the fueros or charters 
 of several of the Spanish provinces in order to tax them for his 
 immediate wants. In the spirit of this act he imposed on the Catalans 
 the sustentation of a large body of mercenaries who had been fighting 
 for him against France. The provocation was of the same sort as 
 we have seen in Germany ten years before this, when it was one of 
 the formal grounds of the complaints of the League against Wallen- 
 stein. 
 
 The Catalans had extremely large privileges by their charter, and 
 they refused to provide the soldiers with more than shelter, beds, fire, 
 salt, and water, and that only when they were actually on service, on 
 the march. The Viceroy, the Count of San Coloma, was murdered 
 in the attempt to enforce obedience. First the Duke of Cardona, 
 then the Marquis of Los Velez were sent to Barcelona to put down 
 the revolt ; but the death of the former and the severity of the latter 
 caused the mission to be ineffectual. 
 
 The Catalans asked the help of France in their despair. The 
 French were long in sending it, and the Catalans proclaimed a re- 
 public ; but the republic went down soon before the arms of the 
 Marquis, and the province in February 1641 handed itself over to 
 Louis XIII. as the elected Count of Barcelona. It was by the aid of 
 the revolted Catalans that Louis was enabled to possess himself of 
 Koussillon. 
 
 The loss of Koussillon was almost forgotten in the loss of Por- 
 tugal, where Olivares's policy in 1640 produced the same result that 
 it produced in Catalonia. The attempt to override the Portuguese 
 constitution, to reduce the kingdom to the rank of a province, was, 
 according to the Portuguese, the occasion of the outbreak ; and it may 
 well have been that Olivares was foolhardy enough to attempt a 
 measure which would have been too great for Charles V. or Philip II. 
 At this period of her history a united Spain was an idea repulsive to 
 every section of the peninsula — to every one of the kingdoms that 
 rejoiced in a history, laws, and privileges of its own. 
 
 The Portuguese revolt was headed by the Duke of Braganza, 
 whose success vindicated his attempt from the charge of insanity. 
 He achieved the independence of his country. Spain had no partisans 
 in Portugal, but her national pride would not submit to the loss of 
 the kingdom. The war, which was begun in 1640, although from 
 the beginning a hopeless one for Spain, went on for twenty-eight
 
 398 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 years : it was not until 1668 that the King of Spain recognised the 
 independence of the King of Portugal. Long before this the con- 
 nexion of the subject with our present one ceases. 
 
 The loss of Eoussillon and Portugal together caused the disgrace 
 of Olivares in 1643, just at the moment when the abilities which 
 had failed to thwart Eichelieu might have had a chance against 
 Mazarin. As soon as he began to lose the royal favour, complaints 
 poured in on every side against him — the injured nobility on one 
 side, the King's nurse on another ; the outcries of the people, which 
 might have been unheard but for these more penetrating agencies. 
 He was coolly dismissed by Philip, who appointed in his place Don 
 Luis de Haro de Guzman, his nephew, who changed the tactics but 
 failed to restore the fortunes of Spain. 
 
 The year 1647 is marked by the revolt of Naples under Masaniello 
 in July and a second in October, to the aid of which the French 
 were invited. The influence of Spain, however, on our war was 
 becoming smaller and smaller : the peace with the United Provinces 
 in January 1648 is the last of her contributions to the interest of it. 
 We close this scanty review of the part she played with contempt 
 rather than pity. Philip IV. reigned until 1665, but he did nothing 
 more memorable in his later than in his early years, and in his son 
 Charles II. the line of the Spanish Hapsburgs, than which no house 
 except the Bourbons ever became so rapidly and totally effete, came 
 to an end. 
 
 LECTUEE II 
 
 THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 
 
 It is impossible for me, in a lecture which is to sum up a long series 
 of events of great importance, and at the same time most difficult to 
 retain in anything like order, in an ordinary memory, to attempt 
 anything like an analysis of a document which, like the treaties of 
 Westphalia, runs into the smallest minutiaB on particulars which, 
 when stated generally, are so puzzling. These treaties have been 
 the subject-matter of a course of lectures given by the Professor of 
 International Law,^ one of which he has published, and I shall make 
 use of it in the present lecture for all that we can now take in hand 
 of the technicalities of the subject. In that course, I believe, he 
 went historically through the treaties ; this, of course, in a single 
 
 ' Professor Montagu Bernard.
 
 THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 399 
 
 lecture I cannot pretend to do. We will, however, first accept his 
 analysis of the treaties as containing four distinct elements : 
 
 First, the declaration of peace and clauses of amnesty, which 
 implies the restitution of such conquests as are not to be retained, 
 the revival of rights which the state of war has interrupted, and the 
 release of prisoners. 
 
 Secondly, the provisions necessary for removing the causes that 
 led to the war, for redress of grievances, and for the prevention of 
 their recurrence. 
 
 Thirdly, the satisfaction exacted by the stronger party for 
 injury sustained and for the compensation of the costs of war. 
 
 Fourthly, there are the provisions for the execution of the fore- 
 going. 
 
 All these elements are in both the treaties ; not arranged, of 
 course, in this analytical way, but digested into a large number of 
 clauses. The Osnabriick treaty contains seventeen articles ; the 
 Miinster one thirteen. The following is a brief recension of the 
 order in which they come : 
 
 The Osnabriick treaty has (1) a declaration of peace ; (2) an 
 article of amnesty ; (3) an enunciation of rights restored ; (4) an 
 enumeration of the special places to be restored ; (5) a redress of 
 religious grievances ; (6) a recognition of the independence of the 
 Swiss Cantons ; (7) the admission of Cahinism as a lawful 
 religion on a par with Lutheranism ; (8) a statement of the con- 
 stitution of the Empire and the relations of the various members 
 of the Diet to the imperial Crown ; (9) a provision for the restora- 
 tion of commercial relations ; (10) the provision of satisfaction 
 to the Swedes ; (11) the securing of Pomerania to Brandenburg ; 
 (12) the restoration of the Dukes of Mecklenburg ; (13) the satis- 
 faction of Brunswick ; (14) the restoration of the Palatine family ; 
 (15) the satisfaction of the princes of Hesse and the ecclesias- 
 tical principalities ; (16) the securing the laying down of arms ; and 
 (17) the provision for executing the treaty. Of these seventeen it 
 will be seen that the first, second, and third answer to Professor 
 Bernard's first element ; his second includes the fourth to the ninth ; 
 his third, the tenth to the fifteenth ; and his fourth the two remaining. 
 
 The treaty of Miinster agrees nearly with this, varying in the 
 omission of four articles and the consequent disturbance of order. 
 The first four clauses are identical with the corresponding ones in 
 the Swedish treaty ; the fifth and seventh articles of Osnabriick are 
 included in the fifth of Miinster ; the sixth of Miinster provides for 
 the Hessians ; the seventh of Miinster answers to the sixth of Osna- 
 briick ; the eighth and ninth are the same in both ; the tenth of 
 Miinster provides satisfaction for the French ; the eleventh includes
 
 400 LECTUEES ON EUKOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 Italian states in the peace ; the twelfth and thirteenth are the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth of the other. 
 
 So much for the form. The most important portions of the 
 matter of the pacification are the alterations of territorial arrange- 
 ments implied in the satisfactions of the several powers that have 
 to be satisfied ; the remedy of the religious grievances to which, in 
 theory at least, the war was traced ; and the arrangement of the 
 relations between the Emperor and the states of the Empire. The 
 first of these includes, in primary importance, the satisfaction of the 
 crowns of Sweden and France ; the restoration of the Palatinate and 
 of Mecklenburg ; the bestowal of Pomerania on Brandenburg, and 
 many subordinate particulars besides. The second, the adjustment 
 of religious rights and the provision for the future, and the division, 
 moreover, of the spoil of the Church under those provisions. The 
 third speaks for itself. 
 
 Now take first the satisfaction of France. France is to have : 
 
 (1) Her claim fully recognised to the territory of the three bishop- 
 rics ; this is to be incorporated into France as it was formerly in the 
 Empire, reserving, however, the metropoKtan jurisdiction of Treves. 
 
 (2) France is to have Alsace and all its dependencies united to 
 the crown of France, including Breisach. 
 
 (3) The house of Austria, which had possessed the landgraviate 
 of Alsace, renounces all right to it in favour of France, provided, 
 however, that the Catholic religion as established in the rest of the 
 hereditary dominions of Austria, without toleration of religious 
 freedom, shall continue to be maintained. 
 
 (4) France is to have the right of putting a limited garrison in 
 the fortress of Philippsburg : the fortress itself continuing to be 
 the property of the see of Speyer. A variety of other articles pro- 
 vide for the restitution to the house of Austria of the possessions 
 held by France on the Ehine not included in this surrender, and for 
 the conservation of the bishoprics of Basel and Strassburg, as well as 
 of the imperial towns and immediate vassals of the Empire in Alsace, 
 to the Empire. The Archduke Ferdinand Charles, the nephew of 
 Ferdinand II., the chief loser by this cession, is to receive a money 
 indemnity from France. 
 
 Sweden is to receive the archbishopric of Bremen and the bishopric 
 of Verden and the rights of the Chapter of Hamburg, ' secularised ' 
 into a principality conferring seat and vote in the Diet : she is to 
 have also Upper Pomerania and Eiigen, Wismar in Mecklenburg, 
 and some places annexed to these. 
 
 Brandenburg is to have the rest of Pomerania and the bishoprics 
 of Halberstadt, Minden, and Magdeburg after the death of the 
 present administrator.
 
 THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 401 
 
 The Dukes of Brunswick, who lose their claims on these bishoprics, 
 are to have an alternate possession of that of Osnabriick and the 
 monastery of Walkenried. The Dukes of Mecklenburg are restored, 
 and have the bishoprics of Ratzeburg and Schwerin as compensation 
 for the loss of Wismar and its dependencies. 
 
 Bavaria retains the Upper Palatinate and the electoral vote. The 
 Palatine house recovers the Lower Palatinate and has an eighth 
 electorate instituted for it ; also a sum of money in indemnification 
 and the reversion of the lost territory in case of the extinction of the 
 Bavarian branch. 
 
 Hesse-Cassel is to have the abbey of Hersfeld as a princely 
 fief, a great part of the county of Schaumburg and an indemnity in 
 money. All the other states, the ecclesiastical principalities, Baden, 
 Wiirtemberg, and others, are to be replaced in their old rights. 
 
 So much, then, for territorial arrangements. In the second place 
 we take the redress of religious grievances. In this respect the 
 provisions of the peace of Passau are revived ; and, so far as the 
 Edict of Restitution was concerned, a provision like that in the 
 peace of Prague, for the maintenance of the Ecclesiastical Reservation, 
 was made. Church property that was secularised on January 1, 1624, 
 was to remain so for ever, and likewise that which was then in the 
 hands of the Catholic Church : on that basis the Ecclesiastical 
 Reservation was to continue. As for the Declaration of Toleration, 
 the freedom of religion was established on the same principle as 
 before, save that Calvinism was recognised as a lawful religion as 
 well as Lutheranism, and that no provision of toleration should be 
 regarded as extending to the hereditary states of Austria. 
 
 I have mentioned several of the appropriations of ecclesiastical 
 estates that resulted from these arrangements ; to go more into 
 detail would only be puzzhng. As for the further provisions for 
 estabhshing religious equality in the imperial machinery, the 
 * Itionsrecht,' the 'jus eundi in partes,' dividing the whole Diet into 
 two bodies, one Catholic and the other Protestant, who, without 
 reference to a majority, were to settle disputed matters by arrange- 
 ment, seems to be a lame sort of expedient, but, I suppose, answered 
 the purpose of a compromise. 
 
 In the third place, the Swiss Confederation is declared to be out 
 of the limits of the Empire : and the circle of Burgundy is to be 
 included in the Empire as soon as France and Spain have agreed on 
 terms of peace. But most important on this head are the two 
 following provisions, which seem almost to aboUsh the imperial 
 jurisdiction altogether : ' that the electors, princes, and states of the 
 Roman Empire shall enjoy without contradiction the right of voting 
 in all deliberations touching the affairs of the Empire, especially 
 
 D D
 
 402 LECTUKES ON EUKOPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 when they turn upon the declaration of war, the imposition of a 
 tribute, the levies of troops, treaties of peace and alliance ; and they 
 shall treat of other such affairs, which henceforth shall not be settled 
 without the privity and free concurrence of all the states of the 
 Empire.' This leaves the Emperor, of course, even less power than 
 usually belongs to a constitutional monarch. The next gives to each 
 of the states pohtical independence : ' that each of the states shall 
 freely and for ever enjoy the right of making alliances among them- 
 selves or with strangers, for their own preservation and security, 
 provided that these alhances shall not be formed against the 
 Emperor and the Empire or contrary to the public peace.' 
 
 These clauses were not all that were proposed for the further 
 limitation of the imperial authority on the new theory of the cha- 
 racter of the Empire. Amongst the projects broached was one for 
 establishing regular sessions of the Diets ; one to forbid the election 
 of a King of the Komans during the lifetime of the Emperor, or, if it 
 were necessary, to forbid his being chosen from the same family ; 
 another to introduce a permanent capitulation or convention between 
 the Emperor and the Empire, to be signed on election ; another to 
 forbid the issuing of the ban of the Empire against any prince or 
 state without the consent of the Diet. Fortunately for himself, 
 Ferdinand managed to get these points referred to a future Diet ; 
 as was also the disposition of the town of Donauwerth and its restora- 
 tion to its rights and privileges, the legal difficulties of which were so 
 overwhelming that nothing more was ever done in the matter. A 
 few other miscellaneous transactions, such as the ratification of the 
 peace of Cherasco and the provision for the inclusion of alhes, 
 complete the important portions of the pacification. And so we will 
 leave it. I mentioned briefly, in the last lecture but one, the 
 transactions that completed the execu.tion of the negotiations. 
 
 We have thus made such a survey of the sequence of events in 
 this famous and important struggle as the limits of a term's lectures 
 would allow, or the proper proportion of the period to the necessary 
 complete cycle of your work here. We have found it, compressed 
 into this small space, sufficiently tough reading, and difficult to carry 
 in anything like order in the memory. It is possible that in 
 attempting to trace too minutely the exact Hnks of cause and con- 
 sequence I have not set before you in sufficient clearness the leading 
 influences of the war. If so, it is too late now to attempt to repair 
 the mistake, but we may first recapitulate once for all the stages of 
 the war in their order and in the process of their development. 
 
 Taking the history of the war as a whole, and not as a portion 
 only of the great struggle of the Keformation, in which aspect I will 
 return to it directly, it may be divided nearly as we have done from
 
 THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 403 
 
 lecture to lecture. The first stage is that of the Bohemian war, from 
 the accession of Ferdinand to the capture of Prague. The second 
 includes the struggles of Christian of Brunswick and Mansfeld, in 
 which the interest spreads from Bohemia to Germany at large. The 
 third is the stage at which Denmark takes the lead, and struggles at 
 the head of the Protestant party until it is entirely broken up and 
 Wallenstein's poUcy and principles are triumphant. The fourth is 
 the period of Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein, and reaches from 
 the Edict of Eestitution to the peace of Prague. The fifth reaches 
 from the peace of Prague to the peace of Westphalia ; it may be 
 regarded as broken into two, the few years preceding the opening of 
 negotiations, and the remainder in which the war and the negotiations 
 went on side by side ; but it is perhaps as convenient to regard the 
 whole thirteen years as substantially a single portion of the great 
 struggle. 
 
 In the first, then, of these stages the war is Bohemian or Austrian ; 
 in the second it is German ; in the third it becomes a struggle of 
 the whole of the Protestant Continent against the Empire, under the 
 leadership of Denmark ; in the fourth it is the same under Sweden, 
 but assisted by France ; in the fifth it is a European contest, in which 
 all other causes of war are mingled, in which all the nations of 
 Europe are engaged, in which neither religion nor nationality deter- 
 mines the portion of any one of the combatants. 
 
 It is on the lines of this arrangement that I have tried to draw 
 the sketch that we have attempted in this course of lectures. It may, 
 however, be done, perhaps, with equal effect upon the memory, by 
 grouping the events round some of the chief characters of the struggle. 
 Ferdinand II., Maximilian, and Tilly, Frederick the Count Palatine, 
 Count Thurn, Mansfeld, and Christian of Brunswick, form one group ; 
 a second is made by Wallenstein and Tilly, Christian of Denmark, 
 Christian of Brunswick, and Mansfeld ; a third by Gustavus 
 Adolphus, Bernard of Weimar, and Wallenstein ; a fourth by the 
 successive generals on each side, after the passing away of Gustavus 
 and Wallenstein ; on the Protestant side, Bernard, Horn, Baner, 
 Torstenson, Wrangel, and Konigsmark ; on the Catholic side, Ferdi- 
 nand III., the Archduke Leopold, the Cardinal Infant, Gallas, 
 Piccolomini, Hatzfeld, and Mercy. But in fact it is not very wise in 
 me to recommend to you such artificial methods of arrangement ; 
 if the time could be afforded, the Thirty Years' War might easily be 
 made a period of study in and for itself, like the Peloponnesian war 
 in ancient history. As matters are at present, the best we can do is 
 to get as complete a view as we can of its parts, variations, and 
 general tendencies. The minutiae of either places or persons cannot 
 be retained in the mind with due regard to the proportion of history. 
 
 p d2
 
 404 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 But I said that we ought to look at the war, not merely as a whole 
 in itself, capable of minute division, and illustrated by the political 
 changes of the states whose actions affect it directly or indirectly and 
 are so affected by it. It may be regarded as the third act of a great 
 series, of which the reign of Charles V. is the first, and the period of 
 the Catholic reaction, between the peace of Passau and the battle of 
 Prague, the second. Throughout the whole of this there is one 
 idea, or rather two distinct ideas, in progress which may be regarded 
 as giving a unity to the long period. The Eeformation is one, 
 the claims of the house of Hapsburg the other. On the whole, the 
 history of the house of Hapsburg is the string on which most 
 certainly the unity of the history arranges itself. The reign of 
 Charles V. witnesses the growth of the Eeformation ; the intervening 
 period the growth of the anti-Reformation ; the Thirty Years' War the 
 struggle between the two : a struggle out of which the Reformation 
 party, partially victorious, emerges with the loss of almost every- 
 thing that gave it a real and lasting interest ; and the anti-Reforma- 
 tion party, technically defeated and having failed to compass the ends 
 for which all along it has struggled, carries off the solid fruits of 
 victory. 
 
 But I am not sure that it is wise, or even convenient, to read 
 the history exclusively from this point of view. The bundle of 
 influences which we regard in common talk as the Reformation, and 
 the association of parties that we group together as the Reformation 
 interest, vary so much at different periods of the long struggle that it 
 is difficult to realise any real identity of them. The spiritual out- 
 break of emancipated thought, the rise against the political supre- 
 macy of one great Catholic house, the desire of plunder to be obtained 
 from the division of the great ecclesiastical estates, the jealousies of 
 the several powers, the Catholic and Protestant or imperial and anti- 
 imperial tendencies of the branches of the same family, cannot be 
 reduced and arranged so as to give an identity to the Reformation 
 throughout ; and much less can they be arranged so as to give a 
 personal identity of presentment to the party. The sole fixed 
 element is the house of Hapsburg ; and even this varies as its plans 
 vary in their object, for the assertion of the imperial dignity, the 
 reformation of the Church on Papal principles, or the consolidation 
 and aggrandisement of the family power. 
 
 It is easy, of course, to adopt the ordinary solution of political 
 historians of the present day, and conclude that the selfishness of 
 Austria is a constant quantity, although its object may for the time 
 be any one or all of the three that I have mentioned. There are great 
 conveniences in such a view, although it is apt to divert the mind 
 from regarding the many different influences and phases, of influence
 
 THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 405 
 
 which produced and modified the Hapsburg selfishness. But insist 
 on it as you may, it does not enable you to impersonate the counter- 
 influences. It is only in France, under the influence of the selfish 
 policy of the dynasties of Valois and Bourbon, that the exact antithesis 
 to Austria, the one unfailing, persistent, irreconcilable antagonist, can 
 be found. France armed and excited against Austria the influences 
 that she was repressing on her own soil, and it was France that 
 made the Thirty Years' War possible and that made it last the 
 thirty years it did last. 
 
 But it cannot be denied that to regard the whole period mainly 
 as a struggle between two great dynastic policies is unworthy in the 
 last degree of a philosophical historian. And to my mind it is 
 scarcely less unworthy to hang the interest of the whole on the 
 selfishness, the dynastic poHcy of the house of Hapsburg, as is the 
 modern fashion : a view which of course is largely suggested by 
 the political and philosophic adherents of the Prussian policy in 
 Germany. This view may be simply stated. The whole period was 
 a struggle waged by the dynastic policy of Austria against the spirit 
 of the German people. The German people had declared emphati- 
 cally against Rome, the house of Hapsburg determined to force 
 Romanism upon them ; the German people had cast off the last 
 shadow of imperialism, the house of Hapsburg determined to revive 
 the obsolete claims of the Empire ; the German people had a multi- 
 plicity of interests opposed to the dynastic interests of the Hapsburgs, 
 but the house of Hapsburg determined to sacrifice everything to its 
 own dynastic ends, even at the risk of quenching all that was living 
 and patriotic in Germany at large. And next to this deliberate 
 purpose of Austrian selfishness, the great source of German miseries 
 was the multitudinous array of rival principaUties marshalling 
 against one another the forces of a nation that was not consulted, 
 destroying the Hfe of the nation by such treatment, and flourishing 
 on that destruction. 
 
 There is much truth in this picture ; but it is not the whole 
 truth ; and it is so far from being the whole truth that it amounts 
 in many respects to thorough misrepresentation. It is true that 
 Austria had a selfish policy, and it is true that the princes were 
 greedy and unprincipled : it is true that the sovereigns were mad, 
 and the people perished ; but it is not true to suppose that it was 
 done with a conscious disregard of right or without an honest 
 purpose, in many respects, on each side : and still less is it true that 
 the sacrifice was a conscious one. It is impossible to read such a 
 view without seeing that it is drawn from a modern and cx-parte 
 standpoint. Distinctly the Evangelical Union was the most pro- 
 nounced and definite impersonation of anti-Austrian principles,
 
 406 LECTUEES ON EUKOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 regarded as religious, dynastic, or national ; yet the Evangelical 
 Union was a union of princes and burghers, who neither loved nor 
 trusted one another, who were not prepared to risk anything, and 
 who did look to win largely in the coarsest material way. It was 
 not a national rising, such as that of the Bohemians certainly was ; 
 it was only in pretence based on solid grounds of action, and its 
 ignominious failure testified to the little faith or self-sacrifice that 
 was mixed up with it. 
 
 It is only on the principles of Protestant dogmatism, and of that 
 German Liberal dogmatism that is so largely, even if unconsciously, 
 leavened with it, that we can shut our eyes to the fact that there was 
 on the other side an array of Catholic princes, infinitely superior in 
 political and moral energy to the Protestant ones ; with as strong a 
 hold on the faith, and a much more fervent, self-sacrificing, persever- 
 ing spirit of resistance. If we are to look at the struggle from the 
 religious standing-point, well, let us do it, but let us acknowledge 
 that we do it. But we cannot say that we believe that the men who 
 fought the battles did so. We cannot say that the Saxons and 
 Brandenburgers regarded the struggle as one of truth and enlighten- 
 ment against darkness and error. They called themselves Protestant, 
 they were Protestant enough when they wanted a reason for secular- 
 ising an abbey or a bishopric, or when they saw a Protestant kinsman 
 in danger, yet they fought with very little intermission on the 
 Catholic side, and they certainly made the fight an impossible one 
 on the Protestant side. 
 
 We may disavow inclination for either side, and say : ' Little 
 as I like the policy and principles of Eome, I like as little the 
 policy and principles of German Protestantism. I am not 
 concerned to defend the fair fame or justify the interference of 
 Gustavus Adolphus ; but yet the spirit of the house of Austria is 
 repulsive to me ; on the whole I cannot help seeing that the result 
 of Austrian success would have been to retard progress, and the 
 result of Austrian failure would have been more thoroughly to 
 secure liberty.' The answer to this is simply : Show me that you 
 mean by liberty and progress anything whatever but the advance- 
 ment of your own opinions, and then I will begin to consider the 
 validity of your plea. 
 
 I do not think that we need necessarily rise from the study of the 
 period, then, with a definite impression that either party was 
 exclusively wise and good, or that the result of the struggle was 
 decisively good or decisively bad. Nay, I think that we should be 
 guilty of a great sin against conviction if we did so. I believe 
 myself that as with the men so also with the measures, and so very 
 clearly in the results, good and evil were very much mixed. I hold
 
 THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 407 
 
 that it must have been a very great evil to have had Germany sub- 
 jugated by the Jesuits ; that the propagation of religion by persecution 
 is at once the most futile and about the most wicked of all political 
 objects ; yet I hold that Ferdinand II. and Maximilian of Bavaria 
 were, according to their Hght, wise and conscientious men : as surely 
 so as the great majority of the princes on the other side were 
 profligate politicians and selfish, aggressive, greedy tyrants. I hold it 
 certain that the best of these men struggled on very mixed motives, 
 and that in the worst of them the hatred of oppression was the sole 
 redeeming trait. Further than this I withhold personal acquittal or 
 condemnation. If a man is to be judged by the unforeseen efifects of 
 his most deliberately careful and conscientious acts, there is no one who 
 can be acquitted of blame in all history. Happily we are not obhged 
 to judge. The result is not to condemn the purpose ; so neither 
 can the cause justify the champion, or the end justify the means. 
 
 As for the results, however, the peace of Westphalia was in itself 
 a compromise : the Thirty Years' War contains much that is 
 dramatic, but it has no pretensions to the character of a drama 
 itself. Its results were what neither party was struggHng for ; they 
 are decisive for neither side ; but they are marked and lasting. The 
 peace drew a decided and permanent Hne between Protestant and 
 Catholic Germany. What was left Protestant continues so, and 
 what was left Catholic continues Catholic ; it stopped the process of 
 robbery on the Protestant side ; what was secularised then remained 
 secular, and what was kept ecclesiastical then remained ecclesiastical 
 to the end of the Empire. It settled the boundaries of Germany 
 from that day to the same period ; for Lorraine, the only subsequent 
 addition to France, had long been French to all intents and pur- 
 poses, and the seizure of Strassburg remains the only considerable 
 infringement of the rule. But, further, it settled the constitution of 
 the Empire to be but primus inter pares : the chief state of a con- 
 federation in which the pre-eminence was but nominal, and the 
 reality of the power due to the possessions of the reigning house 
 outside Germany. 
 
 That this much was an advantage to Austria, that the position 
 of the imperial authority in 1648 was better than it was in 1448, is 
 no diminution from the importance of this truth. Austria was 
 stronger, but the Empire was relatively weaker. The old theory 
 went the way of all theories in 1648, and Austria was content to let 
 it be so. Henceforth the imperial dynasty is Austrian ; Austria 
 does not sacrifice her imperial position to her dynastic interests, 
 simply because there is nothing to sacrifice. The Empire under the 
 later Hapsburgs is as much the Empire of Austria as it was when 
 Francis II. exchanged the title of Emperor of the Romans for that
 
 408 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 of Emperor of Austria. The disruption of the old system was so 
 far completed ; what it wanted of completion was left undone 
 because the exhaustion was too great to suffer more to be done then ; 
 but it soon bore results in the creation of the Prussian kingdom 
 and in the entire break-up that followed a century after. The parts 
 so broken up have now, after a season of trouble, begun to reunite : 
 with what result we dare not anticipate now, but certainly with a 
 great result for good or for evil throughout the whole world.
 
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 INDEX 
 
 ^^ 
 
 / 
 
 Adolf of Guelders, 30 
 
 Adrian VI., Pope (Adrian of Utrecht), 
 18, 36, 54, 55, 69 
 
 Adrian, Cardinal, sent to receive hom- 
 age in Valencia, 20 
 
 Adrian Florenz, Canon of Louvain, 
 28 
 
 Aerschot, Duke of, 212 
 
 Agnes of Mansfeld, 164 
 
 Agricola, John, 108 
 
 Aguila occupies Kinsale, 267 
 
 Aix, capture of, by Bourbon and 
 Pescara, 56 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle put under the ban of 
 the Empire, 260 
 
 Alava, Spanish Minister at Paris, 201 
 
 Alava, 204 
 
 Albert Alcibiades, 117 
 
 Albert, Archduke, of Austria, 161, 163, 
 220, 221, 224, 268, 301, 394 
 
 Albert III. (the Magnanimous) of 
 Bavaria, 163 
 
 Albert V., Duke of Bavaria., 178 
 
 Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of 
 Mentz, 42, 47, 68, 99, 115 
 
 Aldobrandi, Hippolito. See Clement 
 VIII. 
 
 Alencjon, Francis, Duke of, 191, 210, 
 229, 230, 232. See also Anjou 
 
 Alexander VI., Pope, 74 
 
 Alexander, the Grand Prior, 252 
 
 Alexander of Parma. See Parma 
 
 Alkmaar, siege of, 207 
 
 Alva, Duke of, 89, 124, 152, 156, 186, 
 188, 199, 200, 202, 203, 204, 205, 
 207, 221, 229 
 
 Amboise, conspiracy of, 184 ; Edict of, 
 185 
 
 Amiens captured and re-taken, 224 
 
 Anabaptists, the, 35, 101 
 
 Ancre, Marshal d', 221, 252 
 
 Andreas, Cardinal, of Austria, 268 
 
 Anjou, Duke of, 188 ; projected mar- 
 riage with Elizabeth of England, 
 190 ; elected sovereign of the Cen- 
 tral States, 215; his death, 216. 
 See also Alen9on 
 
 Anna Maria, queen of Philip II., 160 
 Anna of Saxony, wife of William the 
 
 Silent, 210 
 Anne of Austria marries Lewis XIII. 
 
 of France, 252, 388; Regent of 
 
 France, 392 
 Anne of Germany, 163 
 Annebaut, General, 89 
 Antonio, prior of Crato, 221, 222 
 Antony, King of Navarre, 159, 182, 184, 
 
 185 
 Antwerp, 200, 201, 212, 215 
 Aragon, kingdom of, 14 ; Cortes, 15, 
 
 20 ; Don John de Lanuza, Eegent 
 
 of, 21 
 Archange, Father, 248 
 Ardres, Henry VIII. of Engl nd visits 
 
 Francis I. at, 53 
 Aremberg, Count of, 202 
 Armada, Spanish, 219 
 Arnold, Duke of Guelders, 30 
 Arques, Henry of Navarre beats the 
 
 Duke of Mayenne at, 235 
 Arras, bishopric of, 33 
 Artois, 25 
 
 Aschaffenburg taken by Turenne, 378 
 Aschhausen, Protestant Union formed 
 
 at, 260 
 Asturias, Charles's landing in, 23 
 Augsburg, Confession of, 72, 98, 359 
 Augsburg, Diet of, 9, 97, 149 
 Augustus the Pious of Saxony, 163 
 Aulic Council, 43, 45 
 Auvergne, Count of, 247, 248 
 Avaux, Count d', 384 
 Avila, Don Sancho d', 208 
 Avila, Junta meet at, 22 
 Azevedo, Peter Henriquez d', 161 
 
 Baden, Margrave of, 261, 303 
 Bamberg surrenders to Bernard of 
 
 Weimar, 347 
 Baner defeats the Saxons at Diemitz, 
 362 ; captures Erfurt and Meissen, 
 and besieges Leipsic, 363 ; driven 
 into Pomerania, 366 ; victorious at
 
 412 
 
 LECTUEES ON EUEOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 ^ 
 
 Brandeis, 368 ; retires on Meissen, 
 
 369 ; disperses the Diet of Eatisbon, 
 
 370 ; his death, 870 
 Barbarossa, Hayraddin, 83, 124 
 Barcelona, Charles at, 20 ; Treaty of, 
 
 61 ; Peace of, 71, 74 
 
 Barlaimont. See Berlaymont 
 
 Barneveldt, 270 
 
 Barricades, Day of the, 233 
 
 Biirwalde, treaty signed at, between 
 Gustavus Adolphus and Eichelieu, 
 328, 390 
 
 Basel, Council of, 100 
 
 Bathory, Stephen, King of Poland, 
 175 
 
 Bayard, death of, 56 
 
 B6arn, Prince of (Henry IV.), 188 
 
 Beaufort, Gabrielle d'Estr^es, Duchess 
 of, 246 
 
 Beghards, 35 
 
 Beguins, 35 
 
 Bergen-op-Zoom, Maurice raises the 
 siege of, 303 
 
 Berlaymont, 198, 199 
 
 Bernard, Duke of Weimar, 336, 341, 
 344, 347 ; becomes Duke of Fran- 
 conia, 348; captures Eichstadt, 
 Neuburg, Ingolstadt, Eatisbon, and 
 Straubing, 348 ; refuses Wallen- 
 stein's offer of service, 353 ; con- 
 tention with Horn, 355 ; defeated 
 by Ferdinand II. at Nordlingen, 
 357 ; becomes general-in-chief of 
 the German army, 360 ; offered the 
 territory of Alsace by Ferdinand, 
 362 ; captures Saverne, 365 ; retires 
 into Lorraine, 366 ; takes Eheinfeld, 
 Eoteln, and Freiburg, beats the 
 Bavarians at Witteweir, and cap- 
 tures Breisach, 367 ; his death, 368 
 
 Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transyl- 
 vania, 292 ; proclaims himself King 
 of Hungary, 293 ; defeats Bucquoy 
 at Neuhausel, 301 ; abandons his 
 pretensions to the crown, 302 
 
 Biberach taken by Horn, 355 
 
 Bible, the, translated, 100 
 
 Biron, Marshal, 237, 239, 247 
 
 Blois, States General meet at, 231 
 
 Blood, Council of, 202, 208 
 
 Boisot, Admiral, 208, 210 
 
 Boitzeburg captured by Tilly and 
 WaUenstein, 314 
 
 Bologna, Charles V. enters, 77 
 
 Bonnivet sent into Navarre by 
 Francis I., 53 ; captures Fontarabia, 
 54 
 
 Bordeaux, convention of, 215 ; Arch- 
 bishop of, burns the Spanish fleet, 
 367 
 
 Borghese, Camillo, Pope, 159 
 
 Borgia, Caesar, 74 
 
 Bossu, Admiral, 206, 207 
 
 Bouillon, Duke of, 248. 250, 252, 388 
 
 Bourbon, Cardinal Charles of, 159, 
 
 229, 232, 234, 235 
 Bourbon, Duke of, Constable of 
 
 France, 54 
 Bourg, Anne du, 183 
 Bourges visited by Charles, 32 
 Brabant, Duke of, Anjou elected, 215 
 Braganza, Duke of, 397 
 Brandeis, Baner's victory at, 368 
 Brandenburg, Elector of, 249 
 Breda, 209, 219, 396 
 Brederode, 200, 201, 270 
 Breissach captured by Bernard of 
 
 Weimar, 367 
 Bremen, archbishopric of, 177 
 Brill, capture of, 206 ; handed to 
 
 England as security for debt, 218 
 Bromsbro, Peace of, 384 
 Bruges, Duke of Anjou elected Count 
 
 of Flanders at, 215 
 Brunau, Protestant church demolished 
 
 at, 287 
 Brussels, Treaty of, 52 ; the Union of, 
 
 211 ; the New Union of, 213 
 Brussol, Treaty of, 249 
 Bucquoy, General, 289, 290, 292, 296, 
 
 301 
 Buda burned by Solyman, 123 
 Buoncompagno, Hugo, Pope, 159 
 Burgundy, House of, 26 
 
 Cajetan, Cardinal, 68, 235, 236 
 Calderon, Eodrigo, 265 
 Calemburg, Count, 200 
 Cambrai, bishopric of, 33 ; League of, 
 
 28, 51 ; peace of, 8, 29, 31, 60 
 Campeggio, Cardinal, 70 
 Caraffa, Cardinal, elected Pope, 149 
 Cardona, Duke of, 397 
 Carignan besieged by the Count of 
 
 Enghien, 91 
 Carlstadt supports Luther, 69 
 Carranza, Bartholomew, Archbishop 
 
 of Toledo, 84, 195 
 Casimir, John, 214 
 Castaldo, Ferdinand's Minister, 126 
 Castile, kingdom of, 14 ; Ximenes 
 
 appointed regent, 18 
 Castilian Cortes, 15, 21 
 Catalonia, Cortes of, 15 ; Charles V. 
 
 at, 20 ; revolt of, 397 
 Cateau-Cambresis, Treaty of, 130, 155 
 Catherine of Aragon, 78, 100 
 Catherine of England a possible 
 
 claimant to the Spanish crowns, 17 
 Catherine de' Medici, 230, 231 ; her 
 
 death, 234. See also M^dicis 
 Catholic League meets at Wiirzburg , 
 
 293
 
 INDEX 
 
 413 
 
 Cercamps, peace nego tiations at, 155 
 
 Consoles, Battle of, 91 
 
 Champagny (brother of Granvelle), 
 
 209, 214 
 Charite, La, 189, 191 
 Charles I. of England, 319, 389 
 Charles V., Emperor, 8, 9, 13, 17 ; 
 crowned at Valladolid, 19 ; his i 
 ingratitude to Ximenes, 19 ; ac- 
 knowledged as joint sovereign of 
 / Aragon with Johanna, 20 ; over- 
 
 tures to the Castilian rebels, 22 ; 
 terms dictated by the Junta, 23 ; 
 lands in Asturias, 23 ; marries 
 Isabella of Portugal, 23 ; crushes 
 the revolt of the Moriscoes, 24 ; 
 offends the Castilian nobles by his 
 taxation proposals, 24 ; dismisses 
 the nobles from the Cortes, 24 ; 
 received by Francis I. at Bourges, 
 32 ; visits Paris, 32 ; triumphal 
 entry into Ghent, 32 ; introduces 
 the Inquisition into the Netherlands, 
 34 ; elected Emperor of Germany, 
 43 ; meets Henry VIII. of England 
 and Cardinal Wolsey, 43 ; crowned 
 Emperor by Pope Clement VII., 
 48, 77 ; appoints his brother Fer- 
 dinand King of Germany, 48 ; lands 
 at Genoa, 73, 76 ; makes his wife 
 his regent in Spain, 76 ; receives 
 the crown of Lombardy, 77 ; pro- 
 tests against Francis to the PaQ;al 
 Assembly, 80 ; besieges Marseilles, 
 
 81 ; accused of treason by Francis, 
 
 82 ; his treatment of Ghent, 86 ; 
 puts the Duke of Cleves to the 
 ban of the Empire, 88 ; defeats 
 the Duke of Cleves, 89 ; summons 
 the Diet at Augsburg, 97 ; calls 
 the Diet to Cologne, 98 ; makes 
 peace with the Smalkaldic League, 
 99 ; annuls the Edicts of Worms 
 and Augsburg, 100 ; attacked by 
 the Smalkaldic League, 104 ; pro- 
 pounds the Interim, 108 ; fails in^ 
 besieging Metz, 116 ; resigns tbfe 
 Netherlands to Philip, 120 ; his 
 character, 132-144 ; abdicates, 150 
 
 Charles IX. of France, 158, 185 ; at 
 Bayonne, 186 ; ordinance at 
 Moulins, 187 ; marries Elizabeth 
 of Austria, 189 ; jealous of hi^ 
 brother, 189, 190 ; saves the King 
 of Navarre, 190 ; arrests the Duke 
 of Alen^on and the King of Navarre, 
 191 ; his death, 192 ; negotiations 
 ■with the Prince of Orange, 203 
 
 Charles IX. of Sweden, 159 
 
 Charles X. of France, Cardinal of 
 Bourbon proclaimed as, 235 
 
 Charles, Margrave of Austria, 261 
 
 Charles the Bold, 26 
 
 Charles of Egmont, 29, 30 
 
 Charles of Lorraine, Cardinal Arch- 
 bishop of Rheims, 182, 258 
 
 Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, 164, 165, 
 264 
 
 Charles Gustavus, Palatine of Deux- 
 ponts, 381 
 
 Charles Lewis defeated by Hatzfeld, 
 367 
 
 Charlotte of Bourbon marries William 
 of Orange, 209 ; death of, 215 
 
 Charolais retained by Philip II., 225, 
 240 
 
 Chartres besieged by Cond6, 187 ; 
 Henry III. retires to, 233 ; secured 
 by Henry of Navarre, 236 
 
 Chateau Thierry, Duke of Anjou dies 
 at, 216 
 
 Chatillons, the, 182 
 
 Chemnitz, Chancellor of Stettin, 370 
 
 Chemnitz, Martin, 256 
 
 Cherasco, Peace of, 396 
 
 Chievres, Charles's prime minister, 
 20 
 
 Chimay, Prince of, 216 
 
 Christian I. of Saxony, 163 
 
 Christian II. of Saxony, 163 
 
 Christian III. of Denmark declares 
 war against Charles V., 89 
 
 Christian IV. of Denmark, 159 ; op- 
 poses Ferdinand, 301 ; elected head 
 of the Lower Saxon Confederation, 
 306, 310 ; negotiates with Ferdi- 
 nand, .350, 371 ; renounces his 
 alliance with Ferdinand, 373 ; his 
 offer of mediation, 381 
 
 Christian of Anhalt, 296, 297, 300, 
 '' 304 
 
 Christian, Count Palatine of Birken- 
 feld, 347 
 
 Christian of Brunswick, 302, 312 
 
 Christian Ernest of Brandenburg, 
 261 
 
 Christian William of Brandenburg, 
 177, 313, 314, 330 
 
 Chytrseus, David, 256 
 
 Cinq-Mars, conspiracy of, 390 
 
 Clara Isabella, Infanta, 161 
 
 Claude of Chalon, 161 
 
 Clement VII., Pope, 8, 55, 58, 60, 70, 
 74, 100 
 
 Clement VIII., Pope, 159 
 
 Clement, Jacques, assassinates Henry 
 III. of France, 235 
 
 Cochlffius opposes the Reformers, 98 
 
 Cocqueville, General, 202 
 
 Cognac, treaty of, 58 
 1 Coignac, 189 
 
 I Coligny, Admiral, 154, 182, 184, 187, 
 \ ■ 188, 189, 190, 203 
 i Collateral Council of Naples, 74
 
 414 
 
 LECTUKES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 Cologne, archbishopric of, 34 
 
 Colonna, Pompeo, 74 
 
 Colonna, Vittoria, 84 
 
 Colonnas, the, deprived of their duchy, 
 
 152 
 Commendone, Papal legate, 176 
 Compi^gne, Treaty of, 363 
 CompU pillaged by the Duke of Guise, 
 
 153 
 Compostella, Castilian Cortes meet at, 
 
 21 
 Concini, Minister of Marie de' Medici, 
 
 251, 388 
 Conde, Prince of, 191, 229, 252, 367, 
 
 379, 388. See also Enghien 
 Conde, Princess of, and Henry IV., 
 
 249 
 Confession of Augsburg, 9, 72, 98, 149, 
 
 358 
 Conspiracy of Amboise, 184 
 Constitutions of the Spanish king- 
 doms, 14 
 Contarini, Aloysio, 384 
 Corbie taken by Thomas of Savoy, 
 
 and recaptured by Louis XIIL, 363 
 Cortes, the Spanish, 14, 16, 20, 227 
 Cortez, Hernando, 132 
 Corunna, Castilian Cortes at, 21 
 Cosmo (Duke of Florence) Grand 
 
 Duke of Tuscany, 165 
 Coss6, Marshal, 189 
 Council of Basel, 100 
 Council of Blood, 202, 208 
 Council of Mechlin, 26, 27 
 Council of Trent, 9, 102 
 Council of Troubles, 202 
 Crane, John von, 384 
 Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 
 100 
 Cremona, 54 
 
 Crespy, peace of, 8, 85, 92, 93 
 Cromwell, Thomas, 100 
 Croy, William de. Archbishop of 
 
 Toledo, 20 
 Culmbach ravaged by Wallenstein, 
 
 341 
 Cyprus, Venetians lose, 196 
 
 Dampieere, General, 289, 296 
 
 Dancing Heretics, 35 
 
 Dandelot, 182 
 
 Day of the Barricades, 233 
 
 Declaration of Independence of the 
 
 United Provinces, 215 
 Declaration of Toleration, 176, 177, 
 
 179 
 Demmin surrenders to Gustavus 
 
 Adolphus, 333 
 Dendermonde, conference at, 201 
 Deventer, Brethren of the Common 
 
 Life founded at, 36 
 
 Devereux assassinates Wallenstein, 
 
 353 
 Diana of Poictiers, Wd 
 Diemitz, Baner defeats the Saxons at, 
 
 362 
 Diet of Augsburg, 9 
 Dinkelsbuhl taken by Gustavus 
 
 Adolphus, 341 
 D'O, intendant of the finances, 238 
 Donauwerth occupied by Charles V., 
 
 105 ; put under the ban of the 
 
 Empire, 260 
 Doria, Andrea, 73, 81, 124, 126, 130 
 Doria, Filippino, 60, 74 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 221, 222 
 Dreux, Francis of Alen9on flies to, 
 
 230 
 Dreux, Battle of, 185 
 Duiveland, Requesens marches to, 
 
 209 
 Dunham's, Dr., criticism of Robertson, 
 
 12 
 Dunkirk captured by Marshal de 
 
 Termes, 155 ; taken by the Duke of 
 
 Enghien, 377 
 Diitthngen, Battle of, 372, 393 
 
 Eberhaed of Liibeck, 177 
 
 Eboli, Princess, 224 
 
 Ecclesiastical Reservation, 149, 176, 
 
 179, 358 
 Eck, Johann, 68, 98, 101 
 Edict of Amboise, 185 
 Edict of Nantes, 240 
 Edict of Restitution, the, 315, 321, 
 
 358 
 Edict of Roussillon, 186 
 Edward VI., England under, 150 
 Egmont, Charles of, 29, 30 
 Egmont, Count, 155, 187, 198, 199, 
 
 200, 201, 202 
 Egra, Wallenstein assassinated at, 353 ; 
 
 captured by Wrangel, 378 
 Ehrenbreitstein, surrender of, 366 
 Eichstadt captured by Bernard of 
 
 Weimar, 348 
 Eleanor, Queen of France, 82 
 Eleanora, Empress, coronation of, 325 
 Electors of Germany, 42 
 Elfsnabben, Gustavus Adolphus em- 
 barks at, 328 
 Elizabeth of Austria, 189 
 Elizabeth of England, 157, 190, 203, 
 
 218, 221, 222, 223, 229 
 Elizabeth of France, queen of Philip 
 
 IL, 160 
 Elizabeth, Queen of France, 163 
 Elizabeth, Queen of Spain, 186 
 Elizabeth Stewart, Electress Palatine, 
 
 286
 
 INDEX 
 
 415 
 
 y 
 
 Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, 164, 
 221 
 
 Enghien, Count of, 91 
 
 Enghien, Duke of, victories of, 372, 
 377, 393. See also Cond6 
 
 England, condition of, under Edward 
 VI., 150 
 
 England's entry into European politics, 
 52 
 
 Entragues, Madame d', 247 
 
 Entragues, Mademoiselle d', 246 
 
 Epernon, Duke of, 233, 235, 239 
 
 Erfurt, Luther enters University of, 
 67 ; captured by Baner, 363 
 
 Eric XIV. of Sweden, 159 
 
 Ernest, Archduke, Governor of the 
 Netherlands, 161, 163 
 
 Ernest of Bavaria, Archbishop of 
 Cologne, 163 
 
 Ernest of Liineburg, 72, 103 
 
 Ernest of Mansfeld, 219 
 
 Escovedo (Don John's secretary) assas- 
 sinated, 213, 223 
 
 Escurial built by Philip II., 225 
 
 Essex, Earl of, 222 
 
 Estr^es, GabrieUe d'. Duchess of Beau- 
 fort, 246 
 
 European politics, Papal influence on, 
 8 
 
 Faber opposes the Eeformers, 98 
 Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma, 
 
 161, 213. See also Parma 
 Farnese, Ottavio, 109, 161, 165 
 Ferdinand I. of the House of Haps- 
 burg, 71, 158 ; his election as King 
 of the Komans, 99 ; at the Diet of 
 Augsburg, 148 ; becomes Emperor, 
 150 ; his family, 162 ; at Passau/' 
 169 ; at Augsburg, 169, 171 ; jjfe 
 complicity in Martinuzzi's assassi- 
 nation, 169 ; elected Emperor, 170 ; 
 his coronation refused by Paul IV., 
 170 ; negotiations with Pius IV., 
 172 ; his death, 172 
 Ferdinand II. of the House of Haps- 
 burg, 162 ; crowned King of Bohemia, 
 264, 288 ; receives the crown of Hun- 
 gary, 289 ; holds Vienna against 
 Count Thurn, 290 ; elected Emperor 
 291 ; acknowledged King of Bohemia, 
 298 ; his character, 298 ; his re- 
 prisals on the Bohemians, 300 ; 
 marries Eleanora Gonzaga, 302 ; de- 
 prives Frederick of his electorate, 
 304 ; endeavours to supersede Wal- 
 lenstein, 352 ; orders Wallenstein's 
 arrest, 353 ; captures Eatisbon, 356 ; 
 defeats Duke Bernard at Nordlingen, 
 357 ; secures the kingdom of the Ko- 
 mans for his son, 364 ; his death, 364 
 
 Ferdinand III. of the House of Haps- 
 burg, 365 ; driven to Eatisbon, 374 ; 
 has his eldest son crowned as King 
 of Bohemia, 377 ; narrowly escapes 
 capture by Wrangel, 378 ; his son 
 crowned King of Hungary, 379 
 Ferdinand IV. of Hungary, 379 
 Ferdinand of Aragon becomes king of 
 
 Naples, 73 
 Ferdinand of Carinthia, 163 
 Ferdinand, Elector of Cologne, 291 
 Ferdinand of Styria crowned King of 
 
 Bohemia, 264 
 Ferdinand of Toledo, Cardinal Infant 
 
 of Spain, 355, 372, 394 
 Ferdinand of Tuscany, 165 
 Feria, Duke of, 237, 347, 348 
 Ferrara added to the Papal States, 
 
 74 
 Field of Cloth of Gold, 43 
 Flacius Illyricus, 170 
 Flagellants, 35 
 Flanders, 25 
 Flanders, Count of, Anjou elected, 
 
 215 
 Florence, Francis, Duke of, 246 
 Flushing, revolution at, 206 ; taken as 
 a surety by Elizabeth of England, 
 218 
 Fonseca, Antonio de, 22 
 Fontarabia captured by Bonnivet, 54 
 Foreign influence at Charles's court, 
 
 17 ; hated by Spaniards, 18 
 Formula Concordisa, 256 
 Fox, Bishop of Hereford, 100 
 France in the sixteenth century, 180 
 Francesco Maria of Tuscany, 165 
 Francis I. of France, Protestant dis- 
 trust of, 10 ; and the Ghent bur- 
 ghers, 32 ; a candidate for the crown 
 of Germany, 41 ; rivalry with 
 Charles V., 49 ; seizes Milan, 56 ; 
 besieges Pavia, 57 ; defeated and 
 taken prisoner by Pescara, 57 ; li- 
 berated, 58 ; intrigues with Sultan 
 Solyman, 78; allies himself with 
 the Smalkaldic League, 78 ; occupies 
 Savoy, 79 ; accuses Charles V. of 
 treason, 82 ; proclaims war against 
 Charles, 89 ; occupies Landrecy, 
 90 ; his death and character, 95 
 Francis II. of France, 158, 182, 184 
 Francis of Alencjon, 229, 230 
 Francis Prince of Conti, 159 
 Francis of Florence, 246 
 Francis of Guise, 182, 185 
 Francis Charles of Saxe-Lauenburg, 
 
 330 
 Frankenthal, 302, 337 
 Frankfort, German Electors meet at, 
 
 42 
 Frederick II. of Denmark, 159
 
 416 
 
 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 Frederick the Wise, Count Palatine, 
 102 
 
 Frederick, Elector Palatine, elected 
 King of Bohemia, 2G4, 291; his 
 incapacity, 296 ; resigns the crown, 
 297 ; visits Gustavus Adolphus, 337 ; 
 his death, 347 
 
 Frederick (the Wise) of Saxony, 42, 
 68,70 
 
 Frederick of Toledo, 207 
 
 Frederick the Long, 335 
 
 Frederick Augustus the Strong, 47 
 
 Frederick Henry of Nassau, 394 
 
 Frederick Ulric, Duke of Wolfenbiittel, 
 312 
 
 Frederick William III. of Prussia, 163 
 
 Fregoso, Csesar, 88 
 
 Freiburg taken by the Rhinegrave, 
 355 ; captured by Bernard of Wei- 
 mar, 367 
 
 ' Freiherren,' or German barons, 44 
 
 Friesland joins the League of Utrecht, 
 214 
 
 Friesland, West, province of, 25 
 
 Fuentes, Pedro Henriquez d'Azovedo, 
 Count of, 220, 239 
 
 Fuggers, Charles V.'s bankers, 97 
 
 Gallas defeats Wrangel, 366 ; de- 
 feated at Yutterbuck, 373 ; his 
 death, 378 
 
 Gassion, Marshal, 379 
 
 Gemblours, Don John's victory at, 213 
 
 George of Brandenburg-Anspach, 70 
 72,98 
 
 George, Landgrave of Hesse-Darm- 
 stadt, 336 
 
 George Frederick, Margrave of Baden, 
 296, 302 
 
 Gerard, Balthazar, assassinates 
 William of Orange, 216 
 
 Germaine of Foix married to Ferdi- 
 nand, 16 
 
 German kingdom, historical survey of 
 the, 37 et seq. 
 
 Germany in the sixteenth century, 253 
 
 Gertruydenberg surrendered to the 
 Spaniards, 219 ; captured by 
 Maurice, 219 
 
 Ghent, 31 ; burghers' invitation to' 
 Francis I., 32 ; Charles's triumphal 
 entry into, 32 ; his treatment of, 
 86 ; congress of the States at, 210, 
 211; submits to Alexander of 
 Parma, 217 
 
 Ghinetto, Cardinal, 364 
 
 Ghislieri, Michael, Pope, 159 
 
 Giron, Pedro, Duke of Ossuna, 160 
 
 Goignies, De, 213 
 
 Golden Bull of Charles IV., 97 
 
 Gomez, Ruy, 224 n. 
 
 Gonzaga, Eleanora, wife of Emperor 
 Ferdinand, 302 
 
 Gonzaga, Ottavio, 213 
 
 Gonzalvo of Cordova, 74, 301 
 
 Gotha, war of, 174 
 
 Gottingen taken by Tilly, 312 
 
 GranveUe, Cardinal, 156, 160, 161, 
 198, 199, 202, 204 
 
 Gravelines, meeting at, between 
 Charles and Henry VIII. of England, 
 53 ; Battle of, 155 
 
 ' Great Privilege ' of the Netherlands 
 provinces, 27 
 
 Gregory XIIL, Pope, 159 ; condemns 
 Archbishop Carranza, 195 
 
 Gregory XIV., Pope, 159 ; declares 
 against Henry IV. of France, 236 
 
 Greitfenklau, Richard von. Archbishop 
 of Treves, 42 
 
 Grenoble taken by Lesdiguieres, 236 
 
 Groningen, province of, 25 
 
 Groningen besieged by Philip of 
 Hohenlohe, 214 
 
 Groote, Gerhard, 36 
 
 Grumbach, William, 171, 174, 175 
 
 Guastalla, Duke of, 317, 324 
 
 Guasto, Marquis del, 88 
 
 Gu6briant killed while besieging 
 Eothweil, 372 
 
 Guelders, duchy of, rival claimants 
 for, 29 
 
 Guelders joins the League of Utrecht, 
 214 
 
 Guelders and Friesland, Duke of, 
 Anjou elected, 215 
 
 ' Gueux, les,' 200 
 
 Guienne and Languedoc, Catholic 
 confederation, 187 
 
 Guines captured by the Duke of Guise, 
 155 
 
 Guise, Claude Duke of, 159 
 
 Guise, Francis Duke of, 153, 154, 159, 
 185 
 
 Guise, Henry Duke of, 116, 159, 188, 
 232, 233, 234, 236, 252 
 
 Guise, Mary of, 159 
 
 Guise, Ren6 II. Duke of, 159 
 
 Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, 
 326 ; sails from Elfsnabben and 
 occupies Stettin, 328 ; modernises 
 the mode of warfare, 330 ; takes 
 possession of Spandau, 333 ; defeats 
 Tilly at Wolmerstadt and W^erben, 
 334 ; overwhelms Tilly at Breiten- 
 feld, 335 ; captures Schweinfurt 
 and Wiirzburg and garrisons 
 lliisselsheim, 336 ; Oppenheim, 
 Mentz, and Mannheim surrender, 
 336 ; captures Wimpfen, 337 ; fin- 
 ally defeats Tilly and enters Bavaria, 
 339; prevents the sacking of 
 Munich, 339 ; unsuccessfully at
 
 INDEX 
 
 417 
 
 / 
 
 tacks Wallenstein, 340 ; his second 
 inroad into Bavaria, 341 ; killed at 
 the Battle of Liitzen, 842 
 Guzman, Lewis de Haro de, 398 
 
 Haarlem captured by Alva, 207 
 
 Hague, Treaty of the, 394 
 
 flainault, county of, 25 
 
 Halberstadt, bishopric of, 177 
 
 Hamelen occupied by Tilly, 311 
 
 Hammes, Duke of Guise seizes, 155 
 
 Hanseatic League, the, 316 
 
 Harlai, Achilla de, 234 
 
 Hatzfeld defeats Charles Lewis at 
 Lemgo, 367 ; resigns his commis- 
 sion, 372 
 
 Heidelberg, 302, 303, 337, 347 
 
 Heilbronn, confederation of, 350 
 
 Heiligerlee, Battle of, 202 
 
 Henry II. of France declares war 
 against Charles V., 113 
 
 Henry III. of France, becomes King of 
 Poland, 229 ; crowned at Eheims, 
 230 ; marries Louise of Vaudemont, 
 230 ; alarmed by Guise's popularity, 
 
 232 ; retires to Chartres, 233 ; 
 issues an edict of reunion at Eouen, 
 
 233 ; procures the assassination of 
 Guise, 234 ; joins Henry of Navarre, 
 234 ; assassinated by Jacques 
 Clement, 235 
 
 Henry IV. of France. See Henry of 
 Navarre 
 
 Henry VIII. of England meets Charles 
 v., 43 ; receives Charles in London, 
 53 ; visits Francis I. at Ardres, 53 ; 
 meets Charles at Gravelines, 53 ; 
 renounces his alliance with Charles, 
 58 ; death of, 95 
 
 Henry, King of Poland, 229 
 
 Henry, Cardinal King of Portugal, 
 215, 221 
 
 Henry of Anjou besieges La Eochelle, 
 191 ; elected King of Poland, 191 
 
 Henry of Guise. See Guise 
 
 Hemy of Nassau, 81, 161 
 
 Henry of Navarre, marriage arranged 
 with Margaret of France, 189 ; cap- 
 tures Cahors, 231 ; beats the Duke 
 of Joyeuse at Coutras, 233 ; joins 
 Henry III. at Tours, 234 ; victory 
 over the Duke of Mayenne at 
 Arques, 235 ; wins the Battle of 
 Ivry, 235 ; besieges Paris, 235 ; 
 Pope Gregory XIV. declares against 
 him, 236 ; captures Epernay, 237 ; 
 takes Dreux, 237 ; recantation at 
 St. Denis, 238 ; crowned as Henry 
 IV., 238 ; receives Papal absolution, 
 239 ; negotiates with Philip II., 
 
 240 ; issues the Edict of Nantes, 
 240 ; his character, 241 ; divorces 
 Margaret of Valois, 246 ; marries 
 Marie de M^dicis, 246 ; makes an 
 alliance with Holland, 249 ; his 
 court scandals, 249 ; assassinated 
 by Francis Eavaillac, 250 
 
 Henry of Saxe-Lauenburg, 177, 257 
 
 Henry of Wolfenbiittel, 103 
 
 Hermann of Cologne deposed by the 
 Pope, 104 
 
 Hermann of Minden, 177 
 
 Hermann of Wied, Archbishop of 
 ' Cologne, 42 
 
 Hertford, Earl of, 91 
 
 Hildesheim besieged by George of 
 Liineburg, 347 
 
 History, modern and medieval, con- 
 trasted, 1, 2 
 
 H6chst-on-the-Main, Battle of, 303 
 t Hochstadt surrenders to Bernard of 
 Weimar, 347 ; taken by Turenne, 
 378 
 
 Hochstraten opposes Luther, 68 
 
 Hohenlohe, Count, 296, 300 
 \ Holland, county of, 25 
 I Holland joins the League of Utrecht, 
 214 ; and Zeeland renounce allegi- 
 \ ance to Philip II., 210 
 
 Holy League, formation of the, 58 
 I Holy Union, the, 231 
 \ Hoogstraten, 202 
 1 Hopital, Chancellor, 184 
 
 Horn, Count, 187, 199, 200, 201, 
 202 
 
 Horn, Duke of, 336, 355 
 
 Horuc Barbarossa, 19 
 
 Huguenots, the, 185, 187, 188, 189, 191, 
 192, 200, 210, 389 
 
 Hulst, Francis Van der, 36 
 
 Hulst captured by Archduke Albert, 
 220 
 
 Ingolstadt occupied by Charles V., 
 
 105 ; by Bernard of Weimar, 348 
 Innocent IX., Pope, 159 
 Inquisition, Spanish, 24, 84, 195 
 Interim, the, 108 
 Inter-State jealousy, Spanish, 14 
 Irish rebellion discouraged by Philip 
 
 IL, 194 ; encouraged by Philip III., 
 
 267 
 Isabella of Castille, death of, 16 
 Isabella of France married to Philip of 
 
 Spain, 388 
 Isabella of Portugal, 23, 76 
 Isabelle, Infanta of Spain, 236 
 Italy, territorial state of, in the 
 
 sixteenth century, 73 
 Ivi-y, Battle of, 235 
 
 E E
 
 418 
 
 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1-519-1648 
 
 Jagebndokf taken by Wallenstein, 
 
 314 
 James I. of England, 158, 223, 318 
 James (or Jacob), Margrave of Baden, 
 
 258 
 Jarnac, Battle of, 159, 188 
 Joachim of Brandenburg, 42, 102, 261 
 Joachim II., Elector of Brandenburg, 
 
 163 
 Joachim Ernest of Brandenburg, 
 
 Margrave of Anspach, 295 
 Joachim Frederick, Elector of Bran- 
 denburg, 163, 176 
 Joam, Duke of Braganza, 221 
 Johanna seized and proclaimed queen 
 
 by Castilian Junta, 22 ; re-taken by 
 
 nobles, 23 
 John III. of Sweden, 159 
 John of Aragon, 74 
 John of Austria, Governor of the 
 
 Netherlands, 161, 211 ; his victory 
 
 at Lepanto, 196 ; aims at securing 
 
 the throne of England, 212 ; seizes 
 
 Namur, 212 ; deposed by the States, 
 
 213 ; his death, 213 
 John of Chalon, 161 
 John of Nassau, 214, 384 
 John Casimir, Count Palatine, 230, 
 
 257 
 John Ernest of Weimar, 313 
 John the Constant of Saxony, 70, 71, 
 
 72, 99 
 John Frederick the Magnanimous of 
 
 Saxony, 99 
 John Frederick of Gotha, 174 
 John George of Brandenburg, 163, 258, 
 
 296, 800 
 John George of HohenzoUern, 304 
 John George of Saxony, 163, 291, 358 
 John Jacob of Anhalt, 311 
 John Sigismund of Brandenburg, 163, 
 
 291 
 Joseph, Father (Richelieu's confidant), 
 
 325, 367 
 Juliers and Cleves, duchy of, seized by 
 
 Rudolf II., 262 
 Julius of Brunswick, 177, 256 
 Julius II., Pope, 67, 74 
 Julius III., Pope, 109, 119, 149, 151 
 Julius, Bishop, of Wiirtzburg, 257 
 Junta meet at Avila, 22 
 
 Kaeling Empire, extent of the, 37 
 Kempten captured by Horn, 355 
 Khevenhiiller, Austrian Ambassador, 
 
 294 
 Kinsale occupied by Aguila, 267 
 Klesel, Bishop of Vienna, 264 
 Klessel, Cardinal, 288 
 Klostergraben, Protestant church de- 
 molished at, 287 
 
 Knights of St. John, 122, 128 
 
 Knights of St. Michael, 183 
 
 Kniphausen captures- Osnabriick, 347 
 
 Konigsmark overruns Lower Saxony, 
 374 ; with Wrangel wins the Battle 
 of Tusmarshausen, 380 ; besieges 
 Prague, 381 
 
 La Capelle captured by Thomas of 
 
 Savoy, 363 
 Landrecy occupied by Francis I., 
 
 90 
 Landsberg taken by Lesley, 355 
 Landshut, Papal forces join Charles V. 
 
 at, 104 
 Languedoc and Guienne, Catholic 
 
 confederation, 187 
 Lannoy, Charles de, 57, 74 
 Lanuza, John de. Regent of Aragon, 
 
 21, 224 
 Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, 100 
 Lauenburg captured by Tilly and 
 
 Wallenstein, 314 
 Lautrec, 54, 60 
 League, formation of the, 231 
 League of Cambrai, 28, 51 
 League of the Sixteen, 232 
 League of Venice, 82 n. 
 Leclerc, Bussy, 234, 236 
 Leicester, Earl of, 218 
 Leipsic taken by Wallenstein, 341 ; 
 
 besieged by Baner, 363 
 Lemgo, Hatzfeld defeats Charles 
 
 Lewis at, 367 
 Leo X.'s intervention in European 
 
 politics, 8 ; supports Francis I.'s 
 
 candidature for the German king- 
 dom, 41 ; changes of views, 53 ; 
 
 death of, 54 
 Leo XL, Pope, 159 
 Leoninus, Dr., 209 
 Leopold, Archduke, Bishop of Passau, 
 
 262 
 Leopold, Archduke, son of Ferdinand 
 
 II., 315, 376, 378, 379 
 Lepanto, Battle of, 174, 196, 204 
 Lerma, Duke of, 265, 270 
 Lesdiguieres captures Grenoble, 236 ; 
 
 Governor of Dauphine, 237 ; beats 
 
 the Duke of Savoy, 240 
 Lesley recovers Minden, 364 
 L'Esparre sent into Navarre by 
 
 Francis I., 53 
 Lewis, king of Hungary, 29, 123 
 Lewis v.. Count Palatine, 42 
 Lewis VI., Elector Palatine, 163 
 Lewis of Darmstadt, 304 
 Lewis of Nassau, 200, 201, 202, 207, 
 
 208 
 Leyden, siege of, 208 
 Leyva, Antonio de, 78, 81
 
 INDEX 
 
 419 
 
 / 
 
 Liege, province of, 25 
 
 Lisbon taken by Philip II., 221 
 
 Lisle, Lord, 91 
 
 London, Charles visits Henry VIII. at, 
 53 
 
 Longjumeau, Peace of, 187 
 
 Longueville, Duke of, 252, 369, 384 
 
 Lorraine, Cardinal of, 187, 188 
 
 Lorraine, Duke of, 347 
 
 Los Velez, Marquis of, 397 
 
 Lotharingia, 26 
 
 Loudun, Peace of, 252 
 
 Louis XIII. of France, 251, 362, 387 ; 
 betrothed to Anne of Austria, 388 ; 
 marries Anne of Austria, 252 ; de- 
 clares himself of age, 252 ; Cinq- 
 Mars' conspiracy against, 390 ; death 
 of, 391 
 
 Louis XIV. of France, 162, 392 
 
 Louis of Cond6, 159, 182, 184, 187, 188 
 
 Louis, Count Palatine, 99 
 
 Louise of Savoy, 54, 60 
 
 Louise of Vaudemont, wife of Henry 
 III. of France, 230 
 
 Lowestein, Castle of, 203 
 
 Liibeck, Peace of, 317 
 
 Ludovico, Pietro, 107 
 
 Luther, Martin, enters Erfurt Uni- 
 versity, 67 ; professor of philosophy 
 at Wittenberg, 67 ; visits Borne, 67 •; 
 appears before the Diet of Wormsn' 
 69 ; Pope Adrian's VI.'s acti<!in 
 against, 69 ; undertakes the com- 
 position of Catechisms, 71 ; draws 
 up the reformers' declaration, 72 ; 
 his death, 95, 102 
 
 Liitter, Tilly defeats King Christian 
 at, 312 
 
 Lux, Baron de, 247 
 
 Luxemburg, Duke of, 252 
 
 Luxemburg, meeting at, between Don 
 John and the States conference, 211 
 
 Luynes, de, Minister to Lewis XIII., 
 252, 388 
 
 MADRro, treaty of, 58 
 
 Maestricht captured by Alexander of 
 
 Parma, 214 
 Magdeburg sacked by Tilly, 334 
 Magdedurg, archbishopric of, 176 
 ' Magna Carta ' extorted from Mary 
 
 of Burgundy, 28 
 Mahomet, Sultan, 256 
 Mannheim relieved by Mansfeld, 302 ; 
 
 capitulation of, 303 ; taken by 
 
 Gustavus Adolphus, 336 
 Mansfeld, Peter Ernest, Count of, 161, 
 
 264, 289, 296, 301, 313 yf 
 
 #" Mantua, War of, 396 / 
 
 y Marcellus II., Pope, 119 ^ 
 
 ^ Marck, William de la, 206 
 
 Margaret of Anjou, Queen, 159 
 Margaret of France, 189 
 Margaret of Navarre, 229 
 Margaret of Parma, 161, 165 
 Margaret of Savoy, 28, 60 
 Margaret of Valois, 212 
 Maria of Portugal, 17, 160 
 Marie de M^dicis, 158, 246, 251, 387 
 
 391 
 Marseilles, siege of, 56, 81 
 Martinitz, Bohemian Minister, 287 
 Martinuzzi, George, 124, 126 
 Martyr, Peter, 84 
 Mary of Austria, 29 
 Mary of Burgundy, 27, 28 
 Mary of England, 119, 151, 155, 160 
 Mary of Hungary, 31, 82, 160 
 Mary Stuart, 157, 183, 212, 218, 219 
 Masaniello's revolt, 398 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 184, 229 
 Matthias, Emperor, 158, 162, 213, 
 215 ; frowned King of Hungary, 
 261 ; elected King of Bohemia, 262 
 Maurice of Nassau, 161, 162,218, 219, 
 
 220, 268, 269, 303, 319, 394, 396 
 Maurice of Saxony, 9, 105, 110, 111, 
 
 163 
 Maximilian I., Emperor, 40, 68 
 Maximilian II., Emperor, 157, 158, 
 162 ; elected King of the Eomans, 
 171 ; King of Bohemia, 171 ; 
 crowned King of Hungary, 171 ; 
 becomes Emperoi-, 172 ; his cha- 
 racter, 172 ; at a Diet at Augsburg, 
 174 ; concludes peace with the 
 Turks and with Transylvania, 174 ; 
 his religious policy, 178 ; aims at 
 his son's election as King of the 
 Eomans, 179 ; his death, 180 
 Maximilian, Archduke, 256 
 Maximilian of Bavaria, 163, 256, 262, 
 
 264, 291, 377 
 Maximilian of Burgundy, 26, 30 
 Maximilian of Lamberg, 384 
 Maximilian of Trautmannsdorf, 384 
 Mayenne, Charles Duke of, 159, 234, 
 
 235, 236, 237, 239, 240 
 Mazarin, Cardinal, 392 
 Mechlin sacked by Alva, 207 ; taken 
 and re-taken, 214 ; Council of, 26, 
 27, 197 
 Medici, the, 74 
 Medici, Alexander de', 77 
 Medici, Alexander de', Pope, 159 
 Medici, John de', Pope, 158 
 Medici, Marie de'. See Marie 
 M^dicis, Catherine de, 182, 183, 184 ; 
 becomes Eegent of France, 185 ; 
 her court, 186 ; at Bayonne, 186, 
 200; intrigues, 187, 188; and the 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 190
 
 420 
 
 LECTUEES ON EUEOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 y 
 
 Mcclina-Celi, Duke of, 204, 207 
 Medina del Campo, burning of, 22 
 Meissen captured by Baner, 363 
 Melanchthon, Philip, 69, 71, 72, 98, 
 
 101, 111, 112, 170 
 Melander appointed to command 
 «^' Ferdinand III.'s army, 378 ; oc- 
 
 cupies Marpurg, 379 ; defeated and 
 killed at Zusmarshausen, 380 
 Melito, Conde de, regent of Valencia, 
 
 21 
 Mello, Francisco de, 394 
 Memmingen taken by Horn, 355 
 Mendoza, Inigo Lopez de. Marquis of 
 
 Mondejar, 160 
 Mendoza, admiral and general, 268 j 
 Mentz surrenders to Gustavus Adol- ; 
 phus, 336 ; put to ransom by 
 Turenne, 378 
 Mercoeur, Duke of, 239 
 Mercy, Bavarian general, 371, 372 i 
 
 Merveille (Maraviglia) assassinated, 
 
 79 
 Metternich, Lothar von. Elector of 
 
 Treves, 291 i 
 
 Metz resists Charles V., 116 | 
 
 Milan, Francis I. and Pescara at, 
 
 56 
 Miltitz, Charles von, 69 
 Minard, President, 183 
 Minden occupied by Tilly, 311 ; re- 
 covered by Lesley, 364 
 Mingolsheim, Battle of, 303 
 Miranda, Don Juan de Zuniga, Count 
 
 of, 160 / 
 
 Modena, Duke of, 366 ^I' 
 
 Modern and medieval history con- 
 trasted, 1, 2 
 Moncada, Hugh de, 59, 74 
 Moncontour, Battle of, 188 
 Mons captured by Lewis of Nassau, 
 
 207 
 Montauban, 189 
 Montferrat claimed by the Duke of 
 
 Savoy, 324 
 Montgomery, Count of, 192 
 Montigny, 198 ; assassinated in prison, 
 
 203 
 Montmorency, Duke of, constable of 
 
 France, 32, 113, 151, 154, 156, 182, 
 
 183, 185, 187, 230 
 Montpensier, Duchess of, 233, 236 
 Moriscoes, revolt of the, 24, 195 
 Morone, Cardinal, 119, 177 
 Morone, Chancellor of Milan, 58 
 Moulins, Charles IX. 's ordinance at, 
 
 187 
 Muley Hassan, King of Tunis, 124 
 Miilhausen, Battle of, 70 
 Mlinster, Anabaptists in, 101 ; Treaty 
 
 of, 399 
 
 Namur seized by Don John, 212 
 Nancy, heads of the League meet at, 
 
 233 
 Nantes, Edict of, 240 
 Naples, revolt of, 398 
 Navarre, fortress dismantled by 
 
 , Ximenes, 19 
 Navarre, Antony of, 172, 184, 185, 229 
 Navai're, Henry of. See Henry IV. 
 Navarre, Margaret of, 186, 187. 188, 
 
 190, 229 
 Nemours, Duke of, 236 
 N6rac, seat of Henry of Navarre, 231 
 Netherlands, the, 25, 27, 33, 34, 196 
 Neuburg captured by Bernard of 
 
 Weimar, 348 
 Neuburg, Count Palatine of, 261, 304 
 Neuhausel, Bucquoy defeated at, 301 
 Nevers, Duke of, 317, 324 
 New or Nearer Union of Brussels, 213 
 New Triumvirate, the, 185 
 Nice, Truce of, 8, 32, 84 
 Nienburg taken by the Count of Anhalt, 
 
 314 
 Nieuport invested by Maurice of 
 
 Nassau, 269 
 Niklasburg, Peace of, 302 
 Nojars, projected arrest of Conde at, 
 
 188 
 Nordheim taken by Fiirstenburg, 314 
 Nordlingen, 105, 341, 356, 373, 394 
 Noyon, Peace of, 19, 51 
 Nuremberg, Peace of, 99 ; Protestant 
 Union meets at, 293 
 
 OcHiNO, Bernard, 83, 84 
 Odowalski, Ernest, 380 
 Olivares, Count Duke, 391, 394 
 Olivarez, Don Henriquez Guzman, 
 
 Count of, 160 
 Olivier, Chancellor, 184 
 Opitz, Protestant preacher, 255 
 Oppeln, Lesley defeats Gotz at, 355 
 Oppenheim, Gustavus Adolphus at, 
 
 336 
 Orange, William of, 156, 198, 199, 200, 
 
 201, 202, 206, 207, 362 
 Orleans surprised by the Huguenots, 
 
 187 
 Orleans, Duke of, 391 
 Osiander's theological disputations, 
 
 170 
 Osnabriick, bishopric of, 177 ; captured 
 
 by Kniphausen, 347 ; Treaty of, 399 
 Ostend taken by Spinola, 269 
 Otto Lewis, Count of Salm, 346 
 Oudenarde taken by Parma, 216 
 Oudewater sacked by Kequesens, 209 
 Overyssel joins the League of Utrecht, 
 
 214 
 Oxenstiern, Axel, 326, 344, 347, 349, 
 
 358, 359, 363, 390
 
 INDEX 
 
 421 
 
 y' 
 
 Pacheco hanged by the people of 
 Flushing, 206 
 
 Pacheco, Dona Maria de, 22, 23 
 
 Padillo, Don John de, 22, 23 
 
 ' Paix boiteuse, la,' 189 
 
 ' Paix fourree, la,' 188 
 
 'Paix Malassise, la,' 189 
 
 Paleario, Aonio, 84 
 
 Papal indulgences, Luther's action 
 regarding, 68 ; influence on Euro- 
 pean politics, 8, 9 
 
 Pappenheim, Count, 330 
 
 Paris visited by Chai-les, 32 ; besieged 
 by Henry of Navarre, 236 ; Treaty 
 of, 305, 394 
 
 Parma, Alexander Farnese, Duke of, 
 viceroy of the Netherlands, 165 ; 
 captures Tournay, 215 ; takes 
 Oudenarde, 216 ; compels submis- 
 sion of Ghent, 217 ; besieges 
 Antwerp, 217 ; takes Sluys, 218 ; 
 relieves Paris, 236 ; raises the siege 
 of Eouen, 237 ; his death, 219 
 
 Parma, Duke of, 362, 366 
 
 Parma, Duchess of, governante of the 
 Netherlands, 186, 198, 201, 202, 204 
 
 Passau, Peace of, 110. 126, 147 
 
 Paul III., Pope, 74, 79, 100, 109 
 
 Paul IV., Pope, 119, 151, 152, 154 
 
 Paul v., Pope, 159 
 
 Pavia, Battle of, 29, 55, 57 
 
 Peasants' War, 70 
 
 Pembroke, Earl of, 153 
 
 Peretti, Felix, Pope, 159 
 
 Perez, Antonio, 223 
 
 Perpetual Edict, the, 212 
 
 Perpignan, siege of, 391 
 
 Perrenot, Antony, 156, 160. See also 
 Granvelle 
 
 Pescara refuses the kingdom of Naples, 
 58 
 
 ' Petite Paix, la,' 188 
 
 Pfaffenhof, Christian of Birkenfeld 
 defeats the Duke of Lorraine at, 347 
 
 Pflug, Julius, 108 
 
 Philibert of Chalon, 161 
 
 Philibert of Orange, 74, 77 
 
 Philibert, Emmanuel, of Savoy, 153, 
 160 
 
 Philip II. of Spain institutes a Council 
 of government for Italy, 74 ; marries 
 Mary of England, 151 ; his four 
 marriages, 160 ; his character, 193 
 supports Elizabeth of England, 194 
 Moriscoes revolt against him, 195 
 his son's death, 195 ; joins Venice 
 and the Pope against the Turks, 
 196; his intrigues, 199; his Segovia 
 despatch, 200 ; his complicity in 
 Montigny's assassination, 203 ; 
 claims Portugal, 215 ; offers reward 
 for the head of "William of Orange, 
 
 215 ; secures the Portuguese crown, 
 
 221 ; his death, 225 
 Philip III. of Spain, 158, 163, 265, 
 
 267, 271 
 Philip IV. of Spain, 252, 388, 394 
 Philip I. of Portugal. See Philip IL 
 
 of Spain 
 Philip of Burgundy, bishop of Utrecht, 
 
 29 
 Philip the Handsome, 26 
 Philip of Hesse, 47, 72, 99 
 Philip of Hohenlohe besieges Gronin- 
 
 gen, 214 
 Philip of Liineburg, 72 
 Philip the Magnanimous, 70, 71 
 Philip the Rhinegrave, 347 
 Philip William of Orange, 161 
 Philippsburg, surrenders to the Rhine- 
 grave, 355 
 Piacenza ceded by Philip, 155 
 Picardy invaded by Henry of Nassau, 
 
 81 
 Piccolomini, Octavio, 352, 353, 370, 
 
 372, 380 
 Pilsen, siege of, 264, 301 
 Pisek sacked, 297 
 Pius IV., Pope, 158, 177 
 Pius v.. Pope, 159, 177, 223 
 Pizarro, Francisco, 132 
 Plessis-les-Tours, treaty at, 215 
 Poictiers besieged by Coligny, 188 
 Poissy, religious disputation at, 185 
 Poland, Duke of Anjou chosen King 
 
 of, 175 
 Poland, Henry of. See Henry III. of 
 
 France 
 Pole, Cardinal, 119, 151 
 ' Politiques,' the, 191, 230 
 Portugal claimed by Philip II., 215 
 Prague, Matthias elected King at, 
 
 262 ; Battle of, 297 ; Peace of, 358 
 Prejudice in the study of modern 
 
 history, 3 
 Presburg taken by Bethlen Gabor, 292 
 Prierias opposes Luther, 68 
 Protestant distrust of Francis, 10 
 Protestant Union, the, 293 
 Protestants, massacre of, at Vassy, 
 
 185 
 Provence invaded by Bourbon and 
 
 Pescara, 55 
 Puritanism and political freedom, 
 
 traditional connection between, 62 
 Pyrenees, Peace of the, 393 
 
 R.vGOTZKi, George, Prince of Transyl- 
 vania, 373 
 Eaimond de Cardona, 74 
 Rainucci, Duke of Parma, 221 
 Rammekens taken by Elizabeth of 
 England as surety, 218
 
 422 
 
 LECTUKES ON EUEOPEAN HISTOEY, 1519-1648 
 
 Rautzau defeated by Mercy, 372 
 Eanuzzo of Parma, 165 
 Ratibor taken by Wallenstein, 314 
 Eatisbon, Diet of, 260, 304, 324 ; taken 
 
 by Bernard of Weimar, 348 
 Ravaillac, Francis, assassinates Henry 
 
 IV. of France, 250 
 Eavenna seized by the Venetians, 60 
 Eecess of Augsburg, 120 
 Eeformation, the, aided by inadequate 
 episcopal superintendence, 33 ; 
 causes of the, 62 et seg. 
 Eenaudie, 183 
 
 Rendsburg taken by Tilly, 314 
 Een6 of Nassau, 161 
 Eenneberg, Count, 214 
 Eequesens y Cuniga, Don Luiz de, 
 
 161, 207, 208, 209, 210 
 Eeservation, Ecclesiastical, 149, 358 
 Eestitution, the Edict of, 315, 321, 358 
 Eheims, archbishopric of, 34 
 Eheinfeld captured by Bernard of 
 
 Weimar, 367 
 Ehinegrave, the, 346, 355 
 Eichelieu, Cardinal, 320, 328, 337, 359, 
 
 363, 368, 389, 391, 396 
 Eidolfi plot, the, 203, 223 
 Eincjon, Antonio, 88 
 Eiviera, Don Parafan de, Duke of 
 
 Alcala, 160 
 Eobert de la Marck, 53; proclaims 
 
 war against Charles, 54 
 Eoche Abeille, battle at, 188 
 Eochelle, La, 188, 189, 191 
 Eocroi, Battle of, 372, 393 
 Eohan, Duke of, 252, 361 
 Eome captured by Bourbon, 60; 
 
 Luther visits, 67 
 Eosny. See Sully 
 
 Eossem, van. Marshal of Guelders, 89 
 Eoteln taken by Bernard of W^eimar, 
 
 367 
 Eothenburg taken by Gustavus Adol- 
 
 phus, 341 
 Eotbweil besieged by Gu^briant, 372 
 Rotterdam sacked by Bossu, 206 
 Eouen, Henry III. issues edict at, 233 ; 
 
 secured by Henry of Navarre, 236 
 Eoussillon, Edict of, 186 
 Eovere, Francesco Maria della, 74 
 Rudolf II., Emperor, 158, 162 ; secluded 
 life of, 354 ; his truce with Amurath, 
 256 ; his inactivity, 258 ; Tycho 
 Brah^'s prediction, 261 ; relin- 
 quishes Hungary, Austria, and 
 Moravia, 261 ; annuls the Treaty of 
 Dortmund, 262 ; his death, 262 
 Eudolf Maximilian of Lauenburg, 335 
 Eiisselsheim garrisoned by Gustavus 
 
 Adolphus, 336 
 Euyter, De, blows up the Castle of 
 Lowestein, 203 
 
 St. Aldegonde, lord of, 200, 209 
 
 St. Andre, Marshal, 185 
 
 St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 184, 
 190, 191, 229 
 
 St. Cloud, Henry III. assassinated at, 
 235 
 
 St. Denis, Battle of, 187 
 
 St. Germain, Peace of, 189 
 
 St. Jean d'Ang61y besieged by the Duke 
 of Anjou, 188 
 
 St. John, Knights of, 122, 128 
 
 St. L6ger-le-Catelet taken by Thomas 
 of Savoy, 363 
 
 St. M6nehould, treaty of peace at, 252 
 
 St. Michael, Knights of, 183 
 
 St. Pol, Count of, 60, 61 
 St. Quentin, Battle of, 153 
 Salamanca, Treaty of, (1505), 16 
 Salentin of Ysemburg, Archbishop of 
 
 Cologne, 257 
 San Coloma, Count of, 397 
 Saragossa, Charles meets the Cortes of 
 
 Aragon at, 20 
 Sarrasin, John, prior of St. Vaast, 214 
 Sauvage, Charles's Chancellor, 20 
 Savoy, Duke of, 240, 247, 324, 362 
 Saxony, Maurice, Elector of, 161 
 Schaumburg, Count, 328 
 Schonborn, Bishop of Wiirzburg, 884 
 Schoonhoven taken by Eequesens, 209 
 Schouwen taken by Eequesens, 209 
 Schweinfurt, negotiations at, 99 ; taken 
 by Gustavus Adolphus, 336 ; 
 captured by Wrangel, 378 
 Sebastian, Dom, of Portugal, 221 
 Segovia revolts against Charles, 22 ; 
 murder of Tordesillas the deputy, 
 22 ; Philip II.'s despatch from, 200 
 Serin, Count, 256 
 Servien, Abel, 384 
 
 Seven United Provinces, republic of 
 the, 33, 220 
 
 1 Sforza, Francesco Maria, 77 
 
 : Sidney, Sir Philip, 218 
 Sidney, Sir Eobert, 250 
 Sidonius, Michael, 108 
 
 i Siena ceded by Philip, 155 
 
 ' Sievershausen, Maurice of Saxony 
 
 i killed at, 163 
 
 ; Sigismundof Brandenburg, Archbishop 
 
 i of Magdeburg, 176 
 Sigismund III. of Poland, 296 
 
 j Sigismund of Sweden, 159 
 
 i Sigismund Bathory, Prince of Tran- 
 
 ' sylvania, 256 
 Simancas, archives of, 193 
 
 : Sismondi, John, historian, 77 
 
 ' Sittard, Battle of, 89 
 Sixtus v., Pope, 159 
 Slavata, Bohemian Minister, 287 
 Sluys taken by Alexander of Parma, 
 218
 
 INDEX 
 
 423 
 
 s^^ 
 
 / 
 
 Smalkaldic League, the, 72, 78, 99, 
 
 100, 169 
 Solyman, Sultan, 78, 122, 174 
 Spain, condition of, at Charles's 
 
 accession, 13 ; decline of, in the 
 
 early seventeenth century, 265 
 Spanish fleet burned by the Archbishop 
 
 of Bordeaux, 367 
 Speyer, Diet of, 70, 71 
 Spinola, Ambrosio, 269, 296 
 Spinola, Frederic, 267 
 Stade taken by Tilly, 317 
 Stadtlohn, Tilly beats Christian 
 
 305 
 Stettin occupied by Gusta' 
 
 Adolphus, 328 
 Stralsund besieged by Wallenstein, 316 
 Straubing captured by Bernard of 
 
 Weimar, 348 
 Strozzi, Leo, 129 
 Study of modern history approached 
 
 with prejudice, 3 ; necessity of 
 
 critical judgment, 4 
 Suicard, John, Elector of Mentz, 291 
 Sully, Duke of, 238, 246, 251, 388 
 Sybilla, Electress of Cleves, 106 
 Szigeth besieged by Solyman, 174 
 
 at, 1 
 
 iVus 
 
 crosses the Elbe 
 Mansfeld at. 
 
 William the 
 
 Tangermijkde, Tilly 
 at, 314 
 
 Tavannes, Marshal, 188 
 
 Tein, Bucquoy defeats 
 290 
 
 Teligny, Mrs., marries 
 SHent, 216 
 
 Termes, Marshal de, 155 
 
 Tetzel, John, 68 
 
 Thionville taken by the Duke of Guise, 
 155 
 
 Thirty Years' War, the, 163 
 
 Tholen, isle of, 209 
 
 Thomas a Kempis, 36 
 
 Thomas of Savoy, 363 
 
 Throgmorton's plot, 223 
 
 Thumbshirn, Wolfgang Conrad von, 
 384 
 
 Thurn. Matthew Henry, Count, 264, 
 288, 290 
 
 Tilly, Count, 296, 301; occupies 
 Hamelen and Minden, 311 ; takes 
 Gottingen, 312 ; defeats King 
 Christian at Liitter, 312 ; captures 
 Stade, 317 ; opposes Gustavus 
 Adolphus of Sweden, 332 ; sacks 
 Magdeburg, 334 ; defeated by 
 Gustavus Adolphus, 334 ; besieges 
 Leipsic and is overwhelmed by 
 Gustavus, 335 ; goes to Rothemburg, 
 836 ; defeated and killed on the 
 Lech, 339 ; his character, 339 
 
 Toledan deputies expelled from Cortes 
 
 by Charles, 21 ; magistrates arrested, 
 
 21 
 Toledo revolts against Charles, 22 
 Toledo, Ferdinand Alvarez de, Duke 
 
 of Alva, 161 
 Toledo, Pedro de, 74, 84, 126 
 Toledo, William de Croy, Archbishop 
 
 of, 20 
 Toleration, Declaration of, 177 
 Tordesillas, deputy for Segovia, 
 
 murdered, 22 
 Torstenson takes Leipsic, 371 ; defeats 
 
 Lamboy and Mercy at Kempen, 371 ; 
 
 conquers Denmark, 371 ; resigns his 
 
 command to Wrangel, 374 
 Tournay, bishopric of, 33 ; captured by 
 
 the Duke of Parma, 215 
 Tours, Henry III. of France and Henry 
 
 of Navarre at, 234 
 Trent, Council of, 9, 102 
 Treslong, Admiral, 206 
 Triumvirate, the New, 185 
 Troppau taken by Wallenstein, 
 Troubles, Council of, 202 
 Truchsess, Gebhard, Elector 
 
 Bavaria, 164, 257 
 Tserclaes, John, Count Tilly, 296 
 Tiibingen captured by Turenne, 378 
 Tuileries building commenced, 186 
 Turenne, Viscount of, 372 ; defeats 
 
 Mercy at Nordlingen, 373 ; his 
 
 successes in Wiirtemberg and 
 
 Darmstadt, 378 ; recalled to 
 
 314 
 
 of 
 
 Netherlands, 379 
 
 Turks, European treaty 
 
 53 
 Tycho Brahe, 254, 261 
 
 against 
 
 the 
 
 the. 
 
 Ulric, Duke of Wiirtemberg, 380 
 
 Union of Brussels, the. 211 
 
 United Provinces, 394 ; Declaration of 
 
 Independence, 215 
 Urban VII., Pope, 159, 381, 384 
 Urbino, principality of, 165 ; added to 
 
 the Papal States, 74 
 Utrecht, bishopric of, 25, 33 ; League 
 
 of, 214 ; Union of, renewed, 218 ; 
 
 Bishop of, a prince of the Empire, 
 
 34 
 Uzeda, Duke of, 270, 395 
 
 Valdes, Archbishop of Seville, 195 
 Valencia, Cortes of, 15 ; Cardinal 
 Adrian in, 20 ; Conde de MeUto 
 regent of, 21 ; revolt in, 23 
 Valenciennes, siege of. 201 
 Valesco, Constable of Castile, 239 
 Valladolid, Charles V. crowned at, 19 ; 
 Cortes of, 228
 
 424 
 
 LECTURES ON EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1519-1648 
 
 y 
 
 Vassy, massacre of Protestants at, 185 
 
 Vaucelles, truce of, 152 
 
 Vehmgericht, Westphalian, 71 
 
 Vendome, Duke of, 159, 252 
 
 Venice, League of, 82». 
 
 Verdun, Peace of, 37 
 
 Vervins, Peace of, 220, 224, 240 
 
 Viglius, 191, 203 
 
 Villalar, Padilla taken prisoner at, 23 
 
 Vitri, 252 
 
 Volmar, Isaac, 384 
 
 Waxlexstein, his birth and education, 
 309; created Duke of Friedland, 
 310 ; subjugates Silesia, 314 ; be- 
 comes Duke of Mecklenburg and 
 Admiral of the Baltic, 316 ; attacked 
 by the Diet of Ratisbon, 324 ; resigns 
 his command, 325 ; raises a new 
 army, 338 ; resists Gustavus's attack 
 at Zorndorf, 340 ; ravages Culmbach 
 and besieges Leipsic, 341 ; defeated 
 by Gustavus at Liitzen, 342; 
 negotiates with Arnheim, 348 ; 
 invades Silesia, 349 ; a cause of 
 jealousy, 350 ; his arrest ordered by 
 Ferdinand, 352 ; assassinated by 
 Devereux, 353 
 Wangen, Ferdinand's troops defeated 
 
 by Horn at, 355 
 War of the Three Henries, 232 
 Warweil, Austrians defeated by the 
 
 Rhinegrave at, 355 
 Weisserberg, Battle of the, 297 
 Welser, Philippina, 261 
 Werten, treaty of, between Gustavus 
 Adolphus and William of Hesse, 
 334 
 WestphaUa, Peace of, 381, 393, 398 
 Wied, Hermann von. Archbishop of 
 
 Cologne, 102 
 William II. of Bavaria, 163 
 William of Chievres, 28, 53 
 William of Cleves, 30, 88, 162 
 William the Faithful, Landgrave of 
 
 Hesse Cassel, 366 
 William of Nassau, 270 
 William the Silent, Prince of Orange, 
 161 ; negotiates with Requesens, 
 209 ; appointed Governor by the 
 States, 209 ; marries Charlotte of 
 Bourbon, 209 ; his peace proposals 
 rejected, 213 ; negotiations with the 
 Duke of Anjou, 215 ; his head 
 valued by Philip II., 215 ; attempted 
 assassination, 215 ; death of his 
 wife, 215 ; marries Mrs. Teligny, 
 216 ; his assassination, 216 
 
 Wimpfen, Battle of, 303, 337 
 Winter King of Bohemia, the, 163 
 Wismar, Treaty of, 363 
 Wittenberg, Luther becomes professor 
 
 of philosophy at, 67 ; surrendered by 
 
 the Electress of Cleves, 106 
 Witteweir, Duke Bernard defeats the 
 
 Bavarians at, 367 
 Wolf enbiittel captured by Pappenheim, 
 
 314 
 Wolfgang of Anhalt, 72 
 Wolfgang of Zweibriicken, 188 
 Wolmerstadt, Gustavus Adolphus 
 
 defeats Tilly at, 334 
 Wolsey's, Cardinal, aims, 52 
 Worms, Luther before the Diet of, 
 
 69 
 Wrangel defeated by Gallas, 366 ; 
 
 enters Bavaria, 376 ; disagrees with 
 
 Turenne, 377 ; captures Schweinfurt 
 
 and Egra, 378 ; retires into North 
 
 Germany, 379 ; captures Winds- 
 
 heim, 380 
 Wiirtemberg, Duke of, 261, 302 
 Wiirzburg, Catholic League meets at, 
 
 293 ; surrendered to Gustavus 
 
 Adolphus, 336 
 
 Xanten, Peace of, 264 
 Ximenes, Cardinal, appointed Regent 
 of Castile, 18 ; death of, 19 
 
 YuTTEKBUCK, Kouigsmark's victory at, 
 373 
 
 Zapolski, John, 123, 174 
 
 Zara, Mansfeld dies at, 313 
 
 Zeeland renounces allegiance to 
 
 Philip II., 210; joins the League 
 
 of Utrecht, 214 
 Zerbst taken by Mansfeld, 313 
 Zierikzee besieged by Requesens, 209, 
 
 210 
 Zorndorf, Gustavus Adolphus attacks 
 
 Wallenstein at, 340 
 Zriny, Count Nicolas, 174 
 Zuniga, Juan de, 160 
 Zusmarshausen, Melander defeated 
 
 and killed at, 380 
 Zutphen surrendered to Frederick, 30 ; 
 
 sacked by Alva, 207 
 Zweibriicken, Wolfgang Duke of, 188, 
 
 261 
 Zwingli and the Holy Eucharist, 170 
 
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