The History of the Thirty Years' War, Friedrich Schiller [audio ebook reader TXT] 📗

with the affairs of Germany than was called for by his character of Duke of Holstein; that he should on no pretext harass the Chapters of Lower Germany, and should leave the Dukes of Mecklenburgh to their fate. By Christian himself had these princes been involved in the war with the Emperor; he now sacrificed them, to gain the favour of the usurper of their territories. Among the motives which had engaged him in a war with the Emperor, not the least was the restoration of his relation, the Elector Palatine - yet the name of that unfortunate prince was not even mentioned in the treaty; while in one of its articles the legitimacy of the Bavarian election was expressly recognised. Thus meanly and ingloriously did Christian IV. retire from the field.

Ferdinand had it now in his power, for the second time, to secure the tranquillity of Germany; and it depended solely on his will whether the treaty with Denmark should or should not be the basis of a general peace. From every quarter arose the cry of the unfortunate, petitioning for an end of their sufferings; the cruelties of his soldiers, and the rapacity of his generals, had exceeded all bounds. Germany, laid waste by the desolating bands of Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick, and by the still more terrible hordes of Tilly and Wallenstein, lay exhausted, bleeding, wasted, and sighing for repose. An anxious desire for peace was felt by all conditions, and by the Emperor himself; involved as he was in a war with France in Upper Italy, exhausted by his past warfare in Germany, and apprehensive of the day of reckoning which was approaching. But, unfortunately, the conditions on which alone the two religious parties were willing respectively to sheath the sword, were irreconcileable. The Roman Catholics wished to terminate the war to their own advantage; the Protestants advanced equal pretensions. The Emperor, instead of uniting both parties by a prudent moderation, sided with one; and thus Germany was again plunged in the horrors of a bloody war.

From the very close of the Bohemian troubles, Ferdinand had carried on a counter reformation in his hereditary dominions, in which, however, from regard to some of the Protestant Estates, he proceeded, at first, with moderation. But the victories of his generals in Lower Germany encouraged him to throw off all reserve. Accordingly he had it intimated to all the Protestants in these dominions, that they must either abandon their religion, or their native country, - a bitter and dreadful alternative, which excited the most violent commotions among his Austrian subjects. In the Palatinate, immediately after the expulsion of Frederick, the Protestant religion had been suppressed, and its professors expelled from the University of Heidelberg.

All this was but the prelude to greater changes. In the Electoral Congress held at Muehlhausen, the Roman Catholics had demanded of the Emperor that all the archbishoprics, bishoprics, mediate and immediate, abbacies and monasteries, which, since the Diet of Augsburg, had been secularized by the Protestants, should be restored to the church, in order to indemnify them for the losses and sufferings in the war. To a Roman Catholic prince so zealous as Ferdinand was, such a hint was not likely to be neglected; but he still thought it would be premature to arouse the whole Protestants of Germany by so decisive a step. Not a single Protestant prince but would be deprived, by this revocation of the religious foundations, of a part of his lands; for where these revenues had not actually been diverted to secular purposes they had been made over to the Protestant church. To this source, many princes owed the chief part of their revenues and importance. All, without exception, would be irritated by this demand for restoration. The religious treaty did not expressly deny their right to these chapters, although it did not allow it. But a possession which had now been held for nearly a century, the silence of four preceding emperors, and the law of equity, which gave them an equal right with the Roman Catholics to the foundations of their common ancestors, might be strongly pleaded by them as a valid title. Besides the actual loss of power and authority, which the surrender of these foundations would occasion, besides the inevitable confusion which would necessarily attend it, one important disadvantage to which it would lead, was, that the restoration of the Roman Catholic bishops would increase the strength of that party in the Diet by so many additional votes. Such grievous sacrifices likely to fall on the Protestants, made the Emperor apprehensive of a formidable opposition; and until the military ardour should have cooled in Germany, he had no wish to provoke a party formidable by its union, and which in the Elector of Saxony had a powerful leader. He resolved, therefore, to try the experiment at first on a small scale, in order to ascertain how it was likely to succeed on a larger one. Accordingly, some of the free cities in Upper Germany, and the Duke of Wirtemberg, received orders to surrender to the Roman Catholics several of the confiscated chapters.

The state of affairs in Saxony enabled the Emperor to make some bolder experiments in that quarter. In the bishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, the Protestant canons had not hesitated to elect bishops of their own religion. Both bishoprics, with the exception of the town of Magdeburg itself, were overrun by the troops of Wallenstein. It happened, moreover, that by the death of the Administrator Duke Christian of Brunswick, Halberstadt was vacant, as was also the Archbishopric of Magdeburg by the deposition of Christian William, a prince of the House of Brandenburgh. Ferdinand took advantage of the circumstance to restore the see of Halberstadt to a Roman Catholic bishop, and a prince of his own house. To avoid a similar coercion, the Chapter of Magdeburg hastened to elect a son of the Elector of Saxony as archbishop. But the pope, who with his arrogated authority interfered in this matter, conferred the Archbishopric of Magdeburg also on the Austrian prince. Thus, with all his pious zeal for religion, Ferdinand never lost sight of the interests of his family.

At length, when the peace of Lubeck had delivered the Emperor from all apprehensions on the side of Denmark, and the German Protestants seemed entirely powerless, the League becoming louder and more urgent in its demands, Ferdinand, in 1629, signed the Edict of Restitution, (so famous by its disastrous consequences,) which he had previously laid before the four Roman Catholic electors for their approbation. In the preamble, he claimed the prerogative, in right of his imperial authority, to interpret the meaning of the religious treaty, the ambiguities of which had already caused so many disputes, and to decide as supreme arbiter and judge between the contending parties. This prerogative he founded upon the practice of his ancestors, and its previous recognition even by Protestant states. Saxony had actually acknowledged this right of the Emperor; and it now became evident how deeply this court had injured the Protestant cause by its dependence on the House of Austria. But though the meaning of the religious treaty was really ambiguous, as a century of religious disputes sufficiently proved, yet for the Emperor, who must be either a Protestant or a Roman Catholic, and therefore an interested party, to assume the right of deciding between the disputants, was clearly a violation of an essential article of the pacification. He could not be judge in his own cause, without reducing the liberties of the empire to an empty sound.

And now, in virtue of this usurpation, Ferdinand decided, "That every secularization of a religious foundation, mediate or immediate, by the Protestants, subsequent to the date of the treaty, was contrary to its spirit, and must be revoked as a breach of it." He further decided, "That, by the religious peace, Catholic proprietors of estates were no further bound to their Protestant subjects than to allow them full liberty to quit their territories." In obedience to this decision, all unlawful possessors of benefices - the Protestant states in short without exception - were ordered, under pain of the ban of the empire, immediately to surrender their usurped possessions to the imperial commissioners.

This sentence applied to no less than two archbishoprics and twelve bishoprics, besides innumerable abbacies. The edict came like a thunderbolt on the whole of Protestant Germany; dreadful even in its immediate consequences; but yet more so from the further calamities it seemed to threaten. The Protestants were now convinced that the suppression of their religion had been resolved on by the Emperor and the League, and that the overthrow of German liberty would soon follow. Their remonstrances were unheeded; the commissioners were named, and an army assembled to enforce obedience. The edict was first put in force in Augsburg, where the treaty was concluded; the city was again placed under the government of its bishop, and six Protestant churches in the town were closed. The Duke of Wirtemberg was, in like manner, compelled to surrender his abbacies. These severe measures, though they alarmed the Protestant states, were yet insufficient to rouse them to an active resistance. Their fear of the Emperor was too strong, and many were disposed to quiet submission. The hope of attaining their end by gentle measures, induced the Roman Catholics likewise to delay for a year the execution of the edict, and this saved the Protestants; before the end of that period, the success of the Swedish arms had totally changed the state of affairs.

In a Diet held at Ratisbon, at which Ferdinand was present in person (in 1630), the necessity of taking some measures for the immediate restoration of a general peace to Germany, and for the removal of all grievances, was debated. The complaints of the Roman Catholics were scarcely less numerous than those of the Protestants, although Ferdinand had flattered himself that by the Edict of Restitution he had secured the members of the League, and its leader by the gift of the electoral dignity, and the cession of great part of the Palatinate. But the good understanding between the Emperor and the princes of the League had rapidly declined since the employment of Wallenstein. Accustomed to give law to Germany, and even to sway the Emperor's own destiny, the haughty Elector of Bavaria now at once saw himself supplanted by the imperial general, and with that of the League, his own importance completely undermined. Another had now stepped in to reap the fruits of his victories, and to bury his past services in oblivion. Wallenstein's imperious character, whose dearest triumph was in degrading the authority of the princes, and giving an odious latitude to that of the Emperor, tended not a little to augment the irritation of the Elector. Discontented with the Emperor, and distrustful of his intentions, he had entered into an alliance with France, which the other members of the League were suspected of favouring. A fear of the Emperor's plans of aggrandizement, and discontent with existing evils, had extinguished among them all feelings of gratitude. Wallenstein's exactions had become altogether intolerable. Brandenburg estimated its losses at twenty, Pomerania at ten, Hesse Cassel at seven millions of dollars, and the rest in proportion. The cry for redress was loud, urgent, and universal; all prejudices were hushed; Roman Catholics and Protestants were united on this point. The terrified Emperor was assailed on all sides by petitions against Wallenstein, and his ear filled with the most fearful descriptions of his outrages. Ferdinand was not naturally cruel. If not totally innocent of the atrocities which were practised in Germany under the shelter