11
The revival of Catholicism in the Empire was received with mixed feelings by France and Spain. Their response to the Empire’s crisis underscores the distinction between their own rivalry and the imperial civil war, as well as illustrating the weakness of confessional solidarity. France viewed Ferdinand’s triumphs as a threat to its own interests, while Spain resented them as diverting energy and resources that might otherwise have been used against the Dutch.
OLIVARES
The Count-Duke
Renewal of the Dutch War coincided with a change in the Spanish government. Philip III died on 31 March 1621 after two years of failing health. The new king, Philip IV, was to reign for 44 years without a single day on which his country was at peace. He matured as a cultured man, with some sympathy for his subjects’ plight, but nonetheless easily distracted by personal pleasures and especially by pretty women. Only sixteen years old on his accession, Philip was heavily reliant on Zúñiga and, increasingly, Zúñiga’s ambitious nephew Don Gaspar, Count Olivares. Like Zúñiga, Olivares came from the Guzmán clan, a junior branch of the great Medina Sedonia dynasty. After succeeding to his father’s lands and title in 1607, he devoted his considerable energies to breaking into the court, finally gaining a place in Prince Philip’s entourage. He skilfully overcame the future king’s initial hostility and won his confidence by remaining deferential, yet prepared to offer frank advice and convey unpleasant truths.
On hearing of Philip IV’s accession, Olivares remarked ‘now everything is mine’.1 He collaborated with his uncle in eliminating the remaining clients of the previous favourite, Cardinal Lerma. His determination to distance himself from the former regime grew more pronounced after Zúñiga’s death in October 1622 and within two years Olivares had made himself the undisputed master of the court and government. He was quick to secure rewards, enlarging his estates in Andalusia and joining the ranks of the grandees in 1625 as duke of Sanlucar la Mayor, henceforth becoming known as the count-duke. He also promoted his clan, many of whom received high office or made personal fortunes. In his mid-thirties, dark and heavy in appearance, Olivares was an impatient man, convinced he alone knew best, and was prepared to work late into the night to prove it. He deliberately avoided the ostentatious display of both Lerma and Cardinal Richelieu, his French counterpart, cultivating instead the new image of the dedicated bureaucrat. He assumed places on the existing councils, rather than create a new position for himself, and he remained personally austere, concealing his wealth and leaving the limelight to the king.
There could hardly have been a more striking contrast than between the cardinal [Richelieu], looking every inch a prince of the church as he swept into a room with his impressive entourage, and the count-duke bustling around the palace with state papers stuck into his hatband and dangling from his waist, reminding those who saw him of nothing more than a scarecrow.2
The style signalled his programme as he swept to power on a wave of revulsion at the perceived corruption, waste and failure of the Lerma era. The language of austerity suited the sombre mood after the resumption of the Dutch War, which culminated in an eclectic mix of financial, administrative and moral reforms in February 1623. The attempt at better government was contradicted by a renewal of war that wrecked any chance of balancing the budget. Olivares was unable to escape the circumstances that propelled Spain to fight. Unlike Lerma and Isabella, he could not see how to reconcile Spanish prestige and peace with the Dutch. The principal change lay in the greater energy, coherence and flexibility he brought to Spanish strategy. Nonetheless, the world had moved on since the days of Philip II, and Olivares accepted that total victory was no longer possible. Operations were intended to force the Dutch to concede a buen concierto, or agreement acceptable to Spain, chiefly by abandoning their colonial ambitions, restoring freedom of worship to their Catholic subjects and accepting some nominal subordination to Spanish majesty. Like his uncle, Olivares saw a greater role for naval power in achieving this by protecting Spanish colonies and strangling Dutch trade. Land operations were incorporated into a strategy that crystallized by 1625 into an ambitious attempt to surround the Republic.3
From the Spanish Match to Breda
Spain sought good relations with Britain, despite religious differences and latent colonial rivalry. Relations over the past decade had been relatively cordial, encouraging Olivares’ hopes that James I might provide naval support against the Dutch who had recently attacked English merchants in Indonesia. Conscious that Spanish forces held much of the Lower Palatinate, James also sought a rapprochement but chose the wholly unsuitable method of proposing that his son Charles should marry the devoutly Catholic Infanta. Madrid had already decided against this by 1621, but James persisted and Charles set off to fetch his bride in the romantic Scottish tradition, arriving unannounced in March 1623 with his friend George Villiers, later duke of Buckingham, posing implausibly as John and Tom Smith. Olivares was obliged to open serious negotiations and, to his surprise, Charles offered to convert to Catholicism. Olivares doubted his sincerity, while Charles grew impatient and went home to an overtly Protestant welcome. To mask its humiliation, the British government blamed the failure on allegedly irreconcilable differences over the Palatinate.4
Whereas James saw military preparations as a means to force Spain to make concessions in the Palatinate, Charles and Buckingham planned war. Buckingham was convinced that Spanish ‘arrogance’ made further marriage talks pointless. He engineered an alternative French match with Charles’s betrothal to Louis XIII’s youngest sister, Henrietta Maria, in December 1624. Britain was drawn into a complex web of negotiations that the pious interpreted as an evangelical alliance but were, in practice, just a sordid attempt to get others to do the fighting. Since neither Denmark nor Sweden was prepared to commit itself to restoring Frederick V, the western powers continued their existing policy of financing the Protestant paladins instead.
As the only commander left in the field by the end of 1624, all attention now focused on Count Mansfeld. Various projects were concocted to help him form a new army on the Lower Rhine to advance upstream and liberate the Palatinate. Britain’s interest was primarily dynastic, while France and the Dutch saw it as a chance to distract Spain and wanted Mansfeld to go on to cut the Spanish Road by invading the Franche-Comté. Mansfeld saw a chance to resurrect his own principality that fleetingly had existed in Alsace at the turn of 1622. James promised to pay Mansfeld to raise 13,000 Englishmen in the Treaty of London on 4 May 1624. Duke Christian arrived in England, hoping to command the cavalry, while Georg Friedrich of Baden-Durlach wrote from his refuge on the Upper Rhine that he would join once they landed.
Recruitment was slow, and James resorted to impressment to fill the ranks. Louis XIII failed to join the alliance and refused Mansfeld permission to land in France. The men were kept on transport ships to stop them deserting or plundering Dover. It grew bitterly cold and many fell ill after being reduced to drinking sea water. Both Britain and France were distracted by their own problems by the time Mansfeld sailed to Zeeland in February 1625. A Huguenot rising that winter diverted French attention and turned British opinion against Charles’s new wife. Reduced by disease to 7,000 men and with no prospect of French support, Mansfeld ignored James’s instructions and cooperated with the Dutch instead.5
The latter were hard-pressed by General Spinola who had deployed a third of his 70,000-strong Army of Flanders to avenge his defeat at Bergen by besieging nearby Breda from August 1624. The Dutch army totalled only 48,000, including 9,000 in the fortress. Spinola built a vast line of entrenchments around Breda to starve it into submission. Mansfeld’s arrival made little difference. Dutch relief efforts were hampered by Maurice of Nassau’s death on 23 April 1625. Command passed to his younger brother, Frederick Henry, but his attack in May failed to pierce Spinola’s entrenchments and the town surrendered on 5 June after 13,000 defenders and civilians had died. Breda was compared with Caesar’s epic siege of Alesia (52 BC) and celebrated by the Spanish as a great victory in poems, plays and Velázquez’s famous painting.6
The War at Sea
Breda was the first of four triumphs in what would prove to be Spain’s year of victories. The others were won at sea where Olivares’ new strategy coincided with a period of rapid transformation. The general trend was away from large, bulky, high-sided ships that fought by individual duels in which one crew tried to board and capture another. In their place sailed longer, narrower vessels designed to carry improved naval artillery, fighting in more disciplined formations that evolved into the classic line ahead to maximize broadside fire. It was not yet obvious which design or tactic would prove superior and much depended on the skill and courage of individual crews.
The Dutch were gradually increasing the size of their ships, from 80 to 160 tonnes by 1590 to 300 or 400 tonnes thirty years later, but by then the Dutch East India Company (VOC) already had 1,000-tonne ships for its long voyages of armed trade.7 Large warships could carry up to a hundred guns and were prestige objects. Gustavus Adolphus ordered his Dutch naval architect to oversee the construction of four great ships in Stockholm. The principal one, dignified by the name Vasa, displaced 1,400 tonnes, and carried 64 bronze guns and 430 sailors and marines. The desire to load it with ordnance meant the gun ports were too close to the waterline and it capsized and sank in a light breeze on its maiden voyage in August 1628.8 The episode illustrates the risks and costs of experimenting with new technology and assembling naval power.
Spain had previously relied on large galleons in the Atlantic and galleys in the Mediterranean. Construction consumed huge quantities of timber: an ocean-going warship of 560 tonnes required 900 oak trees, a galley needed over 200 pines. Spain benefited from the large oak forests of Galicia, Asturias and the rest of its northern coast, while the Catalonian pine woods served the galley fleet. It managed its resources better than its rivals, notably the Stuarts who had deforested much of England by the 1640s and become dependent on imports from Scotland, Ireland and America. Richelieu’s naval programme stripped Brittany of its fine trees and forced France to import timber from the Rhineland. The Dutch Republic was largely treeless and relied on imports from the outset, while all powers depended on imports of pine, tar and hemp from the Baltic. Superior yard management enabled the Dutch to build between five hundred and a thousand ocean-going ships a year during this period, strengthening their hold over maritime trade and creating a fleet large enough to blockade the Flanders coast.
Spain struck back with a new squadron of twenty purpose-built, government-owned commerce raiders at Dunkirk in 1620, supplemented by around sixty privately operated boats that paid the crown 10 per cent of their profit and split the rest between the captain, crew and owners. These ships, prototypes of the later frigates, were smaller than conventional warships and relatively lightly armed. They relied on speed, hunting individually or in packs with their names reflecting their tactics: Cat, Fox, Hare, Black Mole, Savage, Chopper.9 Led by daring captains like Jan Jacobsen, the Dunkirkers began raiding as soon as the Twelve Years Truce expired in 1621. Dutch freight charges doubled within a few months, while maritime insurance costs soared, cutting profits. Only 52 Dutch ships risked the Channel route between the Mediterranean and the Baltic in 1621–7, compared to 1,005 between 1614 and 1620. Other sectors of the economy also experienced a serious decline, triggering a slump that persisted through the decade. The Dunkirkers intercepted ships of other nations bound for the Republic, or just caught in the wrong place. The English lost 390 vessels between 1624 and 1628, equivalent to a fifth of their mercantile marine, and 35 of the 58 Dover-registered ships were laid up by 1626.
Dutch merchants called for immediate reprisals against this new ‘Algiers of the North’. Half the Dutch fleet was stationed off Dunkirk, eventually catching Jacobsen’s ship as he tried to run the blockade late in 1622. Jacobsen earned himself martyr status by blowing himself up rather than be taken. The Dutch hanged his surviving crew, but failed to deter the other privateers.
The Dunkirkers’ greatest triumph came in the autumn of 1625 when the Dutch decision to cooperate with the English fleet against Spain forced them to weaken their blockade of the port. A storm dispersed the rest of the blockading ships, enabling the privateers to sortie in force into the North Sea and attack the Dutch fishing fleet off the Shetlands in October. Within two weeks, they had destroyed 150 boats, including 20 fishery protection vessels, and captured 1,400 sailors. Later successes were more modest, but nonetheless forced the VOC to institute convoys for its ships in European waters. Dutch losses of ships and merchandise totalled at least 23.3 million fl. after 1626, while the French lost 2.35 million after they became targets in 1635 until Dunkirk was captured in 1646. Spain inflicted more damage than it suffered. The Dunkirkers were destroying 250 ships a year in the 1630s, whereas in the entire century after 1546 the Seville fleet sailing the Atlantic lost only 62 vessels to enemy action.
The Global Dimension
Unable to defeat the Spanish in European waters, the Dutch took the war to the Americas. Spain’s Caribbean bases proved too strong, while a large expedition sent round Cape Horn to the Pacific in 1623 was repulsed and finally limped home three years later. Spain’s distraction did enable the British and French to gain American footholds, however. The British settled in Virginia in 1607, followed by a presence in Guyana (1609) and the Amazon (1619). Spain had already abandoned the smaller Caribbean islands due to piracy, and the duke of Buckingham sponsored efforts to colonize these, notably St Kitts and Barbados. The French meanwhile overran Hispaniola, renamed Haiti, and occupied other islands, including Martinique and Guadeloupe. The Caribbean’s economic and strategic importance to both the British and French outweighed that of their outposts in Canada, but the region was yet to assume the significance it acquired in the eighteenth century.
The main Dutch effort was directed at the Portuguese possessions in Indonesia and Brazil. The States General had already declared the Truce over in the East Indies in 1614, and the VOC established itself in Batavia five years later. Pressure on the Portuguese increased as the rival English East India Company drove them from Ormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, a fortress that had previously been considered impregnable. The VOC launched an offensive in 1621 that saw it conquer most of Portugal’s Indonesian possessions within two years to give it the commanding position in the spice trade.
A new Dutch West India Company (WIC) was formed in June 1621 to muscle in on the Brazilian sugar boom that had flourished during the Truce. The Portuguese lacked the capacity to exploit Brazil’s economic potential and the WIC soon controlled over half of the sugar trade into Europe. Pressed by its Calvinist investors to produce better returns, the company organized major expeditions to seize the other two points on the ‘Atlantic triangle’ by capturing the vulnerable Portuguese settlements along the Brazilian coast, as well as the slaving posts at Luanda (Angola) and Elmina on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana). The African expedition was repulsed, but Piet Hein with 26 ships and 3,300 men captured the principal Brazilian port of Bahia against minimal opposition in May 1624. The Portuguese responded with the ‘Voyage of the Vassals’ as the country’s nobility mounted the largest campaign since their ill-fated crusade of 1577, sending 52 ships and 12,566 men who not only retook Bahia in May 1625, but cleared the Dutch from the Caribbean and returned in time to chase the English from Cadiz.10
Cadiz
James I’s death on 27 March 1625 removed the last constraint on Charles and Buckingham. They were still resolved to punish their humiliation in Madrid. A combined Anglo-Dutch assault was agreed at the Treaty of Southampton on 18 September and a Dutch squadron joined the English fleet to make up a force of 33 warships, 70 transports and 10,000 soldiers. The fleet attacked Cadiz only to find the Spanish had removed their ships to safety and were waiting for them behind formidable defences. The English troops eventually landed, got drunk on plundered wine and started shooting each other in the confusion. They were re-embarked and the expedition limped home in November. Charles and Buckingham were castigated for their abject failure to live up to the glories of the Elizabethan age. Yet the standard picture of Caroline decline has been modified by recent research indicating that England’s weakness was relative rather than absolute. Buckingham had enlarged the navy from 23 ships on his appointment as Lord Admiral in 1619, to 34 by 1625. However, other powers were more systematically creating state navies of purpose-built warships. From only 3 ships in 1620, France had 17 by 1625 and 53 in 1640.11 Britain still relied on merchantmen to supplement its forces as in the Elizabethan age. However, the long peace with Spain since 1604 had convinced English merchants that profit lay in trade, not privateering, and they had little interest in joining the crown’s plundering expeditions.
The defeat damaged Britain’s standing in Europe and reduced Charles I’s credibility as an ally. France distanced itself by signing an agreement with Spain in March 1626. Charles continued the war into 1626, sending Captain Sir John Pennington to cruise the Channel and intercept Spanish shipping. Pennington netted prizes worth £50,000, but since he also seized French ships, the operation merely increased Britain’s isolation.
The Union of Arms
Spain’s successes on land and at sea encouraged Olivares to redouble efforts to defeat the Dutch. His famous ‘Union of Arms’ derived from his earlier reforms and has been interpreted as an attempt to centralize and unify Spain.12 The programme was actually more limited and improvised. Each province was intended to maintain a fixed number of men for its own defence, as well as contribute tax for the main army and navy, thus adding a reserve of 140,000 men to the existing forces. The plan threatened cherished provincial autonomy and Olivares encountered considerable opposition as he negotiated with each province in turn from November 1625. Implementation was undermined by a lack of accurate information about the country’s resources. For example, Catalonia with only 400,000 inhabitants was asked to provide the same number of men as Portugal and Naples, each of which possessed over three times that population. The Union’s importance was as an expression of Olivares’ vision of empire, and as a means to establish a basis for additional taxes in lieu of mustering the reservists. Implementation was patchy, with Catalonia refusing to participate altogether, Valencia paying additional money, and Aragon eventually sending extra men after 1641.13
Philip IV’s widely cited boast of 1626 that he had 800,000 men under arms is an exaggeration, exceeding even the theoretical limits of the Union of Arms.14 The real total was more like 130–150,000, of whom about 17,000 were in Iberia, Naples and the Atlantic outposts, with the rest in Flanders and Lombardy. The fleet was also less than the 108 warships the king claimed, but it was still impressive. New construction had doubled the sailing navy to about fifty major ships by 1630, or the equivalent to the peak in 1600, while the galley fleet was only slightly below the earlier total of around forty vessels. Olivares remained optimistic and Philip was regarded by his subjects as the ‘planet king’, because his enemies and their satellites all appeared cowed by his brilliance.
Breda had indicated the cost of land operations, prompting Olivares to develop the trade embargo imposed since April 1621 into a comprehensive strategy to strangle the Dutch economy. The navy would cut the seaways while the army seized the Rhine, Ems, Weser, Maas and Scheldt using its cordon of garrisons. Work was begun on the Fosse Eugeniana canal in 1625 to divert trade from the Rhine just south of Wesel and reroute it to Venlo on the Maas in Spanish territory. Meanwhile, a system of licences was developed from late 1624 to monopolize northern European trade. Known as the ‘Admiralty of the North’ (Almirantazago de los Países Septentrionales), the system used a network of agents overseen by a court based in Seville to certify the place of origin for merchandise transported to and from Spanish ports. It was intended to stamp out the smuggling of Dutch goods that were passed off as German or other nations’ products. Spanish experts considered northern European waters to be more important to the Dutch than the Indies.15 Attempts to create a rival trading company failed, but the licence system was pursued with vigour. Denmark and the Hansa were offered incentives to replace the Dutch in carrying naval stores and textiles, and the British were included in the system once they made peace in November 1630. Spain refused to admit cargoes in Dutch-built vessels, triggering a boom in the Norwegian and north German shipyards. The system was never completely enforced but it seriously affected the Dutch, until the Portuguese revolt reopened some Iberian ports. ‘Together, the total package of Spanish mercantilist measures in the 1620s and 1630s represents one of the most fundamental and decisive factors shaping the development of the world economy in the seventeenth century.’16
RICHELIEU
Divisions in the French Monarchy
Spanish armaments were directed against the Dutch, but they alarmed France as it continued to fear its southern neighbour more than the trouble east of the Rhine. France’s ability to respond was severely restricted by its own instability. Though he was four years older than Philip IV, Louis XIII became king at the even younger age of eight when his father was assassinated. Government passed to the queen mother, Marie de Medici, who remained regent until 1614. The situation bore an uncanny resemblance to that of 1559 when another Medici queen, Catherine, wielded power for a succession of young kings. This time, France stepped back from civil war. Though Henri IV had been killed by a Catholic fanatic, he had enjoyed broad support throughout the country. After his murder, even the Jesuits joined the near universal chorus of praise that swiftly established the myth of a benevolent and successful monarch who wanted to put a chicken in every peasant’s pot.17
Unlike 1559 when the monarchy had been bankrupt, Marie enjoyed revenues of 24 million livres and a cash reserve of 12 million. However, many of the problems that had destabilized France after 1559 remained after 1610 and would restrict the king’s ability to intervene in European conflicts. Foremost were the divisions within the ruling family and its close relations among the ‘princes of the blood’, who held grand titles and vast estates, and regarded senior public offices, like provincial governorships and army commands, as theirs by right. Some of these aristocrats were Catholic, like the Guise family, including the dukes of Lorraine who were related by marriage to the previous Valois dynasty. Others were, at least until recently, Huguenots and related to the current Bourbon dynasty. The most senior, Henri II de Bourbon, duc de Condé, grandson of the Huguenot leader in 1562, led a revolt in 1614 demanding a greater role in the regency. Much of Marie’s cash reserve was wasted defeating this challenge. The underlying problem persisted, however, because the French monarchy lacked the means to integrate its proud, rich aristocrats and their numerous provincial clients into the political system.
The traditional method to deal with this had been for the monarch to assert himself by force of personality, balancing the competing aristocrats by the careful distribution of offices and rewards. Louis XIII was prematurely declared of age in 1614, largely with this in mind. Marie, however, was not prepared to relinquish power and continued to treat her son as a child: the new king had to formally petition his mother to stop beating him for his mistakes. Louis is generally assumed to have been a weak figure, exchanging his mother’s tutelage for that of Richelieu after 1624. Certainly, he lacked his father’s good humour and charm. He grew up warped by the well-intentioned but misguided interference of his parents, physicians and governess. His father reputedly put a gun in his hands straight after his birth. His playroom resembled an arsenal. He already owned 55 arquebuses by the time he was 13 and took his gun cabinet with him wherever he went. When told that Ravaillac had murdered his father, he exclaimed, ‘Ha! If I had been there with my sword, I would have killed him.’ This bravado was not matched by any skill as a commander and he found it much harder to lead real men than he did his toy soldiers. Nonetheless, he was not bereft of ideas and a more recent biographer suggests he worked well with Richelieu because both men essentially held similar views.18 Richelieu’s influence derived from his ability to channel Louis’ angry passions into more constructive activity. Louis trusted him, but also needed Richelieu as a shield to deflect criticism of his own personality and mistakes.
The division between mother and son lasted until her death in 1642 and was soon supplemented after 1614 by the added rivalry between Louis and his younger brother Gaston d’Orleans, known simply as ‘Monsieur’.19 Though a valuable asset when royal mortality was a political liability – Louis outlived his mother by only a year and died when his own son was just four and a half – the role of brother to the king was ill-defined and hard to play. Gaston clearly resented his subordinate part. The personal differences combined with deep disagreements on how the country should be governed and how to respond to events abroad. Individuals within the royal family and the aristocracy emerged periodically as the focus for competing political and religious aspirations, but the situation remained fluid as rival factions coalesced and fragmented rapidly.
The Huguenots
The basic consensus was for the monarch to act as arbiter at home and abroad. The notion of arbiter had been strengthened by Bodin’s theory of alliances – that any group of three or more required a leader to provide direction and ensure disagreements did not threaten the union. This could be applied internally through the role of the monarch, and internationally with one powerful country ensuring European peace.20 There was some support for the king to exercise a firmer hand and prevent a reoccurrence of civil war. However, royal authority remained limited, especially in the outlying provinces only incorporated into France over the previous century. Even in the core provinces, royal decisions became law only when registered by the relevant parlements, or senior law courts. Religious division reinforced provincialism in the areas covered by the Edict of Nantes that brought the earlier cycle of civil wars to a close in 1598.
This was a very different kind of settlement to the Peace of Augsburg. The Peace had been an integral part of the imperial constitution and gave Lutherans rights in formal institutions. The French parlements, however, had registered only the half of the Edict that confirmed Catholicism as the majority faith while giving restricted freedom of conscience to the Huguenot minority. This numbered 904,000 people living in a swathe of territory in a diagonal from La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast, across the Dordogne, Lot and Tarn rivers to Montauban and the Languedoc on the Mediterranean. Another 120,000 lived in Béarn in the extreme south-west, the rump of the old kingdom of Navarre which had only recently been incorporated within the French monarchy. Though numerous, the Huguenots represented a much smaller proportion of France’s 20 million inhabitants than the Protestants in the Empire. They remained scattered in aristocratic manors and the two hundred towns that received special privileges under the rest of the Edict, but issued solely on royal authority. This permitted them to maintain their own troops in half of the towns at royal expense and garrison the other half with their militia. Though resented by French Catholics, these privileges fell far short of those enjoyed by German Protestants. Crucially, the Huguenots lacked a political platform equivalent to representation in the Reichstag: the Edict only sanctioned consistories and synods.
Initially, the Huguenots relied on the influence of their lords at the royal court. However, a gulf opened between the rich aristocrats and the poorer provincial nobles, many of whom inclined to religious militancy and represented a pool of supporters for those grandes who fell from royal favour. An important example was Henri, viscount Turenne, who had acquired the tiny sovereign duchy of Bouillon around Sedan between the Meuse and Spanish Luxembourg. His wife was Frederick V’s aunt, linking him to the Calvinist international and fuelling delusions of grandeur. Forced to flee after plotting against Henri IV in 1602, his presence in the Palatinate had been a major reason why France failed to assist the Protestant Union.
The Huguenots sought a more stable platform for their interests by converting their religious assemblies into political meetings, electing Henri de Rohan as leader in 1611. From the relatively humble provincial nobility, Rohan travelled widely and fought for both Maurice of Nassau and Henri IV who made him a duke in 1603. Rohan was convinced the Huguenots held the political balance within France and refused to back Condé’s rebellion in 1614.21
The Huguenots’ presence considerably complicated French politics. Protestant powers viewed France as a potential partner, given that the ruling Bourbon dynasty converted to Catholicism only in 1593 and Louis XIII had confirmed the Edict of Nantes on his accession. France’s concern at potential Spanish encirclement provided additional common ground. The French crown also sought ties with Protestant states, including the German princes. However, divisions within the monarchy and senior aristocracy prevented the king from monopolizing external relations. Both Louis XIII’s mother and brother, as royalty, offered respectable alternative potential partners for foreign powers, while Bouillon, Rohan and other Huguenot grandees maintained their own contacts through the Calvinist network.
Like the Bohemian rebels, the Huguenots felt the anxiety of an ambitious minority without a firm place in the established political order. The monarchy was now firmly Catholic and while it did not follow the Austrian Habsburgs in making confession a test for loyalty, it clearly resented the Huguenots’ privileged place in French society, if only because it made it harder for the king to satisfy competing demands for status and resources. The crown’s association with the Edict also complicated its relationship with Catholic powers.
Richelieu
Opinions diverged on how to master this situation. One group, calling themselves Les Bons Catholiques, took up the spiritual and political legacy of the Catholic Ligue from the Wars of Religion. They were inspired by St François de Sales whose views that human acts should display Catholic devotion were set out in his Introduction à la vie dévote (1609), the book that gave the group its other name of the dévots. Politics should be guided by religion since divine will took precedence over reasons of state. France could exercise its proper role as arbiter of Europe only by winning the respect of other Catholic powers like Spain. This could not be achieved while heretics were tolerated at home, or alliances made with Protestants abroad.22 Richelieu later portrayed them as naïve, but dévots like Michel de Marillac, superintendant of finance after 1624, also advanced sound practical reasons for their strategy. Marillac argued that alliance with Spain would spare France the expense of a major war. Money could be diverted to alleviate suffering and eliminate the dangers of a popular insurrection that appeared ever-present in an age of crop failure and gross social inequality. The dévots hoped Richelieu, as a man of the church, would represent their interests once he entered government. They were bitterly disappointed.
Richelieu had been destined for a military career, but switched to take a brother’s place as bishop of Luçon to safeguard his family’s clerical interests in 1607. He won papal approval for his diligent enforcement of the Tridentine decrees. His political career began in 1614 and he spent the next ten years navigating the treacherous waters of court politics, managing to stay on good terms both with Louis and Marie, as well as with the pope who made him a cardinal in 1622. Marie had him appointed to the ‘council upstairs’ in April 1624, the key decision-making body that met on the palace’s first floor. Within four months, he became the council’s head and effectively first minister in France.23
In reaching this position, Richelieu had overcome repeated political setbacks that would have broken a weaker man. He acquired an iron resolve and ruthless determination, underpinned by his embracement of Neo-Stoicism, the philosophy behind the Dutch army reforms. He was certainly avaricious, amassing a fortune of around 20 million livres, but he adopted ostentation as a political tactic to outshine rivals, while remaining personally austere. It is clear he wanted to leave his mark on history, building a new town around his ancestral home at Richelieu on the Poitou–Touraine border and having this raised to a duchy in 1631. His oft-quoted memoirs were another attempt to shape the opinion of posterity, along with skilful propaganda directed at contemporaries, coordinated by his friend the Capuchin Father Joseph, who entered history as the ‘grey eminence’ behind the ‘red eminence’ of the cardinal.24
Discrepancies between the carefully cultivated image, actual policy and contemporary aspirations and criticism have caused later opinion to diverge radically on all important points. Richelieu is variously cruel or magnanimous, a war-monger or peace-maker, the architect of modern France or the man who plunged it into a protracted and costly war. Critics accuse Richelieu of Machiavellianism, and even those favourably disposed stress his cool, calculating strategy. He was an opportunist only in that he sought to turn circumstances to his advantage. Politics was like a game of chess, already a contemporary metaphor, with Richelieu thinking several moves ahead, but knowing there were many more to go before checkmate.
Growing up during the last and most destructive phase of the Wars of Religion, Richelieu endorsed Bodin’s belief in a strong monarchy as the bulwark against both tyranny and anarchy. He also embraced the Gallic tradition of recognizing the pope’s spiritual role while asserting the administrative autonomy of the French church. ‘The interests of a state and the interests of religion are two entirely different things,’ he declared in 1616.25 The state must serve Christian goals, but it was a political collective without an immortal soul and so could afford measures not permissible to individual Christians. This placed him closer to the dévots’ opponents, Les Bons Français, who were prepared to compromise with the Huguenots for the greater good of France. The Huguenots were still considered a threat to both the monarchy and the true faith, but it would be wrong to risk renewed civil war, especially given dangers abroad. The growth of Spanish power was seen as threatening France’s ‘traditional’ role as arbiter, and thus posed a greater threat to Christendom than the presence of heretics at home. Richelieu’s goal was ‘a good peace for Christendom’, a concept he deliberately left undefined. He did, however, employ the metaphor of the sun, presenting Louis XIII as the benign centre of a harmonious universe, radiating order beyond France. Just how far Richelieu believed this himself remains disputed. Nonetheless, it became the chief justification for both domestic and foreign policy.
The Huguenot Rebellions
At home Richelieu sought to consolidate royal power by gradually curbing the autonomy of the grandees and the Huguenots. Louis XIII had already embarked on this, imposing his authority on Béarn in 1618. This bloodless campaign, along with two brief clashes with his mother when she resorted to arms to regain influence, helps to explain France’s relatively low-key policy during the Bohemian Revolt. Renewed struggles against the Huguenots from 1621 inhibited intervention in the Empire’s troubles thereafter.
The coincidence of renewed civil war in France with the resumption of the Spanish-Dutch conflict and the fighting in the Empire gives the impression of a general conflagration. This is certainly how it appeared to many Huguenots and to the dévots. Like the Bohemian leadership, Huguenot militants believed there was a Catholic conspiracy to extirpate their faith and eliminate their political influence. The Huguenot assembly convened in La Rochelle in December 1620 without royal permission. The city had grown rich on international trade and was well-integrated into the Protestant commercial network. Almost entirely surrounded by sea and salt marshes, it supplemented its natural defences with modern fortifications built between 1596 and 1611. Radical congregationalists seized control of the city and appealed to Britain for protection. Many were dissatisfied with Rohan and the aristocratic leadership, whom they believed were placing careers at court above religious duty. La Rochelle assumed the character of a secessionist government defying royal authority, and acquired growing significance as Huguenot influence elsewhere contracted.26
Like the resumed Dutch War, the Huguenot risings followed their own trajectory, distinct from strife elsewhere on the continent. Their origins lay in Catholic resentment of the Edict of Nantes and Huguenot anxiety at their lack of political integration. The conflict flared in three bursts: April 1621–October 1622, January 1625–February 1626 and July 1627–June 1629. The fighting was intermittent, because neither side was willing or able to press matters to a conclusion. The crown could rarely assemble over 20,000 men for more than a few months at a time and used these to secure temporary dominance in particular regions. Operations were concentrated in the south and east before 1627. Fighting was often savage as the conflict reopened local feuds from the earlier Wars of Religion. The crown tempered its repression with displays of benevolence intended to sustain royal prestige and foster acceptance for the progressive dismantling of Huguenot autonomy. Each peace in 1622 and 1626 confirmed freedom of worship and pardoned those who had taken up arms, but captured strongholds were not returned. By 1627, the Huguenots were essentially restricted to Montauban and La Rochelle. Access to the latter was constricted by the royalist capture of the islands of Oleron and Ré commanding the mouth of the Charente river. These were fortified, along with the town of Brouage to the south, as bases for Richelieu’s new navy.27
The Huguenots still posed a threat, and Richelieu feared that any reverse would be exploited by Marie, Gaston d’Orleans, or other grandees jealous of his influence. Rumours of plots, real or false, swirled around him, attracting Spanish interest as Olivares increasingly saw him as a dangerous opponent. Alleged Spanish involvement in these plots merely added to Richelieu’s conviction that all European conflicts were related, not by religion, but by Habsburg malevolence. He believed Philip IV wanted to make Ferdinand absolute ruler and marshal German resources to conquer the Dutch.
The feeling was mutual. Philip IV fumed at Louis’ shabby treatment of his sister Anne, who had married the French king in 1615 as part of Lerma’s and Marie’s policy of rapprochement. Since her arrival, Anne had been shut out from politics and the king’s affections, actions that perverted what Spain saw as natural Catholic solidarity. France seemed in league with the devil, tolerating heretics at home and subsidizing the Dutch abroad. Spanish propaganda contrasted French belligerence with Spanish claims to be the oldest monarchy and first Christian people.28
Richelieu’s Strategy
Richelieu developed four methods to counter the Spanish threat, pursuing each option with varying intensity depending on the circumstances.29 His preferred policy was a network of alliances to enable France to overcome Spanish hegemony and effect the desired general pacification of Europe. This explains his involvement in long negotiations with the more powerful European states for a grand anti-Habsburg front after 1624. He was well aware of the obstacles to this, and so pursued parallel talks for separate German and Italian leagues. The latter embraced the slogan of the ‘liberty of Italy’ from Spanish domination and entailed efforts to combine Venice, Savoy, Parma, the papacy and other states in a defensive alliance to isolate the Spanish garrisons in Milan and Naples. Negotiations in the Empire trumpeted ‘German liberty’ as a means of emasculating the emperor. Richelieu’s preferred plan was an understanding with Bavaria to convert the Catholic Liga into a pro-French neutral party that could stop Ferdinand sending troops against the Dutch. However, he was also prepared to talk to Protestant princes like Johann Georg of Saxony, if they were willing to cooperate with this objective.
Bilateral alliances with individual states were a second strategy to substitute for the failure to persuade others to join a more general alliance. Such alliances were deliberately distant to avoid compromising France’s Catholic credentials or committing it to objectives in which it had little interest. Richelieu’s preferred method was to offer subsidies, and less often recruits, to assist an ally without openly supporting it. This characterized his support for the Dutch and Swedes until 1635 whom he hoped would keep both Habsburg branches occupied.
The third option was to offer protection to weaker territories that might assist France by allowing passage for French troops.30 France had already asserted a protectorate over the bishoprics and associated cities of Metz, Toul and Verdun in 1552 which provided access into Lorraine and threatened the Spanish Road (see Chapter 5, p.154).The system was extended around 1600 when France offered protection to Sedan and Geneva, as well as approaching minor Alsatian and Italian rulers for similar arrangements. France’s revival after the Wars of Religion had made such offers attractive. Rudolf II’s incapacity weakened the value of imperial protection (Reichsschütz), especially to vulnerable territories on the Empire’s periphery. Swiss neutrality was very restricted, since the Confederation was reluctant to admit new associates or become involved in affairs beyond the Alps. However, French strength also made its protection a potential first step to annexation. For it to be effective, France had to establish a military presence that was both burdensome for the protectorate and alarming to its neighbours. Protection thus became an option of last resort for the weak once it was clear others would not respect their neutrality.
Protection could also cause problems for France, pulling Richelieu towards his fourth and least desired strategy of military action. Armed force was intended to lend weight to diplomacy, especially in conjunction with alliances. Conquests were limited and closely connected to protection. Both were means of obtaining gateways across the French frontier to block foreign invasion and allow France to intervene elsewhere. Richelieu did not invent this strategy. French involvement in Italy since 1600 was already directed at securing Susa, Pinerolo, Saluzzo and Casale as a safe route over the Alps. Ostensibly defensive, this policy was inherently aggressive and tended to suck France into conflicts just beyond its frontiers. The long-standing desire to annex Metz, Toul and Verdun encouraged interference in Lorraine’s internal affairs to eliminate the duke’s influence in the three bishoprics. Intervention in Lorraine in turn drew France into the neighbouring German territories and was, as we shall see later in Chapter 16, a major cause of war with Spain in 1635.
Like Olivares’, Richelieu’s strategy was fundamentally flawed. Both men viewed war in Clausewitz’s sense as the continuation of diplomacy by other means. Neither wanted a major conflict. The application of force was intended to make the other side be more reasonable. Unfortunately, neither possessed accurate information regarding the other’s strength or interests. Once started, it became difficult to break the cycle as pressure from one side prompted the other to escalate matters elsewhere. The incidents remained individually relatively minor, but negotiations over them became progressively more difficult as the points of contention accumulated and mistrust mounted.
THE VALTELLINA
The Holy Slaughter
These difficulties are best illustrated by the tension over the Valtellina, a dispute that pre-dated Richelieu’s coming to power. Here the Bohemian Revolt had disturbed the stand-off between the Spanish governor of Milan and the Rhetian Free State occupying the Alpine valley. The radical Calvinists who had taken control of the Rhetian council welcomed Frederick’s election as Bohemian king and later supplied him with troops.31 Madrid instructed the duke of Feria, appointed governor in August 1618, to reopen the pass provided he could restrict military action to the Valtellina. Feria exceeded his instructions. Without telling Madrid, he conspired with the Valtellina Catholics who had appealed for help against their Protestant masters. Capuchin monks acted as couriers in precisely the kind of plot Protestant militants suspected everywhere. Seeing Spanish troops massing at Fort Fuentes at the southern end of the valley, the Rhetians began countermeasures. Fearing they would be discovered, however, the Catholics struck before Feria was ready, initiating fifteen days of ‘holy slaughter’ that left at least four hundred Protestants dead in July 1620. The survivors fled west and north into Switzerland and Rhetia.32
Rhetian troops counter-attacked, backed by 1,500 Protestant Swiss, and routed the locals, destroying their churches. A thousand Spaniards then advanced from Fort Fuentes, capturing Chiavenna and the southern half of the valley by September. The Catholic rebels established their own government behind new Spanish forts at Morbegnio, Sondrio, Nova and Riva. Pressure on the Rhetians mounted as Archduke Leopold saw an opportunity to reassert Austrian jurisdiction and called in military assistance from the archbishop of Salzburg. The Habsburgs’ initial advance was repulsed at the northern end of the valley in March 1621, but by the following January the Rhetians had capitulated, surrendering authority over eight members of the Ten Parish League, as well as the Lower Engadin valley belonging to the Holy House League. This reduced Rhetia by nearly a third and threatened its hold over the northern Valtellina. Catholicism was imposed by force in the southern half where pastors were given a year to leave. A Protestant rising temporarily ejected the Austrians in April 1622, but was crushed by fresh troops who annexed the Lower Engadin and Davos for the Tirol in September. Hunger caused widespread suffering that winter.
Though Madrid had retrospectively sanctioned Feria’s action, it proved highly embarrassing. Intervention had not resolved the stalemate that left no one able to use the valley, and had caused alarm in Italy, where Venice and the papacy opened talks for a French alliance in 1621. French involvement was the last thing Spain wanted and it sought a diplomatic solution. Distracted by its own problems, France also wanted to avoid a fight, but needed to act to preserve its influence in Italy. Louis’ representatives began a series of deliberately well-publicized talks with Savoy and Venice, culminating in the Treaty of Lyons in February 1623 that envisaged an army of 40,000, possibly under Mansfeld, to eject the Spanish.
Spain was not prepared to risk war and accepted the face-saving device of papal mediation. Both parties agreed a week after the Treaty of Lyons that papal troops should replace the Spanish in the valley. Though Spain managed to send 7,000 reinforcements along the Spanish Road through the valley to Germany in October 1623, the situation remained unsatisfactory. Moreover, the election of the Francophile Urban VIII as the new pontiff that August signalled a shift against the Habsburgs. Urban was convinced the religious crisis had passed and stopped his predecessor’s subsidies to the emperor and the Catholic Liga. The anti-Habsburg trend continued following Richelieu’s assumption of power in 1624, as he saw the Valtellina dispute as a chance to ratchet pressure onto Spain without unduly exposing France.
War 1625
Richelieu received eager assistance from Carlo Emanuele of Savoy, who wanted to settle his long-standing dispute with Genoa over the fief of Zuccarello and signed a secret pact with France in November 1624.33 An attack on Genoa would cut the southern end of the Spanish Road and knock out Spain’s banker. The time seemed opportune, with the apparent convergence of Protestant hostility to the Habsburgs, and explains French participation in the London talks with Mansfeld. Richelieu hoped Britain and the Dutch would send a fleet to assist his own squadron in cutting the seaway between Spain and Genoa, while Venice attacked Milan. D’Estrees and 3,500 French troops crossed Protestant Swiss territory to join a similar number of Rhetians levied with French money. More subsidies and troops poured into Savoy, where the French formed a third of the 30,000-strong army that began operations against Genoa in February 1625.
The attack caught the Spanish and Genoese unprepared. Most of Genoa was overrun, while 4,000 reinforcements from Spain were intercepted by French warships in March. D’Estrees quickly conquered the Valtellina, because the papal garrisons offered no resistance except at Riva and Chiavenna. Richelieu’s elaborate plan then began to unravel. The Valtellina operation placed France in direct opposition to an essentially Francophile papacy, incensing the dévots. The duke of Feria sent 6,000 men to reinforce the city of Genoa itself, which continued to resist the Franco-Savoyard siege. Venice abstained from the fighting, while British and Dutch support failed to materialize, enabling Spain to break through the relatively weak French fleet and relieve Genoa in August. A fresh Huguenot rising in 1625 meanwhile distracted Richelieu at home: it was typical of the tortuous politics of the Calvinist international that the French Protestants contributed to their government’s inability to assist their Alpine brethren.
The rebellion at least gave Richelieu an excuse to open talks to escape an increasingly dangerous situation. Papal mediation culminated in the Treaty of Monzón on 5 March 1626, which restored the pre-1617 situation with important qualifications. Rhetian jurisdiction was nominally restored over the Valtellina; this was now recognized as Catholic, which strengthened its autonomy and introduced doubt as to who could decide on transit through the valley. Papal troops replaced the French, though the forts were supposed to be destroyed.34 Monzón represented a serious reverse for Richelieu who blamed his envoy for the terms and feigned illness to avoid seeing the furious Savoyard ambassador. Abandoned, Savoy was obliged to make its own peace and now sought a Spanish alliance and intrigued with French malcontents against Richelieu, including possible involvement in the Chalais plot to murder the cardinal in 1626. Spain had won the first round.