16
While Ferdinand capitalized on Nördlingen by making peace in the Empire, France and Spain moved towards war. The two developments were related, but had distinct roots. The emperor partially pacified the Empire with the Peace of Prague, brokered by Saxony, which left Sweden isolated by the middle of 1635. Before exploring this further, it is necessary to examine Franco-Spanish tension. As the next two sections indicate, France did not seek war in the Empire, but was dragged deeper into that conflict to support Sweden and prevent Ferdinand assisting Spain. The intervention worked, distracting the emperor sufficiently to enable Sweden to recover. Peace between the emperor and Sweden nonetheless remained possible into 1636, and it is important to look at the interaction between diplomacy and military operations to see why both sides squandered the opportunity. Imperial and Bavarian troops joined the Spanish in attacking France, but refrained from engaging the Dutch. Spain welcomed Ferdinand’s assistance, but had envisaged it for its existing struggle in the Netherlands. Austro-Spanish military cooperation continued until 1639, but the emperor restricted his commitment and refused to allow Spanish interests to dictate policy in the Empire.
RICHELIEU RESOLVES ON WAR
Spanish Policy
There are good reasons to discount Spanish propaganda presenting themselves as innocent victims of unprovoked French aggression. Olivares had grown more hostile towards France since the Mantuan War. He signed a new, secret pact with Gaston d’Orleans on 12 May 1634, promising 6,000 auxiliaries plus subsidies to enable him to invade France again. However, it is unlikely that he actively sought a major war with France to make himself indispensable to Philip IV.1 The Spanish Council of State had voted against war on 13 April and the deal with Gaston was merely a repeat of the earlier arrangement in 1631–2 to keep Richelieu busy.2
Oñate concluded negotiations with Ferdinand in the Treaty of Ebersdorf on 31 October 1634 that was publicly directed at upholding the integrity of the Empire. Secret articles endorsed Spain’s interpretation of the 1548 Burgundian Treaty that the emperor should help against the Dutch on the grounds that the Netherlands were part of the Empire. Oñate persuaded Ferdinand to accept a very wide definition of these obligations as requiring aid against any of Spain’s enemies. Nonetheless, he was careful to restrict his promise to Austria, merely undertaking to do his best to persuade the other imperial Estates to join him. Moreover, it became clear the two Habsburg branches had very different ideas on how the assistance was to be provided. Olivares expected the emperor to send part of the imperial army, whereas Ferdinand simply intended to let Spain recruit more German soldiers.
Despite the potential obligation to assist against France, the arrangement remained directed against the Dutch. Fernando’s army had marched to Flanders, not into France. Imperial operations at the beginning of 1635 remained restricted to ejecting the French and Bernhardines from Speyer and other imperial territory. Duke Charles’s invasion of Lorraine in April and May was on his own initiative. Furthermore, the whole point of Olivares’ strategy since 1633 had been to assemble enough troops in Flanders to achieve decisive superiority and compel the Dutch to accept an honourable peace. The Spanish Council of State endorsed this again on 2 February 1635 when it agreed to continue to prioritize the Dutch War.3
The general trend of Spanish policy nonetheless remained hostile towards France. Richelieu could not afford to let Spain defeat the Dutch any more than he could allow the emperor to crush Sweden. Both Protestant powers remained counterweights to perceived Spanish dominance. Worse, the deteriorating situation on the Upper Rhine coincided with a Spanish intervention further downstream that unwittingly challenged Richelieu directly. The failure of Feria’s expedition to clear Alsace prompted Olivares to authorize the governor of Luxembourg to remove the French from Trier, thereby opening an alternative route from Germany to the Netherlands. Alarmed at Elector Sötern’s plans to name Richelieu as his coadjutor, the Trier canons cooperated with the Luxembourg governor who sent 1,200 men. These surprised the French in Trier on 26 March, seizing Sötern while the canons took over the government. Another 1,500 Imperialists evicted the French from Koblenz in April, but they fled into the Ehrenbreitstein fortress and held out for a further 28 months. Olivares had nothing to do with Sötern’s arrest, which was possibly organized by Fernando to precipitate what he regarded as an inevitable conflict with France and so force the Empire in general, and Austria in particular, to honour their commitments.4
French Belligerence
The French government grew more bellicose from December 1633, encouraged by a war party around Abel Servien who wanted Richelieu to move more decisively. The cardinal was certainly heading towards open conflict with Spain, but did not want it so quickly. War with Spain entailed openly joining the Dutch who remained divided, with a strong peace party favouring resumption of the talks suspended in April 1634. Frederick Henry circumvented the formal institutions where the peace faction held a majority and used his influence in the provinces, enhanced by French bribes, to win support to extend the war. Indirect French assistance was converted into an offensive alliance on 8 February 1635. Both parties promised to field 30,000 men and 15 ships each for a joint invasion of the Spanish Netherlands. Following invasion, the region was to be given three months to declare independence, or be partitioned between France and the Republic.5
The treaty had not yet been ratified when news of Sötern’s arrest reached Paris on 30 March. Spain’s action forced Richelieu’s hand. His entire position since the Day of the Dupes rested on an assertive foreign policy and he could not afford to accept the humiliation of the arrest of the most senior foreign prince under French protection.6 A series of hasty meetings with Louis XIII led to a decision for war on 5 April. Meanwhile, Richelieu sent a demand to Brussels for Sötern’s release to win time and establish grounds for a ‘just war’ by displaying an ostensible willingness for peace. The arrest conveniently allowed him to present the conflict as a struggle against Spanish tyranny. The manifesto drafted by Father Joseph carefully avoided criticism of the emperor. French units were already entering the Netherlands when a herald, resplendent in his traditional costume of tabard and plumed hat, and accompanied by a trumpeter, rode into Brussels to deliver the manifesto. Fernando refused to see him, obliging him to pin it to the border post and go home.7
French Preparedness
After nearly forty years without a major war, France was relatively poorly prepared and only harnessed its true potential a few years into the struggle. There has been considerable debate over the size of its army, but while historians disagree on the exact total, all revise older estimates downwards. Overall strength was certainly below the 120-150,000 men widely cited for the first year of the war. The army probably numbered about 49,000 at the end of 1634, rising to a maximum of 65,000 infantry and 9,500 cavalry in 1635, and 90,000 in all the following year.8 Most soldiers were unseasoned and their officers inexperienced. Count Guiche, later known as the duke of Gramont, recalled the events of 1635:
… the opening of the campaign and everything appeared difficult to the troops, and even to the officers, who had lived softly for too long; the cavalry was not used to pitching camp, and did it clumsily… The army regarded it as a prodigy to have to pass four or five days without bread, and their attitude produced an almost general sedition.9
The usual financial problems helped wreck Richelieu’s optimistic expectations of rapid success. Though the war began with an offensive, the French spent most of the first six years operating on their own soil. They were unable to levy contributions on their enemies, and while neutrals paid for ‘protection’, troops still had to be stationed to uphold this. Money was extorted from Lorraine and Alsace, but the latter was increasingly treated as a French province after 1643, entailing a degree of restraint. Units operating in Germany (and later in Catalonia) did live at the locals’ expense, but France did also continue to pay substantial subsidies to the Dutch, Sweden and other allies.
Annual revenue rose significantly, from 32.5 million livres in 1610 to 57.5 million on the eve of war, reaching 79 million by 1643. Inflation accounted for some of the growth, but the rest followed a relentless race to keep pace with the burgeoning military expenditure. The latter already averaged nearly 16 million a year in the 1620s, approaching 20 million with the fighting in La Rochelle and Mantua, but rocketed to over 33 million in 1635 and exceeded 38 million after 1640. At 138 per cent, the rate of increase outstripped that of gross agricultural production which rose by only 37 per cent. The per capita tax burden more than doubled, representing the equivalent of nearly five weeks’ wages, compared to less than a fortnight’s wages under Henri IV.10 As this was at a time when the average household spent most of its income on food, this caused widespread hardship, precipitating a series of major revolts into the middle of the century.
The war strained a system that worked only imperfectly even in peacetime. The monarchy always overspent, forcing it to borrow heavily. As in Spain, specific sources of revenue were mortgaged to financiers in return for loans. Revenue was not only spent before it had been collected, but large parts of the fiscal system were transferred into private hands, largely beyond government control. Only 49 per cent of expenditure under Richelieu was submitted to the royal audit office, with the remainder only presented in total. The government claimed exemption on grounds of national security, but the real reason was to hide the exorbitant rates of interest paid to financiers. A total of 700 million livres of loans (affaires extraordinaires) was raised between 1620 and 1644 at the cost of 172 million.11 The formal structure of ordinary taxation ‘became little more than a front behind which the financiers carried on their affairs with studied indifference towards the damage that they did to the government and contempt for the suffering of the tax-paying element of the population’.12
Richelieu was aware of these problems and made periodic efforts to eliminate the worst abuses. Many of the taxes alienated to financiers were clawed back in 1634 when a new military tax, called the subsistence, was introduced. The war frustrated reform and taxes were again mortgaged by 1642. The system had been evolving for nearly two centuries and there was considerable reluctance to challenge the vested interests of those charged with collecting and spending the money. Perhaps more fundamentally, those in charge did not feel the need. Central government was almost entirely in the hands of Richelieu’s clients by 1635, removing any incentive to change existing institutions. The monarchy might lurch from one financial crisis to the next, but at least it kept moving forward. The famous centrally appointed inspectors, called intendants, were clearly not impartial agents of royal absolutism as once thought, yet they did ensure money reached the treasury, troops were paid and warships equipped.13 French troops remained ill-disciplined, but they did not mutiny like Sweden’s German army.
THE WAR IN THE WEST 1635–6
Habsburg Military Cooperation
The French declaration of war on Spain was extremely unwelcome to Ferdinand who had hoped to avoid conflict. The imperial envoy left Paris in August, but it was the end of December before the emperor sanctioned joint operations with Spain, and March 1636 when the French ambassador was expelled from Vienna. Neither Louis XIII nor Ferdinand declared war on the other. The emperor still hoped France and Spain would resolve their differences without prolonged conflict.14 Military cooperation with Spain was already under way, but imperial forces restricted their participation to targets within the Empire. Fernando’s army, totalling 11,540 on its arrival in Brussels, was absorbed into the Army of Flanders. The Ebersdorf Treaty envisaged Spanish subsidies to form a new army of 13,300. Ferdinand reluctantly allowed Spain to recruit around 8,000 Germans by February 1635, and transferred 5,000 Croats and Polish cavalry who had recently joined Gallas on the Rhine. Another 9,000 recruits were sent south over the St Gotthard pass in October to reinforce the Spanish Army of Lombardy operating in northern Italy. Ferdinand also allowed Spain to collect 10,781 men discharged from the Polish army in September. Having wintered in Silesia, 7,000 eventually joined Gallas in October 1636, while the rest reinforced the Spanish in Milan. This represented only indirect assistance and came at a price, since Spain paid 910,000 florins towards recruiting costs in 1635–7, compared to 1.2 million in direct subsidy to Austria over the same period.15
Spain withheld 540,000 fl. of the promised subsidy in 1635 to pressure Ferdinand to provide more direct assistance. Gallas was assigned 35,000 of the then 90,000 troops of the imperial army to make a diversion on the Rhine. Maximilian agreed to support this because French interference in the siege of Heidelberg in December 1634 persuaded him to reject Richelieu’s renewed offer of protection. The Bavarians numbered about 18,000, while the Cologne-Westphalian forces were only around 6,000 strong. Some Bavarians helped blockade the French in the Ehrenbreitstein, while the others cooperated with Gallas along the Upper Rhine.
Spain approached Gallas directly, offering the title of duke while also discreetly looking into his past for incriminating evidence to use if he proved difficult. He nonetheless remained loyal to the Empire, blaming his failure to invade France on operational problems. Many of these difficulties were indeed genuine. He had been obliged to send 10,000 men to help Spain clear the Valtellina that had just been blocked by Henri de Rohan’s corps from Upper Alsace (see below, Chapter 18). The abject failure of that operation further discouraged the Austrians from helping their cousins. Another 6,000 were assigned to reinforce Charles of Lorraine who was essentially pursuing his own war to recover his duchy. Finally, Gallas detached 10,000 more to join Piccolomini who had wintered in Franconia and returned down the Main in June. Piccolomini’s force eventually numbered 22,000, but this probably included imperial units under Mansfeld who remained east of the Rhine in support of the Westphalians.16
Piccolomini crossed the Rhine near Andernach and advanced west towards the Meuse. His approach greatly helped Fernando who now faced a war on two fronts, like his distant predecessor the duke of Parma in the 1580s. Units had to be detailed to garrison the towns along the southern frontier with France as well as the existing posts to the north facing the Dutch. This took nearly half of his 70,000 men, leaving him outnumbered by the Franco-Dutch field armies. The French were 4,000 short of the strength promised the Dutch because of the men diverted to help La Force in Alsace at the beginning of the year. Nonetheless, they advanced down the Meuse from Sedan and defeated a Spanish blocking force under Prince Tommaso of Savoy at Avesnes on 22 May 1635. Having joined the Dutch at Namur, the combined army turned west towards Brussels, taking Tienen (Tirlemont) on 9 June. Things then started to go wrong as they became bogged down besieging Leuven (Louvain). The French cut poor figures alongside the Dutch veterans. Supply arrangements collapsed, reducing the French to only 8,000 effectives to the consternation of the Dutch. As Piccolomini advanced into Cleves, the Spanish captured the fort of Schenkenschans commanding the Rhine just downstream from Emmerich. These moves threatened to strand the Dutch in Belgium, forcing them to retreat rapidly, while the French hurried back up the Meuse. The Franco-Dutch invasion frustrated Spanish plans to recover Maastricht, but its failure nonetheless strained relations between the two allies.
The Rhine Campaign 1635
The requirements of the new war placed a premium on manpower. The poor showing by the French in Flanders, as well as the losses suffered by La Force at the end of 1634, indicated the importance of seasoned soldiers. Richelieu wanted to avoid an open breach with the emperor, yet he needed an army to contest control of Alsace. It became imperative to acquire Sweden’s army on the Rhine, either through the Heilbronn League, or by agreement with Bernhard of Weimar. The latter’s growing significance was not lost on Ferdinand, who sent the Scottish colonel John Henderson to persuade the duke to defect at the end of 1634. These efforts would continue, but always foundered on the emperor’s reluctance to grant the political and financial concessions demanded by Sweden’s German officers.17 Ferdinand’s stress on patriotic duty paled compared to France’s offer to Bernhard in April of Alsace as a French fief in compensation for the loss of Bamberg and Würzburg, together with a renewed promise of 12,000 men to stiffen his army. Bernhard hesitated, wanting proof that France could deliver its commitments.
This seemed unlikely at first, because the situation remained precarious along the Upper Rhine. The operations are worth following in detail, because they reveal how matters remained in flux, despite France’s war with Spain and the emperor’s peace with most of the German Protestants at Prague. The inability of Ferdinand’s generals to neutralize Bernhard not only pulled France deeper into the German war, but encouraged Sweden to continue fighting.
Operations resumed on the Rhine only as news of the Prague settlement spread in June. Archduke Ferdinand arrived with reinforcements, bringing Gallas’s army back to 20,000. These were used exclusively in support of the Prague peace by besieging the remaining Swedish outposts along the Rhine and attempting to crush Bernhard. While the Bavarians under Gronsfeld reduced those outposts on the right bank, Gallas besieged Mainz and Saarbrücken in the west. Having detached 6,000 men to hold these positions, Bernhard was left with only 7,500, too few to do much. Heidelberg castle surrendered to Gronsfeld on 24 July, followed by Frankfurt (21 August) and Mannheim (10 September). Richelieu directed Cardinal La Valette with 10,000 of the 26,000-strong French army in Lorraine to help Bernhard, and together they relieved Mainz in August.18 Gallas withdrew, but the French suffered the same problems that hindered their operations in the Netherlands. Two-thirds of La Valette’s army deserted as supply arrangements broke down. As it became obvious the Hessians would not cooperate, the cardinal retreated precipitously to Metz that September. Gronsfeld crossed with 6,500 Bavarian troops to join Gallas in pushing south from Saarbrücken into Lorraine. This struck clearly at French interests, but was intended to restore the situation there prior to the French invasion of 1632, not to attack France itself. Duke Charles had launched his third attempt that year to recover his duchy, striking across Alsace from Breisach at the end of June with the help of two Bavarian cavalry regiments. His second sister, Henriette of Pfalzburg, accompanied the troops in male attire and participated in the fighting.
Louis XIII was obliged to move his reserve army of 12,000 newly enlisted Swiss mercenaries to eject the duke from the west, while La Valette, La Force and Bernhard faced Gallas’s invasion from the north. The two sides faced each other in fortified camps near Moyenvic between 12 October and 23 November. Both suffered terribly from the plague and malnutrition, just like Wallenstein and Arnim in 1633, or the two armies at Nuremberg the year before. The situation deteriorated more rapidly in the imperial camp where Duke Charles’s arrival added to the pressure on resources, while Gallas spent days drinking. He finally gave up and retreated through Saverne in the snow, having been forced to leave his artillery behind because the soldiers had eaten the transport animals. His army lost up to 12,000 men, though French losses, including deserters, were probably at least as high.19 Nonetheless, Gallas had prevented the French from relieving Bernhard’s garrison in Mainz which remained under imperial blockade. Abandoned and reduced to eating their boots, the surviving 1,000 defenders in Mainz capitulated in January in return for safe conduct to Metz. The city’s fall eliminated the last major Swedish position on the Upper Rhine.
Though his strong points in Germany had been reduced to just Hanau on the Main, held by Sir James Ramsay, Bernhard was nonetheless sufficiently reassured of French help to agree a formal alliance at St Germain-en-Laye on 27 October.20 He transferred his army to France, dropping the pretence of serving the defunct Heilbronn League. A secret article promised him a pension, plus the Austrian part of Alsace as a French fief once this was fully secured. Richelieu intended the arrangement to continue the war in Alsace without the need for further French troops. These could then be reduced to those garrisoning Lorraine. It proved unsatisfactory to both parties. Though under French direction, Bernhard remained autonomous and his operations, like his earlier Swedish service, remained at least partly focused on securing the promised territory. France pledged an annual subsidy of 4 million livres (1.6 million talers), but this would cover only a third of the cost of the 6,000 cavalry and 12,000 infantry he was supposed to maintain, compelling him to extend operations in search of contributions. These always fell short, and he rarely mustered more than half the official establishment, with the result that France withheld part of the subsidy, compounding the problem. Moreover, Richelieu’s refusal to relinquish Sweden’s former Alsatian outposts raised Bernhard’s suspicions that the French intended to keep the province.
The Year of Corbie
Olivares continued to prioritize the war against the Dutch in 1636, which was more popular in the Netherlands than fighting France.21 Fernando still had nearly 70,000 men, but Frederick Henry struck first, retaking Schenkenschans and the other places lost the year before. The Dutch offensive ground to a halt as the Republic temporarily ran out of money, but it had again disrupted Spanish plans. France meanwhile directed its main effort against the Franche-Comté, remaining on the defensive against the Netherlands and launching only subsidiary attacks in Italy. The prince de Condé led 20,000 men into the Franche-Comté and besieged its capital of Dôle on 26 May. The invasion breached the neutrality guaranteed by the Swiss Confederation, but was considered essential to eliminate Duke Charles who had retreated there at the end of 1635.
Charles and the local Spanish forces were too weak to resist. Olivares pressed Ferdinand to act, but the emperor again agreed only indirect assistance. A new treaty had been concluded on 30 December 1635 whereby Spain promised monthly subsidies of 100,000 tlr until the end of the war, in return for 25,000 Germans to enter its service. Olivares held back the money and only released instalments when imperial generals did something in Spain’s interests.22 Gallas refused to budge from his entrenched camp at Drusenheim in Alsace. He was still rebuilding his army and was engaged in long and ultimately fruitless negotiations with Strasbourg to use its Rhine bridge. His failure enabled Bernhard and La Valette to hold their own in Alsace.
Continued lack of action by the imperial generals prompted Olivares to order Fernando to launch a diversionary attack from the Netherlands. Fernando and Prince Tommaso invaded Picardy with 25,000 men. At last, Piccolomini moved west from the Rhine to join Werth and seven Bavarian regiments that had wintered in Liège and together they attacked Champagne with about 12,000 troops. The rich French farmland was thoroughly stripped by the experienced plunderers.23 The invaders brushed aside the 9,000 French under Soissons and captured the minor border forts of La Capelle and Le Câtelet after minimal resistance in July. Fernando besieged Corbie on the Somme north of Noyon on 7 August, as Werth’s cavalry raided as far as Compiègne. Corbie fell on 15 August and Fernando moved south to join Werth, while another 10,000 Spanish soldiers crossed the western Pyrenees and captured St Jean de Luz.
Panic gripped the French court, Richelieu’s entire policy seemingly in ruins. Refugees streamed south to Chartres and Orleans. Louis XIII summoned the militia and royal guards. Even Gaston rallied to the cause, rushing from his estates where he had been sulking since 1634 and arriving with 4,800 hastily raised reinforcements. Frederick Henry launched an attack with 13,000 Dutch against the southern Netherlands to distract the Habsburg forces, while Condé abandoned his siege of Dôle on 15 August and sent 9,000 men to join the king. Piccolomini wanted to press further on into France, but the Spanish had been surprised by their success and had no resources to exploit it. Fernando never intended capturing Paris and merely wanted to consolidate his present positions to winter in Picardie and the Champagne. He retreated as Louis and Gaston advanced from Paris. Corbie was retaken on 14 November and the situation stabilized.
The crisis did allow Gallas to advance through the Belfort Gap from Alsace into the Franche-Comté and join Duke Charles to give a total of 40,000 men. Any chance of using their numerical superiority was wrecked by the plague and autumn rains, however. The Imperialists fell back eastwards along the upper Saône to end the year at Breisach. Duke Charles attacked into his duchy, starting the ‘guerre des châteaux’, a vicious cycle of raids and counter-raids between garrisons across Lorraine.24
The invasion of France had been improvised and there was no real chance of forcing Louis XIII to make peace.25 Its real impact was to oblige the French court to accept that it was now engaged in a protracted struggle. Habsburg cooperation remained ineffective, with the Austrian and Spanish branches pursuing separate objectives. Gallas’s operations failed to secure Alsace and merely increased Richelieu’s determination to eliminate what he saw as a threat to his possession of Lorraine.
THE PEACE OF PRAGUE 1635
Peace-making
Peace in the Empire remained Ferdinand’s priority. The victory at Nördlingen at last allowed him to negotiate from the position of strength necessary to avoid concessions appearing as weakness. He adopted what Konrad Repgen has described as a three-step plan: to unite all the imperial Estates behind him; achieve military superiority; and drive foreigners from the Empire.26 This was to be achieved through a general peace with his largely Catholic supporters and Sweden’s Protestant German allies and collaborators. He was prepared to give some ground on the Restitution Edict to secure sufficiently broad agreement and isolate those unwilling to accept his terms. All forces within the Empire were to be united under imperial command to achieve the numbers and coordination necessary to defeat Sweden. The latter would also be offered peace, but only by being invited to accept the emperor’s settlement.
This strategy is generally interpreted as secularizing the conflict that was now sustained (it is thought) by foreign involvement. French intervention is credited with defeating an attempt to base peace on ‘imperial absolutism’.27 The war certainly lost its superficial confessional character as Saxony, Brandenburg and the majority of Lutheran territories accepted the emperor’s terms of 30 May 1635. Militants like Lamormaini largely lost their former influence on policy, which passed firmly into the hands of Trauttmannsdorff and other more pragmatic men. However, the war had never been exclusively a religious struggle and the confessional issues associated with the constitutional dispute persisted beyond 1635 because Ferdinand’s terms left a dissatisfied minority who continued to stress religious grievances alongside political objectives.
The war did change character, because the emperor insisted that the original problems had been settled and the enemies were now malicious foreign crowns bent on disturbing the Empire’s peace and grabbing its territory. He had to argue this because the terms obtained at Prague met many of his objectives, and he had no desire to jeopardize these gains in later negotiations. However, it was precisely these terms that France and Sweden contested. The Peace did not make Ferdinand an absolute monarch, and his intention was to restore what he regarded as the proper constitutional order.28 It was nonetheless a monarchical solution, devised through a series of exclusive deals with the electors and presented to the other imperial Estates without further discussion. Ferdinand claimed it was impossible to hold a Reichstag, in view of growing French interference, but this conveniently reserved peace-making as an imperial prerogative. The general direction of the terms of the Prague treaty suggested a degree of imperial authority unacceptable to Sweden and France, who therefore drew closer together to break the nascent Habsburg revival. Their continued intervention was facilitated by Ferdinand’s grave error of excluding some princes from the amnesty offered at Prague. This allowed the two crowns to present their intervention in the language of ‘German liberty’, a slogan that obscured their programme of keeping the emperor weak and the Empire open to external manipulation.
Ferdinand’s advisers were concerned at his failing health, which made it imperative to prepare for the election of his eldest son as king of the Romans. With Wallenstein gone and Sweden in retreat, it was easier to hold direct talks with Saxony on the basis of the Pirna Note.29 Ferdinand realized peace would work only if he won acceptance from his Catholic supporters as well, especially as the pope had already announced his opposition to concessions involving ecclesiastical land. It was relatively easy to keep the ecclesiastical princes informed, because they were still sheltering together in Cologne.30 Many, especially Mainz, were prepared to give ground on the Restitution Edict, but Ferdinand wanted to go further and dissolve the Liga, both to allay Protestant fears and to assert control over war-making. Several Catholic princes were dissatisfied with the actions of Bavaria, while the Liga had seemed decidedly less attractive ever since Tilly’s failure to protect them after Breitenfeld. Stadion, the Teutonic Grand Master and adviser to Archduke Ferdinand, was an influential critic who argued that the Liga represented an obstacle to the unity of command deemed essential to winning the war.31
Securing Bavarian approval became a key prerequisite for peace. Maximilian was won over by special concessions agreed at the Stuttgart Recess on 19 November 1634 that allowed him to retain command of the Bavarian army as a distinct corps in the new, combined Reichsarmada. The deal was sealed by a dynastic alliance following the death of Maximilian’s first wife on 4 January 1635. The elector was still childless and needed a son to secure his gains as hereditary possessions. He married the emperor’s eldest daughter, Maria Anna, on 17 July 1635 and was gratified by the birth of a son, the future Elector Ferdinand Maria, on 31 October the following year. Bavarian support rendered the elector of Cologne’s continued opposition relatively unimportant.32
As talks progressed with Saxony, all that remained was to silence the remaining militants in Vienna and salve the emperor’s conscience. Cardinal Dietrichstein convened a committee of 24 theologians on Ferdinand’s orders in February. Lamormaini and the eight Jesuits were overruled by the majority who argued concessions were justifiable on the doctrine of the lesser evil.
The Terms
The Peace dissolved the Liga and all alliances, except for that between the electors who were still allowed to meet on their own initiative. The constitution was stressed as the bedrock of the Peace that appealed to all the Empire’s inhabitants to ‘behave truthfully, like Germans’, regardless of confession.33 An amnesty was extended to those who had taken up arms against the emperor since 1630. The two dukes of Mecklenburg were expressly pardoned and restored, but articles 31 and 57 excluded the elector Palatine and confirmed Bavarian possession of his lands and titles. A separate list agreed with Saxony excluded Württemberg, Hessen-Kassel and others who were, nonetheless, invited to make their own peace with the emperor. The Peace followed the Edict of Restitution in referring to Protestants as adherents of the Augsburg Confession, meaning Lutherans, but avoided restricting this to the 1530 text, which would have explicitly excluded Calvinists like Brandenburg from the settlement.
Those excluded from the amnesty faced full restitution according to the 1629 Edict. The others received a forty-year suspension for church lands they had appropriated between 1552 and 12 November 1627. The latter date was selected for this new normative year because it followed the Mühlhausen electoral congress that had established the legal basis for the Edict. In other words, the basic legitimacy of Ferdinand’s policy was upheld, but its implementation was substantially modified. The Peace stressed that efforts to find an amicable settlement over restitution were to continue during its suspension. If these talks failed, the emperor could reimpose the Edict only after consulting a delegation of princes to be drawn equally from Catholics and Protestants. Article 11 stated that the new normative year of 1627 was to remain in force if this cross-confessional group failed to reach agreement. This amounted in practice to the Edict’s permanent suspension. The emperor conceded Magdeburg to Elector Johann Georg’s son for life, while a separate article granted Saxony full possession of Lusatia. Halberstadt was still reserved for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, but safeguards were written in for the Protestant inhabitants. Ferdinand gave so much ground because his core goal of excluding Protestantism from the Habsburg hereditary lands was secured, apart from some minor concessions in Silesia to preserve face for Saxony.
Article 42 indicated that the war was to be a common effort by explicitly extending assistance from the emperor and Catholics to loyal Protestants. Signatories agreed a conjunctis viribus, a combined army that was to swear loyalty to the constitutional formula of ‘emperor and Empire’. Article 69 obliged all imperial Estates to pay 100 Roman months in six instalments from 1 September 1635 to fund the army. Articles 70 to 75 stipulated that logistics and billeting were to adhere to imperial ordinances, in an unrealistic attempt to tame war-making.
The Peace was agreed between imperial and Saxon representatives only, with the other imperial Estates simply invited to join. To encourage them, the emperor distributed printed copies that omitted the controversial exclusions from the amnesty. After a celebratory banquet in Prague, Trauttmannsdorff wrote optimistically that the army could be reduced now to concentrate on the few remaining enemies.34
Winning Acceptance
Saxony retained an important role as broker between the emperor and his remaining enemies. Johann Georg was named imperial commissioner in both Saxon Kreise to enforce the Peace and negotiate with Sweden. Like Bavaria, he was allowed to retain his own army as a distinct corps. Arnim was compromised by his service against the emperor after 1631 and resigned its command, eventually retiring to his estates in Brandenburg. The Swedes placed a reward on his head, capturing him in March 1637, though he did manage to escape. He was replaced as Saxon commander in August 1635 by Baudissin who had quit Swedish service in March 1633. The Saxons evacuated Silesia and concentrated their 25,000 men at Leipzig in July.35 They were assisted by 7,000 Imperialists on the lower Oder under Count Marazzino, another Italian officer who had supported Wallenstein’s assassination.
Brandenburg had already signed a truce with the emperor in February 1635 and swiftly accepted the Peace. Elector Georg Wilhelm remained concerned at potential Swedish reprisals, especially as the Swedes still occupied many of his towns. He eventually discharged his military obligations by assigning three regiments to Saxon command in October, but otherwise tried to remain neutral.36 Sweden’s Lower Saxon collaborators had also agreed a truce with the emperor in February and negotiated to accept Prague after May. Duke Georg of Lüneburg had emerged as the dominant figure here after the childless Friedrich Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel died falling down the stairs in his palace in August 1634. Georg bullied his relations into redistributing the family territories by May 1636, at last emerging with his own principality comprising Calenberg, Göttingen and Hildesheim. The latter was especially problematic since it was supposed to be restored to Ferdinand of Cologne under the Prague terms. Georg accepted these on 10 August 1635, resigning his Swedish command and sending a few units to cooperate briefly with the Saxons. However, he refused to submit completely to Ferdinand who merely offered to reappoint him an imperial general. He retained six regiments in common with his elder brother August II, who had inherited Wolfenbüttel. Their uncooperative behaviour persuaded Ferdinand to leave the imperial garrison under Colonel Ruischenberg in Wolfenbüttel town as leverage for the return of Hildesheim. August protested that the garrison, allegedly numbering 7,000 including dependants, was an intolerable burden. The town’s population had fallen from 1,200 to 160 and the entire principality had ‘become almost completely desolate’.37
Brandenburg and the Guelphs escaped reprisals because neither the Swedes nor the emperor was sufficiently strong to force them onto their side. Their stance restricted operations to the Elbe and Oder corridors, thus offering a measure of protection for Sweden’s bridgehead in Pomerania. Failure to recover Hildesheim was just one factor behind Ferdinand of Cologne’s sceptical attitude towards the Peace. He was reconciled by concessions negotiated on his behalf by Maximilian in October 1635 that added a further exception to the military structure by permitting the Westphalian army to remain a distinct corps under its own generals. Its autonomy was more restricted than that enjoyed by Bavaria and Saxony, mainly because the army was smaller and depended on additional Bavarian and imperial units that were often recalled in times of crisis elsewhere. The October 1635 agreement did, however, consolidate Bavarian autonomy, especially as Maximilian managed to get rid of Duke Charles and replace him with Count Johann Götz as his new field marshal in January 1636.
The other territories also retained units under the loopholes of Articles 64 and 66 that allowed imperial Estates to keep garrisons in their own territories. Würzburg, for example, maintained around 2,000 men in 1636, though some were detached to reinforce the imperial army.38Nonetheless, considerable pressure was applied to Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg, the only Catholic who refused to cooperate under the Prague system. The episode illustrates the central place of the constitution as the basis for peace. Rather than invade, the emperor prosecuted the duke through the Reichshofrat. Piccolomini still threatened force, especially as his men desperately sought warm billets at the end of 1635. Unpaid, most of the Pfalz-Neuburg troops defected to the Imperialists, leaving just 870 holding out in Düsseldorf.
The Amnesty Question
The exclusion of the more important Heilbronn members from the terms of the treaty became known as the ‘amnesty question’ and ultimately wrecked the Peace. Archduke Ferdinand had favoured a comprehensive amnesty for all those prepared to accept the Peace, but his father excluded the elector Palatine, Hessen-Kassel, Württemberg, Hohenlohe, many Rhenish counts and all the Bohemian exiles. Some of these were prominent Calvinists, but confession played only a modest part in this fateful decision. Johann Georg, it is true, always maintained Calvinists were not included in the Peace of Augsburg that the Prague settlement also confirmed. However, Ferdinand’s targets were his inveterate enemies whose possessions had largely already been given to his allies. The elector Palatine could not be granted amnesty without contradicting arrangements with Bavaria. The Hohenlohe counts were outlawed in 1634 for their prominent place among Sweden’s collaborators. All the counts were pardoned in 1635 except Georg Friedrich, whose support for Sweden broke the terms of his earlier amnesty after the Bohemian Revolt.
Württemberg’s exclusion had nothing to do with religion, since it was Lutheran. Capture of its archive revealed the extent of its collaboration with Sweden since 1632 and provided an excuse to use the duchy to satisfy the clamour for rewards after Nördlingen. Bavaria wanted Heidenheim, the Tirolean Habsburgs coveted the Württemberg enclaves in their Swabian possessions, the prelates expected their monasteries back, while senior imperial officials petitioned for a share in the spoils. Seven districts were given to Schlick, Trauttmannsdorff and Bishop Wolfradt in June and July 1635, though Ferdinand resisted the other demands. He also rejected calls to exclude the imperial knights from the amnesty to allow Würzburg and others to expropriate their estates.39
Despite its genuine contribution towards the Peace, Darmstadt’s expectation to receive all of Kassel was wholly unreasonable. Nonetheless, Ferdinand felt obliged to give it a few more Palatine districts, and territory belonging to the counts of Solms and Isenburg-Büdingen. The four counties of the Nassau-Walram line were distributed to Mainz, Schwarzenberg, Prince Lobkowitz and Duke Charles of Lorraine, while Zweibrücken was sequestrated after its capture in October 1635 on the grounds its prince, Johann Casimir, was Gustavus’s brother-in-law.40
The decisions were understandable. The beneficiaries were the emperor’s loyal supporters, many of whom had suffered at the hands of those whose lands they now obtained. Nonetheless, Ferdinand made it much harder to resolve the amnesty question by enlarging the numbers of those with a vested interest in opposing a pardon. Yet, by excluding so many, he undermined the desired character of Prague as a general peace. His son was left with the almost impossible task of resolving the issue that soon stuck on the discrepancy between the partial pardon he could offer the banished rulers and the full restoration they and their foreign backers demanded.
The Problem of Hessen-Kassel
The cases discussed so far were politically but not militarily important since the outlaws had but few troops and these were now under Bernhard’s command and beyond their control. Hessen-Kassel was more dangerous, because it still possessed its own army and had entrenched across much of Westphalia. The ruling family was genuinely concerned at the exclusion of Calvinists from the Peace, but was also determined that it would not come out of the war empty-handed. At the very least it wanted the former imperial abbey of Hersfeld that had passed into its hands only in 1606. Landgrave Wilhelm V felt that Ferdinand had treated his family with unnecessary severity. He assured Oxenstierna in July 1635 that he would remain loyal to Sweden, but he despaired after Bernhard retreated over the Rhine, and the main Swedish army mutinied again (see below). Having left garrisons in Kassel and Ziegenhain, he retreated with 4,000 men under Melander to join his Westphalian outposts at the end of August.
The Imperialists massed 12,000 men from the Westphalian army and Piccolomini’s forces on the Lahn ready to invade Hessen-Kassel, which forced Melander to agree a truce on Wilhelm’s behalf in October. Archduke Ferdinand was keen to see an agreement and intervened, suspending operations against the Hessians occupying Fulda and offering some concessions. Ferdinand of Cologne also favoured compromise as the best way of removing the Hessian parasites infecting his Westphalian territories.41 The prospects looked bright as Wilhelm provisionally accepted the Prague treaty on 12 November, but the emperor failed to clinch the deal, and imperial units entered the Westphalian bishoprics. The emperor renewed contact through the bishop of Würzburg, but the landgrave no longer trusted him and only continued talks to alarm France into making a better offer.
Oxenstierna sent Alexander Leslie to assume command of the remaining Swedish units left leaderless by Knyphausen’s death in January 1636. Better known in British history by his later title as the earl of Leven, Leslie was one of the many able Scottish officers in Swedish service, having joined in 1608 and fought with distinction under Gustavus.42 He immediately revived the morale of the 3,000 or so German mercenaries still holding out in Osnabrück and other north German garrisons. Several of Duke Georg of Lüneburg’s regiments defected to him in May, giving him command of the Weser and parts of Lüneburg by August. These developments emboldened Wilhelm to renounce the truce in May 1636. His decision was influenced by his wife, Amalie Elisabeth, who, as countess of Hanau, was concerned to save her home town, still defended by Ramsay’s Bernhardine garrison. Along with Queen Christina, Archduchess Isabella and Claudia of the Tirol, she was one of a group of female rulers exercising considerable influence on events. Though presented as a peace-maker43 she was in fact even more determined than her husband to obtain new territory. Hessian troops marched south-west from Hamm, joining Leslie to punch through the imperial cordon and throw supplies into Hanau.44
The Westphalian army used the Hessians’ absence to capture most of their outposts along the Lippe, temporarily reducing the Hessians to Lippstadt, Dorsten and Coesfeld. Oxenstierna was obliged to recall Leslie eastwards in August, leaving the Hessians no choice but to retreat north from Hanau, exposing their homeland again. Ferdinand lost patience. He placed Wilhelm under the imperial ban in October and began to collect troops to sequestrate Hessen-Kassel.
APPEALS TO PATRIOTISM
The Powder Barrel Mutiny
The amnesty issue helped Oxenstierna to present the Peace as contrary to German liberty. The allies’ collapse following Nördlingen caused consternation in the Swedish government. Salvius reported, ‘all here are calling Peace, Peace, Peace’.45 The chancellor was also disillusioned: ‘The Polish war is our war; win or lose, it is our gain or loss. This German war, I don’t know what it is, only that we pour our blood here for the sake of reputation, and have nought but ingratitude to expect.’46 The Prague settlement confirmed his worst expectations: ‘The emperor has achieved more in this peace than if he had won two battles of Nördlingen.’ There was widespread bitterness at what was perceived as German betrayal. Swedish propagandists published documents at the Frankfurt autumn fair intended to demonstrate their German policy as altruistic. Criticism of Saxony was muted until it became obvious that Johann Georg could not be won back. Chemnitz, Sweden’s leading German writer, then penned a damming personal attack, accusing the elector of dishonouring Gustavus’s sacrifice. Sweden tried to steal the emperor’s patriotic language. ‘Regardless of whether you are Catholic or Protestant,’ wrote Chemnitz, ‘you are always a German whose ancestors preferred death to foreign oppression.’47 This attempt to associate Prague with Spanish tyranny rang hollow in view of Sweden’s own costly presence in the Empire. Likewise, Sweden’s efforts to assume the mantle of the defeated Protestant activist party by playing up confessional issues was contradicted by the alliance with France.
In fact, Oxenstierna was looking for an honourable way out of Germany and was prepared to renounce the earlier extensive demands and settle for a few token Pomeranian ports. The situation looked desperate in 1635. The entire southern and western armies had been lost, either destroyed or transferred with Bernhard to French control. The Saxons, Brandenburgers and Lüneburgers had defected, while the Hessians were known to be negotiating to do so. Forces in north-west Germany were reduced to nine regiments numbering 3,000 men under Colonel Sperreuther and stranded in Lower Saxony, and another 4,000 under Wilhelm of Weimar at Erfurt. The main army under Banér totalled only 26,000, or 18,000 below establishment. Around 11,000 of this army garrisoned Pomerania, reducing the field force to just 15,000 in Magdeburg and Halberstadt. There were fewer than 3,000 Swedes and Finns among them. Sweden had experienced four bad harvests in a row. For a country where large proportions of taxes were still paid in kind, this was a crippling blow. Oxenstierna knew he had little to offer the army.
Peace depended on Ferdinand’s willingness to offer realistic terms and on how far his patriotic rhetoric would induce Sweden’s remaining German mercenaries to defect. Both issues were devolved to Johann Georg as imperial commissioner in north-east Germany. The elector was highly sensitive to Swedish criticism and excused his defection on the grounds of necessity to save the Empire from destruction by bringing about long-desired peace. He also played on widespread resentment of Swedish plundering. However, the core argument was a new appeal to patriotism deliberately couched to transcend confession and present the Empire as a common fatherland. These arguments would eventually produce the consensus facilitating the Peace of Westphalia, but they encountered serious difficulties in the short term. As long as hope remained that Sweden’s German troops might defect, Johann Georg had to refrain from denouncing them as traitors and instead appeal to them to end Germany’s suffering by changing sides.48
This hamstrung Saxon policy, obliging the elector to delay military action and giving Oxenstierna critical breathing space. News of Prague prompted the German officers of Banér’s army to elect a committee to negotiate with both Sweden and Saxony. They were deeply disgruntled, in contrast to the imperial officers who were still content with the recent distribution of property confiscated following Wallenstein’s murder. Those who had been paid in Swedish donations since 1632 had lost these after Nördlingen. Many were subjects of princes who had just accepted the emperor’s peace. The imperial summons (avocatoria) to leave Swedish service issued in July gave them a face-saving excuse to abandon Sweden on the grounds of higher loyalty to the emperor. Such a move would, however, automatically forfeit the back pay Sweden owed them.49
Peace became a matter of haggling over the officers’ demands. Oxenstierna negotiated mainly for show, carefully concealing his intention to keep at least part of Pomerania so as not to alienate the Germans. He halved his original demand for 8 million tlr to pay off the army and proposed a phased withdrawal in return for a full amnesty and restoration of the Empire to its condition in 1618. This was wholly unrealistic, but so too was Johann Georg’s offer of only 1 million tlr, to be paid by Saxony and the Protestant Germans, in return for Sweden’s renunciation of all territorial ambitions.
Sensing that Oxenstierna’s envoys were not representing their interests, the officers sent their own delegation to meet the elector.50 The elector increased the pressure on 19 August by issuing an ultimatum to Banér to leave Magdeburg. This was accompanied by another summons to the officers that set out the Prague terms. Realizing that the Swedes had misrepresented these, the officers seized Oxenstierna who had just arrived in their camp having returned to Germany by sea from his meeting with Richelieu. The result was the ‘Powder Barrel Convention’ extracted from the chancellor on 21 August 1635. He agreed not to make peace without consulting the officers and to include their ‘contentment’ in the Swedish war aims. The latter was a ploy to induce them to continue fighting by off-loading responsibility to the enemy to pay them off.
Their loyalty nonetheless remained suspect. Mitzlaff, the former Danish officer from Pomerania we last encountered in 1627 and who had subsequently entered Swedish service, engineered the defection of Wilhelm of Weimar’s corps on 24 August. Four regiments joined the Saxons, while the rest were disbanded. The Swedes still held Erfurt, but Johann Georg advanced from Leipzig eleven days later to enforce his ultimatum. News that the elector of Brandenburg had accepted the Prague treaty outflanked Banér, who left five regiments to hold Magdeburg and retreated north to Stendal on 28 September. Oxenstierna took the opportunity to slip away to the more reliable garrison in Wismar.
Johann Georg exploited the officers’ renewed fury to open direct talks with their delegation at Schönebeck on the Elbe upstream from Magdeburg. While his troops overran Halberstadt, the elector improved his offer to 2.5 million tlr payable direct to the generals. Not until Count Kurz, the imperial envoy, arrived on 16 October did Johann Georg authorize General Baudissin to use force. The elector was overconfident and expected the German regiments to remain neutral. Joined by Brandenburg and Lüneburg units, the Saxons advanced downstream, taking Werben the next day. Banér no longer trusted his men and tried to escape through Dömitz to Mecklenburg. Baudissin sent 7,000 infantry over the Elbe to the right (north) bank to cut him off, but these were surprised and routed by a sudden counter-attack by Banér’s remaining reliable units. The Saxons lost 5,000 men and Baudissin escaped only by swimming the Elbe. The success improved Banér’s authority, but he took no chances and continued his retreat to Malchin behind the Pomeranian lakes. Johann Georg followed to Parchim, while Marazzino had taken Gartz and now marched west to join him.
The Stuhmsdorf Truce
French diplomacy saved the Swedes from this desperate situation. The officers had been waiting to see what would happen when the Swedish-Polish Truce of Altmark expired that September. Sigismund III had been succeeded by his more pragmatic son, Wladyslaw IV, in 1632. After Sweden rebuffed his offer to renounce his claims to the Vasa crown in return for compensation, and had encouraged Russia to attack Smolensk that year, Wladyslaw allowed Ferdinand to recruit more cavalry and renewed Poland’s alliance with the Habsburgs in 1633. Despite having to send another army to repel Tartar and Turkish incursions to the south, Wladyslaw relieved Smolensk in September 1633, forcing the tsar to make peace in May 1634 and confirm Polish possession of the lands ceded in 1618. Riding high on this victory, Wladyslaw persuaded the Sejm to agree an offensive war against Sweden once the Truce of Altmark expired.
The Baltic crisis could not have come at a worse time for Richelieu, coinciding as it did with the start of the Franco-Spanish War, the Peace of Prague and the Swedish mutiny. The emperor offered Silesia to Poland if Wladyslaw would convert his renewed alliance into a joint offensive against Sweden. Oxenstierna shipped 20,000 men to reinforce his Prussian garrison in a show of force, but recognized the impossibility of fighting two wars simultaneously. He accepted a 26-year extension to Altmark brokered by Richelieu’s envoy d’Avaux in talks at Stuhmsdorf on 12 September. Sweden made major concessions. Its previous expansion in the Baltic had been incremental, seizing land by force, confirming initial occupation by truce and then converting this to full possession by further belligerence. Sweden could reasonably expect to annex Royal (Polish) Prussia in this manner. Relinquishing it at Stuhmsdorf thus represented a major retreat, disengaging from the country’s primary imperial arena until now in order to concentrate on a very uncertain German war.51
Wladyslaw retained hopes of exploiting Sweden’s difficulties and renewed his Habsburg alliance in September 1637 by marrying Ferdinand II’s daughter, Cecilia Renata. However, his subjects had lost their enthusiasm for an offensive against Sweden. He soured relations with the Habsburgs by pursuing parallel talks with England and France, as well as alienating Denmark by raising the Prussian tolls. He was prepared to let Spain recruit 30,000 auxiliaries for Flanders, but the Sejm blocked this by 1641.52 The Stuhmsdorf truce held, containing the Thirty Years War within the Empire.
More immediately, the truce allowed Oxenstierna to move Lennart Torstensson and 9,700 men from Prussia. These troops began arriving in Pomerania in late October 1635 along with a morale-boosting delivery of new clothes for Banér’s ragged army. Torstensson’s units surprised Marazzino, prompting Johann Georg to fall back to protect Berlin in December, while Banér retook Werben and relieved Magdeburg in January 1636. The unpaid, hungry Saxons retreated to Halle, back virtually to where they had started the previous summer.
Why Saxony Failed
The Saxon elector had renewed negotiations in November, but the improved military situation allowed Oxenstierna to be deliberately obstructive, now demanding that any settlement be ratified by the entire Empire. The outcome was deeply disappointing. Unrest in Banér’s army continued until May 1636. At least six generals and several experienced colonels defected, but the wholesale rejection of Sweden failed to materialize. For example, as a Mecklenburger, Colonel Sperreuther no longer felt bound to Sweden once his own dukes had accepted the Prague Peace. Knyphausen came out of retirement and rushed with 15,000 tlr advanced by the French ambassador to secure Sperreuther’s soldiers’ loyalty: only eighty horsemen followed Sperreuther to the imperial lines in December 1635.53
Appeals to German patriotism undoubtedly proved effective in some cases, but the choice was usually the result of a mixture of personal motives. The example of Augustus von Bismarck illustrates this. A distant ancestor of the later German chancellor, Bismarck was the son of a Brandenburg landowner and entered Swedish service in June 1631, transferring with his unit under Bernhard to the French in 1635. His brother wrote to him that their lord, the elector of Brandenburg, had accepted the Peace of Prague and summoned his subjects to leave enemy service. Arriving three days after he had been promoted, Augustus stuck the letter in his pocket, waiting to produce it much later when his regiment marched to northern Germany and he had accumulated a small fortune, enabling him to retire to a more comfortable existence as a Brandenburg fortress commandant.54
The hope of persuading more officers to defect seriously hampered Saxon military operations at a time when forceful action might have crushed Banér’s army. The constant delay sapped morale that was already low, because many Saxons were unenthusiastic about fighting their former allies. They had little confidence in Baudissin as their new commander. Once an energetic officer, he was now an alcoholic who could out-drink even Johann Georg and once fell asleep during a battle. One officer noted in his diary after yet another minor reverse:
Early in the morning, Baudissin addressed the cavalry who were standing up to their knees in muck, telling them that they should feed their horses because he intended to attack the enemy. I daren’t say what kind of swearing and uproar this caused. Tell the dog turd he should feed his wife, the whore, should we feed the muck to our horses?55
Serious financial problems contributed to the shambles. Johann Georg wanted to avoid calling his Estates to deny them, especially the knights, a chance to criticize his policy. No diet was called in 1618 during the controversy surrounding his decision not to support the Bohemians. Assemblies did meet in 1622 and 1628 and extended existing taxes at higher rates, but this was insufficient even to cover the costs of the modest mobilization in 1618–24. Electoral debts more than doubled to 7 million fl. by 1628 when tax collection was falling into arrears. Full military engagement after 1631 deepened the crisis. A diet had met in January 1635, but merely extended existing arrangements. The electorate plunged deeper into debt, which soared to 25.2 million fl. by 1657, despite having written off 10 million fl. worth of interest arrears the year before.56
The Treaty of Wismar 1636
Saxony’s failure stiffened Oxenstierna’s resolve. The defections had deprived Sweden of some experienced officers, but they had eased its liabilities since the pay arrears could be written off. Those who remained with Sweden were now imperial outlaws with little choice but to fight on. Oxenstierna knew it was imperative to place Sweden’s alliance with France on a firmer footing. Richelieu was also anxious to improve relations. The failure of the French offensive in the summer of 1635 heightened Sweden’s significance, and the cardinal sent the marquis de St Chamont to ensure the chancellor did not make a separate peace with Ferdinand.
Oxenstierna met the envoy in Wismar in February 1636, agreeing a new treaty on 30 March that was ratified by Louis XIII on 11 May. France paid the 60,000 tlr arrears claimed by Sweden from the subsidy terminated on Gustavus’s death. The money enabled Oxenstierna to recruit another four British regiments to reinforce the army. Though even higher subsidies were now promised, the chancellor refused to ratify the treaty, because it obliged him not to make peace without France. The alliance had already been announced, serving Oxenstierna’s purpose of putting pressure on the emperor and confounding renewed Danish offers of mediation. France could not afford to lose even such an unreliable ally during the disastrous ‘Year of Corbie’ and Richelieu reluctantly released the subsidies even without ratification. Oxenstierna was finally able to return home to silence his domestic critics in July 1636, leaving Sten Bielke and Salvius to represent Sweden in the Empire.57
Talks continued without result, because Ferdinand remained overconfident, while Oxenstierna was convinced further fighting would win better terms. With Lower Saxony temporarily neutralized under the Guelphs, and operations in Westphalia largely suspended during talks with Hessen-Kassel, fighting remained restricted to the area between the Elbe and Oder.
The Battle of Wittstock
The lull in the Westphalian operations allowed Ferdinand to switch 10,000 Imperialists under Count Melchior Hatzfeldt from there to reinforce the Saxons. Hatzfeldt was one of several senior officers to emerge from the regiments raised by the Sachsen-Lauenburg brothers. He had served the emperor since 1620, fighting in major actions like Dessau and Breitenfeld, and had been rewarded with part of the estates confiscated from Schaffgotsch in 1634. He was comparatively well-educated and connected: his brother Franz was bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg. He was a skilled strategist, but his desire to micro-manage battles meant he often lost control of his forces once they became engaged, and he had the disagreeable tendency to blame subordinates for his own mistakes. Marginalized and dispirited, Baudissin resigned on 10 July 1636, clearing the way for Hatzfeldt to be appointed Saxon commander as well.
Sweden’s German army was down to 45,000 men, mainly holding Mecklenburg and Pomerania. The Baltic froze during the winter, preventing the despatch of reinforcements from Sweden and leaving the field forces numbering only 6,000 under Leslie in Westphalia and 12,000 under Banér at Magdeburg. Banér still distrusted his army and fell back to Werben on 5 May. More forceful than Johann Georg, Hatzfeldt besieged rather than blockaded Magdeburg, capturing it on 13 July. The city’s population still numbered only 2,600, but its capture secured an important Saxon war aim that had been promised in the Peace of Prague.
With plague again ravaging the area and all the grass eaten, Banér abandoned Werben on 12 August, moving west to collect Leslie who was falling back through Lower Saxony. Hatzfeldt detached Klitzing and 4,000 men to protect Brandenburg, which was still not fully committed to war against Sweden. Marrazino was summoned from the Oder to join the main imperial army now posed at Tangermünde to invade western Pomerania and Mecklenburg. Banér staked all on a battle to save the bridgehead. He marched north-east over the Elbe to meet 3,800 men detached from the Pomeranian garrisons, giving him a total of 17,000 men. He then headed eastwards, severing Hatzfeldt’s communications and forcing him to recall Klitzing and collect at Wittstock just south of the Pomeranian lakes. Banér hastened to attack before Klitzing could arrive.
Both sides were fairly even in numbers, though Hatzfeldt probably had around 1,000 more men, as well as a strong position facing south along the south-eastern end of the low Schreckenberg ridge south-west of Wittstock. His left (east) was covered by the Dosse river and the wooded Fretzdorf heath. The south face of the ridge was strengthened by entrenchments and wagons that had been chained together, and was in any case difficult to approach across the wooded and marshy Natte heath. The approach from the west was blocked by the large Heiligengrab forest.
Banér took the only feasible route, crossing the Dosse early on Saturday 4 October at Fretzdorf and advancing over the heath to the Scharfenberg hill between the river and Hatzfeldt’s position. He quickly appreciated the difficulties, but resolved to attack anyway, splitting his army by sending King and Stalhansk with 3,100 cavalry west across the
Nette heath to turn the enemy’s other flank. Leslie and 5,800 men were directed north-west to pin Hatzfeldt’s front, while Banér and the rest continued round the Scharfenberg to turn his left. This was an extremely risky plan, since the three parts of the army risked being defeated in detail. The terrain concealed their initial approach, but they were spotted around 2.30 p.m. and a fierce fight developed for possession of the Scharfenberg. Hatzfeldt fed men from his centre to reinforce his left and pushed the Swedes off the hill and into the Fretzdorf wood. Leslie’s men were drawn in to stem the imperial advance. Rumours spread that Banér had been killed. It was not until 6.30 that King fired signal guns to indicate he was in position on the other side of the battlefield. The imperial right was taken by surprise and lost its artillery, but it was growing dark and King soon had to suspend his attack.
Banér had lost at least 3,500 casualties. It was unclear who had the advantage at nightfall, but the imperial-Saxon army was sufficiently battered and demoralized that Hatzfeldt and Johann Georg decided to retreat. Banér claimed to have taken 5,000 men during the pursuit, but this is unlikely since the Saxons and Imperialists drew off in good order. Their total loss was around 5,000 including 2,000 dead, but all their artillery and baggage was abandoned.58
Wittstock was one of the most important battles of the war. A Swedish defeat would have destroyed the last field army in Germany and encouraged Hessen-Kassel to convert its truce into a peace. Hatzfeldt’s defeat not only prevented this but discouraged the Guelphs from bowing to the emperor. Panic gripped Berlin as the elector and his court fled to Küstrin. Hatzfeldt’s Imperialists lost cohesion, plundering their way westwards to the Lower Rhine, while the Saxons went home. Banér swept south-west through Thuringia to relieve Erfurt and reopen communications with the Hessians, before turning east into Saxony and taking Torgau by February.
RENEWED EFFORTS FOR PEACE
The Cologne Congress 1636
Pope Urban VIII was genuinely horrified by the suffering, but was neither prepared to assist a Habsburg victory, nor sanction concessions to Protestants to obtain peace. He wanted to preserve his status as padre commune, a benevolent father chiding his Catholic children to resolve their petty squabbles to unite against the Protestant bullies. This required him to remain distant from the Habsburgs who appeared too powerful and alienated many other Catholics. His envoys helped broker peace in the Mantuan conflict (see Chapter 13 above), but he had achieved little since then, concentrating instead on enlarging the Papal States by annexing Urbino.
Richelieu’s declaration of war on Spain forced him to act, however, especially because it brought renewed fighting in north Italy (detailed in Chapter 18). Cardinal Ginetti was named papal legate in August 1635, posing a dilemma for the Catholic powers. Papal mediation was unwelcome, especially for Ferdinand who had already accepted the necessity for concessions at the expense of the imperial church. Yet, the pontiff could not be rebuffed outright. Ferdinand consented to talks on 18 August, counting on the other parties to drag their feet.59 Since the pope refused to invite Protestants, while France insisted its allies be included, Venice eventually volunteered to mediate between them and the Habsburgs. The deteriorating military situation made a congress more viable and Ginetti set out in July, eventually reaching Cologne on 22 October 1636.
Frederick V’s son, Karl Ludwig, turned eighteen in January 1636, making him old enough to rule if restored. Charles I of England took the opportunity to launch his own peace initiative, spending £70,000 to despatch a lavish embassy headed by the earl of Arundel in April. Arundel made his way up the Rhine to the Habsburg lands where he was received politely, but it was obvious that both Ferdinand and Maximilian regarded the Palatine question closed. After an extended sight-seeing tour of those areas that had escaped destruction, Arundel returned home through the ravaged Main-Rhine region.60
Meanwhile, France consented to talks at Cologne but failed to send a representative. Ferdinand’s envoy belatedly arrived in April 1637, followed by his Spanish colleague. Richelieu sent terms. He was prepared to renounce Alsace and negotiate over Lorraine, but only if Ferdinand recognized the French protectorate over Metz, Toul and Verdun and admitted the German princes to the congress. This constituted a better deal than the one the emperor eventually accepted at Westphalia eleven years later. The inclusion of the princes represented a significant development in French diplomacy, moving the imperial constitution to the centre of their public demands to legitimize their growing military involvement in the Empire and to undermine the Prague peace. This was completely unacceptable to the emperor in 1637, who still expected the military situation to improve.61 Without the inclusion of the Protestants as full partners, the Cologne talks had no chance of success, especially as the rival Danish initiative (ongoing since 1633) offered alternative discussions in Hamburg. Though Ginetti left in October 1637, Urban persisted, entrusting the fruitless task to a series of officials, before handing it late in 1643 to Fabio Chigi who had assumed the post of nuncio in Cologne in August 1639.
The Regensburg Electoral Congress 1636–7
The papal initiative and Arundel’s mission were overshadowed in the Empire by a more important meeting: that of the electors in Regensburg, which opened on 15 September 1636 and remained in session until 23 January.62 It was the first imperial assembly since 1630 and the first after Prague. Several princes attended in person, as well as three electors, while many others sent envoys, as did Denmark, Poland, France, Spain and the papacy. Ferdinand was determined to rally support after the disappointing 1635 campaign and to consolidate the Peace of Prague by having his son elected king of the Romans. Spain saw an opportunity to push Austria to honour the Ebersdorf treaty and increase assistance against France. Oñate bankrolled the congress, paying at least 209,000 florins to Bavaria, Mainz, Cologne and Saxony, who were all going to vote for Archduke Ferdinand anyway. The money nonetheless smoothed their rejection of a Dutch call for the Empire to formally declare itself neutral in their war with Spain. Oñate was also pleased with their apparently hard stance towards France, demanding the return of Metz, Toul and Verdun. Such statements were already routine and did not indicate real enthusiasm for fighting France. In fact, the electors were inclined to accept papal mediation and it took some effort from Ferdinand to persuade them that the Empire’s problems had to remain separate from the Franco-Spanish conflict.
Spain released Elector Sötern into imperial custody to avoid charges of meddling in the Empire’s affairs. The Trier vote was suspended. Johann Georg and Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg both excused themselves from attending, citing the war as an excuse. Under Swedish pressure, Georg Wilhelm insisted on discussing the progress of Saxony’s talks with Oxenstierna. However, none of the electors saw an alternative to Johann Georg’s proposal that the Protestant Germans should pay the Swedes to leave the Empire. Sweden could retain tolls and a Mecklenburg port until the money was delivered.
The defeat at Wittstock paradoxically strengthened Ferdinand, because the subsequent Swedish occupation of Brandenburg convinced its elector that he could not expect anything from Oxenstierna. Having fled east to Prussia, Georg Wilhelm opened negotiations for a new alliance with Ferdinand in November as the best way to prevent the emperor sacrificing Pomerania to obtain peace with Sweden. Duke Bogislav’s death on 20 March 1637 added impetus to the negotiations that were concluded on 22 June. In return for financial assistance, Georg Wilhelm promised a large corps to reinforce the imperial army. His position remained weaker than either Bavaria’s or Saxony’s, because his army was smaller, reaching no more than 11,000 men by June 1638. Though under the command of Klitzing, who entered Brandenburg service, the corps lacked the autonomy of the Bavarians and Saxons and its soldiers had to swear loyalty to both Ferdinand and the elector.63
Closer cooperation with Brandenburg helped secure Ferdinand’s other objectives. The electors extended the financial arrangements agreed at Prague for a further year. Archduke Ferdinand was duly elected as king of the Romans on 22 December 1636 (just in time, because his father died a month after the congress closed). His election was bought at the cost of further restrictions on his prerogatives, of which the most important was the promise to consult the electors before placing anyone else under the imperial ban.64
Nonetheless, another opportunity for peace had slipped by. The emperor and the Catholic electors had done nothing to make Johann Georg’s task as mediator any easier. They felt the Protestants alone should pay the Swedes to leave, on the alleged grounds that they had invited them into the Empire. Johann Georg was unable to increase his offer to Oxenstierna and refused to mediate any further. Negotiations continued through other intermediaries largely for form’s sake. All were to find the continued war far more expensive than the peace they might have obtained in 1635–6.