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In the Balance 1641–3

THE FRANCO-SWEDISH ALLIANCE 1641

The Relationship of War to Diplomacy

Melander’s dramatic rise from humble peasant to the senior ranks of the imperial aristocracy epitomized what appeared to be a world turned upside down. He amassed a vast fortune, allegedly totalling 1.5 million talers, and bought a lordship from his former master, Count Johann Ludwig of Nassau-Hadamar. Though often dismissed as a boorish provincial bumpkin,¹ Melander was in fact well-educated, fluent in French (and probably Italian as well), and had already received letters of nobility in 1608, making his subsequent prominence rather less remarkable.

Even Melander’s experience indicates therefore the resilience of established social conventions. The same was true for the Empire’s political culture. This had been strained by the conflict, but it still guided behaviour. The war is customarily portrayed as entering its most destructive and meaningless phase after 1640, as it allegedly descended into ‘universal, anarchic and self-perpetuating violence’.² The development is often attributed to the deaths of the ‘great captains’ like Gustavus, Wallenstein and Bernhard, and is associated with the supposed internationalization of the war. ‘The soldiers alone ruled’ as junior officers acted on their own initiative to sustain their units or enrich themselves.³

Much of this is a myth deliberately fostered by the territorial authorities after the war to justify tighter control and surveillance of the population. Rulers wanted to persuade their subjects to continue paying high taxes to support armies in peacetime. These were considered necessary to promote princely dignity and facilitate a greater role in European affairs. The post-war personnel, especially as they grew more numerous in the 1660s, were presented as disciplined soldiers (Soldaten), not the lawless soldiery (Soldateska) supposedly characterizing the era before 1648.⁴

There were certainly serious problems by the 1640s. The war’s rapid expansion dislocated social and economic structures and disabled territorial administration. It became harder to recruit, even when bounties were offered.⁵ However, armies were now smaller and more mobile than before 1635. Overall numbers fell by at least a third, and though the forces mustered for individual battles were still substantial, their composition had changed significantly. Whereas cavalry formed between a quarter and a third of field armies before 1635, over half were generally mounted thereafter. Some of the infantry now also rode horses on the march to speed movement. With some important exceptions, less time was spent on sieges in Germany – in contrast to operations in Flanders that remained dominated by protracted struggles around key towns. There is some evidence that garrison commanders surrendered more readily as massacres became less common. Officers were generally released on their word of honour, though the ordinary soldiers were usually pressed into the victor’s ranks. This practice rarely worked well, and most deserted to their former masters as soon as possible. Driven by the growing shortage of seasoned soldiers, this probably explains why some believed desertion was a more serious problem than in the 1620s.⁶

The greater proportion of cavalry to infantry in armies partially offset the overall decline in numbers by enabling commanders to respond more rapidly to unexpected threats in poorly defended regions. However, it was also dictated by logistical constraints, since mounted men could forage more widely and carry supplies on their saddles. This put a premium on rural recruits since armies needed men who could both ride and look after their mounts. Animal casualties were generally high, especially as operations continued in winter when forage became scarce. Around half the cavalry were dismounted by the end of each campaign, contributing to the often slow start the following year as new mounts were procured and generals waited for the grass to grow.

The changed composition of armies does not support the standard interpretation of military development. The technologically determinist character of most military history sees change dictated by weaponry. The proportion of pikemen declined from between 33–50 per cent in 1618 to about 20 per cent or less by the 1640s. This is usually related to a supposed trend towards linear tactics where infantry units no longer fought autonomously but in long lines, with only narrow intervals between regiments.⁷ The intention was to maximize firepower as had already been the case in the Dutch Orangist reforms of the 1590s. Linear tactics became the norm in European warfare from the 1670s as all armies emphasized the rapidity and volume of musketry delivered under tight supervision. The proportion of cavalry again declined to under a third by 1700. Whereas these developments were consciously promoted, those of the later Thirty Years War were not. The shortage of pikemen was considered a disadvantage since they were generally the more seasoned fighters needed for aggressive tactics. The growing reliance on musketry made infantry less use offensively. They were often posted behind fieldworks or in woods to protect them against the now more numerous cavalry.

While troop quality was uneven, there was no marked decline in the skill of either senior or junior officers. The deaths of generals military history has chosen to remember cast a shadow over those commanding in the later stages of the war. The presence of Turenne and the younger Condé in the French army, as well as the less widely celebrated Wrangel and Königsmarck in the Swedish forces, has led one writer to suggest the emperor was out-generalled.⁸ However, men like Mercy, Melander, Montecuccoli and Piccolomini were at least a match for Wallenstein, Tilly and the other earlier imperial generals.

The continued effectiveness of the combatants leads to a further, more significant point. War still wreaked havoc, but it also remained firmly controlled and directed.⁹ Operations continued to support political objectives as rulers sought to improve their negotiating positions. If anything, the interrelationship between warfare and diplomacy tightened as it became obvious that no one could achieve their goals solely by military means.

The Regensburg Reichstag

The absence of a decisive victory persuaded Ferdinand III to summon the first Reichstag for 27 years. Though intended to revitalize the Prague settlement, the decision departed from the 1635 political programme. His father had tried to manage imperial politics by consulting just the electors, denying the other imperial Estates a public forum to criticize his policy and impose constraints. Ferdinand III had already shown himself more flexible in his approach, but he nonetheless guarded his prerogatives. The approach to the Kreis assemblies in November 1638 brought the minor territories back into the formal political process, but was also intended to limit discussions to the emperor’s agenda of more war taxes. These discussions, together with the negotiations over northern neutrality, indicated the growing desire for peace. The electors added their voices to this call, using their right of self-assembly to convene their own congress at Nuremberg in February 1640. Maximilian of Bavaria had already backed the papal peace initiative in 1636. He now indicated his willingness to invite the Kreis-convening princes to the Nuremberg congress.¹⁰ The emperor decided to pre-empt the elector from emerging as the leader of a peace party by summoning all imperial Estates to a Reichstag where he could set the agenda. The invitation made the Nuremberg congress superfluous and it closed on 7 July. The electors’ representatives reassembled with those of the other Estates in Regensburg on 13 September and remained in session until 10 October 1641.

The agenda closely resembled that of the 1636–7 electoral congress. The Empire was asked to extend the taxes agreed by some Kreis assemblies in 1638 that had now expired. All were to rally behind the emperor to defeat the two crowns of France and Sweden bent on suppressing German liberty.¹¹ Ferdinand made some concessions. An attack on the Hohentwiel was postponed so as not to antagonize the Protestant Swabians. The amnesty issue was addressed by an offer to widen the terms already granted to Württemberg by returning some of the monasteries, and even to extend a pardon to Hessen-Kassel and the Palatinate provided they joined the imperial war effort. It was suggested that a new, eighth electoral title might be created to persuade the elector Palatine to accept his Bavarian cousin’s new status. Lastly, Ferdinand hinted he might accept 1627 as a more permanent normative year, allowing some of the Protestant administrators to keep their bishoprics indefinitely. These proposals were condemned by the papal nuncio, but were eventually accepted by the Catholic princes, including those like the electors of Mainz and Cologne that stood to lose territory.

The proposed modifications to Prague came very close to the adjustments adopted in the Peace of Westphalia. Had they been offered in 1636, or even 1637, the emperor might have achieved the united front he desired. Now it was too late, since the Guelphs and Hessians were committed to a Swedish alliance. The emperor renewed the mandate summoning Germans to renounce French and Swedish service. An imperial Recess incorporating Ferdinand’s proposals was adopted thanks to the support of the electors and cities, though 31 of the 46 princely representatives voted against it. This confirmed the mandate and extended the war taxes by retrospectively sanctioning 240 Roman months across 1640–1. Compliance was poor, however, because even loyal territories wanted to deduct the cost of billets and plundering.¹²

Banér’s Winter Offensive 1641

Despite its limited results, the Reichstag alarmed France and Sweden who doubted their German allies’ loyalty. Despite failing health, Banér struck south from Thuringia in January 1641 to disrupt proceedings. Guébriant and Taupadel led France’s Army of Germany into northern Franconia, not to conquer as a decade before, but to extort contributions. Banér was left to make the main attack, advancing rapidly through Hof and Bayreuth across 200km despite thick snow. He relied on moving as fast as any messenger to pre-empt countermeasures, and managed to reach Regensburg on 20 January. Three cavalry regiments crossed the frozen Danube downstream to approach the city unexpectedly from the south side, and surprised the imperial hunting party. Though they netted the emperor’s prized falcons, he had been delayed leaving the city and avoided capture. A sudden thaw thinned the ice on the river, forcing the Swedes to beat a hasty retreat. Banér briefly bombarded the city, but had only light artillery with him and the shelling was simply a demonstration of power. Ferdinand refused to leave the city, gaining new credit for his coolness under fire.

Sensing the expedition was rebounding to his disadvantage, Banér headed north again. Guébriant refused to be drawn into operations against the Habsburg lands and retired north-west towards Lower Saxony, leaving the Swedes to retreat alone to Cham in the Upper Palatinate. Banér hoped to rest amid the forested hills, before breaking into Bohemia via Eger. The emperor responded with unexpected vigour. Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Piccolomini and Mercy assembled 22,000 Imperialists and Bavarians on the Danube and advanced north in March. Banér hastily summoned his forces to rejoin him at Cham and was only saved by a detachment under the one-armed Erik Slang who briefly delayed the enemy at Neunburg on 19 March. The other Swedes escaped north at a punishing 20km a day along roads turned to mud by the renewed thaw, and then over the Preßnitz pass into Saxony at the beginning of April. They lost their baggage, plus over 2,000 prisoners and 4,000 sick and deserters.¹³

Renewed Swedish Mutiny

Banér died on 10 May shortly after his army had rejoined Guébriant at Halberstadt. Following Duke Georg of Lüneburg’s death a month earlier, this left Sweden dangerously exposed.¹⁴ Ruthless and forceful, Banér had been instrumental in rebuilding the army and saving Sweden’s position in Germany after 1635. The consequences of his absence were immediately apparent. Under contingency plans, command devolved to three major-generals: the Swede, Count Karl Gustav Wrangel; the Finn, Avid Wittenberg; and the German, Adam von Pfuhl. Only 500 of the 16,000 soldiers were native Swedes. The situation returned to that of the 1635 ‘powder barrel’ mutiny, as 23 of the 30 colonels established a committee under Caspar Mortaigne to press their demands.

Ferdinand seized the opportunity to offer an amnesty and worked hard to win over Pfuhl. Pfuhl’s sister had been one of Queen Maria Eleonora’s ladies-in-waiting and Banér’s first wife. These connections and his own service record led him to expect to be named Banér’s successor. Oxenstierna had no intention of choosing a German and appointed Lennart Torstensson, despite his fragile health.¹⁵ Torstensson was still in Sweden, leaving a vacuum quickly filled by Pfuhl who sided with the colonels. They opened negotiations with August of Wolfenbüttel who had used the opportunity of his belligerent brother’s death to resume talks with the emperor. Disaffection spread to the German officers in Guébriant’s army as well.

As in 1635–6, peace negotiations resumed and ran in parallel with talks with the officers. France and Sweden had failed to harmonize their objectives when renewing their alliance in 1638. Richelieu wanted a universal peace that would settle all France’s conflicts to his satisfaction. Oxenstierna’s goals remained restricted to Germany and he considered breaking with his partner to clinch a separate peace with Ferdinand. Swedish resentment of France grew after Richelieu incorporated Bernhard’s army in 1639. Kurz and the Lauenburg dukes had been negotiating on the emperor’s behalf in Hamburg since 1639. The mood at the Reichstag prompted Ferdinand to send a separate mission to Brussels to renew mediation between Spain and the Dutch. Meanwhile, the Lauenburg dukes relayed a much improved offer to Sweden, incorporating the concessions discussed in Regensburg to accommodate the Palatinate, Guelphs and Hessen-Kassel within the Peace of Prague.

Unlike his father, Ferdinand responded to Oxenstierna’s desire for territory to enable Sweden to leave the war with honour. The Swedes had conquered the Altmark (western Brandenburg) and Frankfurt on the Oder in 1640. Elector Georg Wilhelm died that December and it was obvious to his ambitious successor, Friedrich Wilhelm, that Pomerania could not be obtained by force of arms. The new elector opened negotiations with Sweden under cover of an embassy to announce his succession. Count Schwarzenberg’s death in March 1641, the only Catholic on the duchy’s privy council, removed the principal opponent of this rapprochement. Predicting correctly that Brandenburg was about to defect, Ferdinand sought to pre-empt this. He secured Bavarian and Mainz agreement to offer all Pomerania to Sweden at the end of 1640.¹⁶

Unfortunately, Ferdinand’s envoys failed to convince Salvius that the offer was serious. Rumours of talks nonetheless alarmed the French who had been pressing Oxenstierna to renew the 1638 alliance that was due to expire in March 1641. D’Avaux added another 80,000 riksdalers to the annual subsidy to be paid until both parties secured a satisfactory peace. Oxenstierna felt it was worth sacrificing diplomatic autonomy for this firm support and gave his assent on 30 June 1641. The two crowns were now committed to a common front, each obliged to fight until both were satisfied.

Confirmation of the French alliance improved Oxenstierna’s position in his other negotiations. Brandenburg accepted a two-year ceasefire on 24 July, leaving Sweden in possession of Gardelegen, Driesen, Landsberg, Crossen and Frankfurt on the Oder, thereby securing access between Pomerania and Silesia. Friedrich Wilhelm also promised to supply 10,000 tlr and over 177 kilolitres of grain each month. He tried to forestall the inevitable imperial protests by transferring part of his army to the emperor, leaving only 2,200 men holding Berlin, Spandau, Küstrin and Peitz. Many of his officers were furious. Colonel Rochow threatened to blow up Spandau, while Colonel Goldacker took his regiment over to the Imperialists. Though Franz Albrecht of Lauenburg, now an imperial field marshal, drove Stalhansk’s detachment from Silesia, Brandenburg’s defection secured the approaches to Pomerania and gave Oxenstierna time to deal with the officers’ mutiny.

The chancellor invited the colonels to send two representatives to Stockholm in July. Both were fêted, flattered and rewarded, while the committee’s spokesman, Colonel Mortaigne, was promoted to major-general and given land in Pomerania to settle his pay arrears. Salvius found 60,000 tlr to meet the other officers’ most pressing claims. The army was then reorganized by amalgamating the understrength regiments and agreeing pay arrears at 330,000 tlr to be split between the remaining units. Salvius eventually handed over 486,260 tlr, much of it raised on credit using the new French subsidies as collateral. Pfuhl was replaced by the Swede Lilliehook as interim commander until Torstensson arrived. Guébriant meanwhile persuaded his own officers to desist from their negotiations with the emperor by warning them of Saxony’s fate since 1635.

The Battle of Wolfenbüttel

Clandestine contact with the emperor persisted into the autumn of 1641, but the army had already demonstrated its reliability by intervening at Wolfenbüttel. Sweden needed to secure Guelph loyalty and prove it could assist its German partners. Klitzing had blockaded Ruischenberg’s imperial garrison since the autumn, but his 7,000 men were too few to take the town. Wolfenbüttel had been strengthened in the Dutch manner with earth walls covering bomb-proof stone casemates sheltering the defenders. It was surrounded by a broad, wet ditch fed by sluices from the river Oker, while a separate castle served as a citadel. Klitzing copied Pappenheim’s methods from the 1627 siege, conscripting peasants to dam the Oker below the town from the middle of March 1641. Despite Ruischenberg’s sorties, the dam was finished at the end of June with a strong redoubt at either end. A large entrenched camp protected the besiegers at Thiede west of the river as they waited for the water to back up and flood the town.¹⁷

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm and Piccolomini waited at Egeln on the Saale for the negotiations with the mutinous officers to bear fruit, before heading west in June as the situation grew critical in Wolfenbüttel. Wahl’s Bavarians were summoned from Westphalia to give 22,000 men altogether. Guébriant, Königsmarck and the remaining loyal Swedish units force-marched to the area, joining Klitzing on 28 June just two hours before the Imperialists arrived. In addition to the 7,000 Guelph troops, there were 6,000 ex-Bernhardines and 13,000 Swedes. A carriage draped in black carried Banér’s body in their midst.

The large inundation from the Oker prevented any attack on the allied left (east), while their camp was too strong to be attacked frontally. Leopold Wilhelm ordered Wahl through the woods west of Fümmelse to outflank the enemy on the other side, while the Imperialists made a diversionary attack against the camp. Wahl was already in position at 9 a.m. on 29 June, opposite the Swedes on the allied right, but the Imperialists were delayed by the terrain. The Bavarians attacked without them at midday. A fierce fight developed for possession of a wood just beyond the Swedish position as Königsmarck tried to stop Wahl outflanking him. The Imperialists eventually arrived, but instead of merely feinting against the enemy front, they became drawn into the struggle for the wood. The tightly packed mass of infantry was caught in crossfire between a redoubt at the end of the camp and Königsmarck’s troops in the open. The gunfire tore bits off trees, inflicting further casualties. The Bavarians pressed on, routing the crack Swedish ‘Old Blue’ regiment and capturing the redoubt. Their cavalry also broke through further west, but all were hurled back by a counter-attack. Guébriant and Klitzing sent their cavalry from the camp to threaten the Imperialists to the east. The struggle continued until the late afternoon when Leopold Wilhelm ordered his exhausted troops to withdraw, having lost at least 3,000 casualties.

The allies were also battered, losing around 2,000, and had no inclination to leave their entrenchments and pursue the imperial troops. Inactivity fuelled disagreements between their generals, while the imperial army opened a long and ultimately fruitless siege of Göttingen to the south. Having broken the dam on 1 October, the allies finally retreated to Sarstedt between Hanover and Hildesheim where they remained for two months awaiting the outcome of renewed talks.

These had opened at Goslar on 7 October after Duke August of Wolfenbüttel apologized to the emperor for the recent battle. Duke Georg’s successor, Christian Ludwig, was a young and inexperienced youth who was no match for his uncle who had the backing of the

third Guelph duke, Friedrich of Lüneburg. Having no direct interest in Hildesheim, August sacrificed it to recover his own capital. Wahl arranged a compromise on 16 January 1642, confirmed and extended by several later agreements. The Guelphs accepted the Peace of Prague and restored the disputed Hildesheim districts in return for the face-saving promise from Ferdinand of Cologne to respect Lutheran worship there for the next forty years. The Guelphs were formally pardoned and Ruischenberg finally evacuated Wolfenbüttel on 23 September 1643. The Treaty of Goslar represented a defeat of Guelph ambitions. They retained a few thousand garrison troops for the rest of the war, but had ceased to influence events.¹⁸ Guelph neutrality ruptured Franco-Swedish military cooperation by removing the link of Lower Saxony. Guébriant marched west to help the Hessians, while the Swedes eventually moved east into Silesia.

Brandenburg’s defection and the failure of the renewed talks with the enemy officers, however, negated the modest imperial success in Lower Saxony. With the imperial Estates growing restless, Ferdinand made another gesture towards peace. His envoy had agreed the peace preliminaries in Hamburg with France and Sweden on 25 December 1641. These settled the form but not the content of the future peace congress. France and the Catholic powers would meet in the Westphalian town of Münster. Sweden and the Protestants would gather in nearby Osnabrück. Both venues would be declared neutral, while security was guaranteed for envoys and post between them and to the home capitals. These terms signalled a radical departure from the previous imperial stance of only negotiating with Sweden to settle the war in the Empire before dealing with France. Ferdinand now reluctantly ratified the preliminary arrangements in July 1642, knowing that negotiations with France might entail a breach with Spain. He nonetheless delayed exchanging the credentials necessary for the envoys to assemble in the hope that the military situation might yet improve.¹⁹ For the moment, matters still hung in the balance.

THE WAR IN THE EMPIRE 1642–3

The Battle of Kempen 1642

The emperor could not afford a defeat, however minor. Having declared for Sweden, the Hessians in turn needed a victory before they could resume talks with Ferdinand. They collected 7,000 men under General Kaspar Count Eberstein, a Pomeranian who joined from the Swedes in 1631 and was promoted to replace Melander. Guébriant arrived in December 1641, but he had to threaten to invade Overijssel before the Dutch finally allowed the combined army over the Rhine at Wesel on 12 January. Guébriant’s 12 infantry regiments mustered only 2,000 men, while the 12 of cavalry were little better at a total of 3,500. Eberstein’s force had already dropped to 4,000, half of whom were cavalry.²⁰

They nonetheless posed a serious danger to the electorate of Cologne as they now began to ravage it. Lamboy’s 9,000 Imperialists were recalled from assisting the Spanish and crossed the Meuse to protect Cologne, while Hatzfeldt hurried up from winter quarters in Würzburg with 7,000 reinforcements. Hatzfeldt arrived ahead of his troops on 8 January and collected boats ready for them to cross at Andernach. Guébriant and Eberstein decided to attack Lamboy before Hatzfeldt’s men arrived. It was a big risk, since they had already run out of food and a defeat would leave them no choice but to run off into the Dutch Republic like Mansfeld and Duke Christian had in 1622–3. A third of Lamboy’s men were either sick or inadequately armed, while he had only 6 cannon to the enemy’s 23, yet Lamboy was overconfident and ignored instructions to wait for Hatzfeldt. He camped at Hüls, now a suburb of Krefeld, drawing up behind a double dry boundary ditch not far from Kempen from which the coming action took its name.

Lamboy was still eating breakfast when the enemy appeared on 17 January on the other side of the ditch. The action swung both ways until dragoons and musketeers detached by Guébriant appeared on Lamboy’s flanks, having crossed either side of his position. The Imperialists collapsed, losing 2,000 dead. Lamboy and another 5,000 were captured. Only 2,000 escaped. They refused Spanish offers of food for fear they would be pressed into the Army of Flanders and eventually crossed the Rhine to join Hatzfeldt in the Wetterau.

Lamboy had wasted a valuable opportunity to crush France’s Army of Germany. It had been on the point of disintegration and had not scored a major success since capturing Breisach over three years previously. A grateful Louis XIII promoted Guébriant to Marshal of France, and sent 3,600 Breton recruits by sea to Rotterdam to join him. The Dutch discharged 3,000 men into French service as an additional reinforcement. He spent the next nine months taking minor places in the electorate of Cologne, including Kempen and Neuss, as well as Düren in Jülich. His forces captured so much food that hungry Spanish and imperial soldiers deserted to them.

The imperial countermeasures indicate how difficult it was becoming to raise new armies. The emperor sent 135,000 tlr, while Hatzfeldt spent 8,000 from his own pocket and Elector Ferdinand sold his silver to provide more. As the enemy were detaining travellers and holding merchants to ransom, the city of Cologne relaxed its neutrality to provide 500 men and 6 cannon from its civic guard, while 2,000 Lorrainers arrived from Luxembourg and the Spanish put in 1,500 men to protect Aachen. Wahl arrived with 2,600 Bavarians in June, followed two months later by Werth, just released from French captivity, who appeared at the head of three imperial cavalry regiments. Werth’s arrival demonstrated the significance of personality: even peasants fell on their knees when they saw the famed commander, believing he would rid them of the enemy.²¹ The Imperialists now had about 15,000 men, matching their opponents, but Hatzfeldt hesitated to risk another battle, especially as he was short of horses and dependent on the Spanish for food, because he could not afford the exorbitant prices demanded by local traders.

The allies had gorged themselves on their earlier bounty and were now also hungry. Guébriant and Eberstein argued constantly, because the Frenchman refused to let the Hessians garrison the captured towns. They gave up first, retreating over the Rhine at the end of September after Guébriant had browbeaten Amalie Elisabeth into giving him 1,000 men from Eberstein’s army in return for handing the captured towns to her control.²² Guébriant marched east in a fruitless attempt to stop the Guelphs signing the Peace of Goslar. The electorate of Cologne had suffered its worst devastation, but the balance of power had been restored on the Lower Rhine.

Swedish Recovery

The Swedes remained inactive at Winsen (near Celle) after abandoning the siege of Wolfenbüttel until Torstensson finally arrived with 7,000 conscripts on 25 November 1641. He withdrew the army east of the Elbe to a position near Werben where he spent the next four months restoring discipline after the mutiny. Lamboy’s defeat at Kempen robbed the emperor of any chance of exploiting this inactivity. Torstensson displayed his considerable strategic skills by sending Königsmarck and the cavalry to raid Saxony in April, drawing the imperial forces there while he marched his main force of 15,000 across Brandenburg to join Stalhansk’s 5,000 men on the Oder.

Torstensson recognized that Banér’s invasion of the Habsburg lands in 1639 had foundered because it relied primarily on speed and failed to capture the fortresses necessary to hold conquered territory. He opened his invasion of Silesia by storming Glogau on 4 May, then taking Jauer and Striegau as he advanced south-west to Schweidnitz. The province was weakly defended, but Franz Albrecht of Lauenburg rushed 7,000 imperial and Saxon cavalry over from Saxony to disrupt further progress. The duke was unaware that Striegau had already fallen and mistakenly believed Torstensson was heading directly south towards Breslau. He also did not know that Königsmarck had followed him from Saxony with 6,000 Swedish cavalry. Königsmarck deceived the duke by appearing and then pretending to retreat, drawing the Imperialists against the Swedish infantry posted on a hill east of Schweidnitz on 31 May. Some imperial regiments fled early on, but the others fought on for five hours before retreating. As at Kempen, defeat meant the virtual destruction of the army as units swiftly lost cohesion, leaving 1,800 dead and 2,000 prisoners. Among the former was Franz Albrecht, who had been mortally wounded by angry Swedes still convinced he was to blame for King Gustavus’s death. Schweidnitz surrendered three days later, completing the Swedish victory.²³

Torstensson left Lilliehook with half the army to finish the conquest of Upper Silesia while he took the rest through Troppau into Moravia, capturing Olmütz which surrendered quickly – allegedly because the Swedes captured the commander’s wife.²⁴ Banér had not penetrated so far east in 1639 and the region was still relatively fresh. The Swedes captured 5,000 new uniforms, broke into monasteries, held the monks to ransom, and opened the crypts to steal rings from the corpses. They took even more from the living, including 10,000 books which they sent to quench Queen Christina’s thirst for knowledge. By the time they left Olmütz in 1650, only 1,675 of the city’s 30,000 inhabitants remained. The richer citizens had fled immediately, spreading panic in Vienna.

However, Brieg still resisted in Silesia, while the Imperialists collected at Brünn, to the south of Olmütz, and were joined by 2,670 Bohemian militiamen. By July 1642, Leopold Wilhelm had assembled 20,000, though many of these were recruits who wanted to go home once the cold, wet autumn set in.²⁵ While some blockaded Olmütz, the rest pushed passed Troppau to relieve Brieg, recovering most of Silesia by August. Torstensson’s strategy now paid off, because Leopold Wilhelm was unable to recover Glogau which secured Swedish communications to Pomerania and allowed the 6,000 Swedes left to cover the Oder to join the main army. Moreover, the Imperialists’ failure to recapture Olmütz gave Sweden a base deep in Habsburg territory that remained a threat until the end of the war. The Imperialists were forced westwards through Lusatia into Saxony, to the despair of its elector who saw his land becoming a battlefield again.²⁶

The Second Battle of Breitenfeld

Torstensson pursued the imperial army, besieging Leipzig to force his opponent to give battle. Leopold Wilhelm duly arrived with 26,000 men, including 1,650 Saxons, and the Swedes withdrew to Breitenfeld, scene of Gustavus’s great triumph eleven years earlier.²⁷ Piccolomini was suspicious and urged caution, but disturbing reports had arrived that Guébriant and the Hessians were marching to join Torstensson, so the archduke decided to accept battle on 2 November.²⁸

The two armies camped the night before at right angles to the positions taken in 1631. The Imperialists were on the eastern side at Seehausen facing west, opposite Torstensson at Breitenfeld. Between them lay the Linkelwald where Tilly’s infantry had made their final stand, with a shallow valley formed by the Ritsche stream to the south. Torstensson was significantly outnumbered by 7,000 men, but was determined to smash the emperor’s only remaining substantial army.

Both armies advanced at dawn, Torstensson crossing the Ritsche to deploy in front of the Linkelwald. Leopold Wilhelm accepted

Piccolomini’s advice and sent sixteen cuirassier regiments north around the wood to turn the Swedish left and cut them off from the Torgau road. Torstensson shifted his army northwards to confront this and the action became general around 10 a.m. The imperial infantry were split by the wood, but nonetheless made progress against their opponents in Torstensson’s centre. Like the Swedes, the Imperialists were now employing regimental guns to support their infantry. They fired chain-shot, assisting in pushing the Swedes back and capturing some of their cannon.

Wittenberg and Stalhansk on the Swedish right advanced from the Ritsche valley, out-riding their accompanying musketeers. The rapid approach worked, giving Puchheim no time to deploy the imperial cavalry properly. Several regiments in the imperial first line broke before contact, taking the Saxons in the second with them as they fled. The rest resisted stoutly, but were overwhelmed by superior numbers. Stalhansk pursued with half the Swedish horse, while Wittenberg led the rest behind Torstensson’s infantry to help Slang on the left. The latter had stuck to Gustavus’s tactic of advancing slowly to allow the musketeers to keep up. He was killed in the initial imperial onslaught, while his men gave way as Croats turned their flank to the north. Königsmarck rallied them and held long enough for General Wittenberg to arrive around midday. The Swedes now enjoyed local superiority and swept round their opponents’ flank, driving them back towards the infantry still struggling in the centre.

Leopold Wilhelm and Piccolomini led their bodyguards in a counter-attack to enable the infantry north of the wood to escape. A Swedish dragoon levelled his pistol at the archduke, but it misfired. Nothing could be done for those who were south of the wood; they resisted for another hour or so before surrendering. It had been a hard-fought battle. The Swedes lost 4,000 killed and badly wounded, but the poor quality of some of Leopold Wilhelm’s cavalry cost him the battle. In addition to 3,000 dead, the Imperialists lost nearly 5,000 prisoners, all 46 cannon and their entire field treasury and supply train.

The margin of victory was far narrower than in 1631, but the action nonetheless had important repercussions. News of the defeat spread alarm throughout Catholic Germany where the population feared a repeat of the consequences of the first battle.²⁹Maximilian summoned his Bavarian militia and prepared for the worst. Leipzig predictably surrendered on 7 December, making a large payment to avoid plunder and admitting a Swedish garrison that stayed till 1650. The Swedes relieved their outpost at Chemnitz, which had been isolated since 1639, and made another unsuccessful attack on Freiberg where they lost 2,000 men in February 1643. Ferdinand hastened to reassure Johann Georg he would do all in his power to save Saxony, and the Swedes were disappointed that the elector did not immediately make peace.³⁰

The Drift to Neutrality

Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg was not so sanguine. Convinced the emperor would sacrifice Pomerania to the Swedes to obtain peace, the elector improved relations with Sweden by converting his ceasefire from 1641 into a truce on 9 May 1643 that was to last until a final peace settlement. Oxenstierna restored the Brandenburg countryside to electoral administration in return for the continuation of the contributions agreed in 1641. As Brandenburg appeared trustworthy by remaining neutral, Oxenstierna returned Crossen and Frankfurt on the Oder in July 1644 as well. Other negotiations with France since September 1643 extended neutrality to the elector’s Westphalian possessions in return for the Hessians evacuating all their positions in Cleves except Lippstadt. The arrangement gave the elector greater autonomy, but brought little relief to his subjects who were expected to continue paying war taxes, but now to the modestly expanded Brandenburg army.³¹

Brandenburg neutrality directly contravened the 1641 imperial Recess that forbade such arrangements without the emperor’s express approval. Friedrich Wilhelm excused himself by saying the military situation left him no choice. His political stature and the emperor’s lack of military muscle enabled him to escape reprisals. Elsewhere, rulers avoided such open agreements, but nonetheless withdrew incrementally from the conflict. Frequently, local officials negotiated agreements for their districts with tacit approval from their masters. The Bavarian administration in Heidelberg paid regular contributions to the nearby French garrison to stop its depredations in the Lower Palatinate.³² Such arrangements clearly represented a first step towards leaving the war. The bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg signed a formal treaty with the Swedish garrison in Erfurt on 21 March 1641 following a series of local agreements concluded by officials in the frontier districts. The bishop not only promised regular contributions in return for the release of hostages, but both parties agreed to collaborate to revive trade in the area. Johann Philipp von Schönborn confirmed the arrangement when he became bishop of Würzburg in June 1642. Bamberg and Würzburg paid a relatively modest 500 florins a month until the Peace of Westphalia. It was neutrality in all but name.³³

The trend was not restricted to the Empire’s core regions. Ever since the French invaded the Franche-Comté in 1636, the Swiss had worked to restore the neutrality of all Burgundy agreed between France and Spain in 1522. Cut off from all prospect of help following Duke Charles’s defeats, the Spanish administration in Dôle agreed a local truce in April 1642 that was extended, with Madrid’s permission in July 1644, to last until peace was concluded. This eased tension on the Upper Rhine, encouraging the French to restore Mömpelgard to the local Württemberg administration in 1645 in return for its promise of neutrality.³⁴

These developments are important. First, they dispel the misconception of the war’s later stages as generalized, unlimited destruction. Considerable efforts were being made to curb and contain violence, although these had the unfortunate consequence of channelling the fighting into areas unable to escape. Second, the drift to neutrality further reduced the resources available to the imperial war effort and discouraged the emperor’s remaining supporters. Bearing the brunt of the burden with no immediate prospect of victory, they grew disillusioned with Ferdinand’s leadership. The 1641 imperial Recess had again postponed the question of judicial reform, but did promise an imperial Deputation to discuss it. A Deputation was a formal committee drawn from all three categories of imperial Estate. By demanding in May 1642 that the Deputation be convened, the electors of Bavaria, Mainz and Cologne signalled their willingness to continue broad cooperation with the princes and cities, rather than return to their exclusive relationship with the emperor. Ferdinand was unable to prevent them expanding the Deputation’s remit to include peace and military discipline. He met a similar response when he summoned the Kreis assemblies that summer to discuss renewing the war taxes agreed in Regensburg the year before.³⁵

The 1643 Campaign

Ferdinand needed to continue operations while avoiding serious risks to begin the now inevitable peace congress from a position of strength. It was felt imperative to replace Leopold Wilhelm as the imperial army’s commander. Hatzfeldt refused to take over, because he felt his advice had been ignored in the past. Ferdinand eventually appointed Gallas, ignoring the fact that he was now an alcoholic. Piccolomini felt superseded and accepted Philip IV’s offer to assume command of the Army of Flanders. Wahl, now crippled, was replaced by Mercy as the Bavarian commander. The combined force remained formidable at over 70,000 troops, excluding those on the Habsburg Military Frontier. Gallas had 32,000 of these, a third of which were cavalry, while Hatzfeldt commanded 15,000 imperial and Cologne troops, including the former Wolfenbüttel garrison. The Bavarians had increased their numbers to 22,650, but the Saxons were down to a few thousand, mainly in Magdeburg and other garrisons. A few thousand other Imperialists and Tiroleans still guarded the Upper Rhine.

Having failed to bully Saxony into peace, Torstensson renewed his invasion of the Habsburg lands by attacking through Lusatia into northern Bohemia in March 1643, intending to relieve Olmütz and join potential Transylvanian support. Gallas concentrated his forces at Königgrätz to block him, sending General Krockow and 4,000 cavalry as a diversion into Pomerania. Krockow was one of the many Pomeranians who had left Swedish service in disgust at the treatment of their homeland. He was, unfortunately, over-optimistic. Though he quickly overran most of eastern Pomerania, he was too weak to attack the better fortified western half and was soon cut off as Königsmarck hastened to catch up with him with the 3,000-strong allied detachment left to occupy Saxony. Krockow rode at a punishing 50km a day to escape, reaching Breslau with only 1,200 survivors at the end of October.³⁶ The diversion at least prevented reinforcements reaching Torstensson, who was unable to achieve anything beyond relieving Olmütz before retiring into Silesia. The Imperialists followed, eventually retaking Schweidnitz in 1644.

After the unsuccessful attempt to prevent the Guelphs making peace, Guébriant had arrived on the Saxon frontier at the end of 1642. Torstensson persuaded the French not to enter, in the vain hope that this might induce Saxony to make peace. With only 7,000 men and no prospect of cooperation with the Swedes, Guébriant risked being cut off. He marched west again, this time down the Main valley and into Württemberg, until he was driven out by the Bavarians in January, losing 1,600 men by the time he reached Breisach. France’s Army of Germany was back where it had been five years earlier. The main focus of the war moved with it, again bringing relief to north-west Germany where the Hessians were left isolated.

The military situation was simplifying in line with new French objectives following Richelieu’s death and the new regime under Mazarin (see below, p.666). Rather than direct cooperation, the two crowns evolved a division of military labour. The French would strike across the Black Forest to knock out Bavaria, while the Swedes hit the Habsburg hereditary lands from their new positions in Saxony, the Oder valley and Olmütz. The Hessians would keep the Westphalians busy. It took two years before this strategy was in place, not least because the Swedes and Hessians had other objectives to achieve first, but once it was set by 1645 it determined the remainder of the war.

Things did not go well for France at first. It remained busy with its primary war against Spain and was unable to commit sufficient resources to Germany. French difficulties explain why Ferdinand was eventually prepared to open the peace congress. The arrival of his wife with a few reinforcements, as well as men drawn from his garrisons, gave Guébriant a field army of 11,000 by June. Prompted by Mazarin who needed successes to stabilize his government, Guébriant advanced via the Forest Towns to the Hohentwiel. Mercy’s Bavarians moved up the Danube to block him, so he reduced his plans to consolidating his hold on the south-east slopes of the Black Forest, ready for a renewed offensive the following year. He attacked Rottweil, but again Mercy was there to relieve it in July. Guébriant gave up and retreated back over the mountains, while Mercy moved to their northern end and reoccupied Baden-Durlach and parts of Lower Alsace.³⁷

The Battle of Tuttlingen

This was not what Mazarin wanted. The fall of Sierck in Lorraine in September enabled the despatch of 6,000 more reinforcements under Rantzau. Guébriant advanced again, but was mortally wounded taking Rottweil on 18 November. Command devolved to Rantzau who was despised by the ex-Bernhardine colonels. Rantzau left Taupadel holding Rottweil and went into winter quarters along the upper Danube at Tuttlingen with detachments either side at Mühlingen and Möhringen.

Hessian inactivity permitted the despatch of Hatzfeldt with six regiments from the Lower Rhine while the fugitive Duke Charles arrived from Sierck, giving Mercy around 15,000 men, roughly equivalent to Rantzau’s force. Originally from Lorraine, Mercy gained valuable experience in the imperial army before transferring to Bavarian service in 1638. He was an outstanding general, skilled in handling all three arms and able to second-guess his opponents. He won agreement from the other generals for a bold march eastwards round the end of the Black Forest, and then south through Württemberg to surprise the French. Having crossed the Danube at Sigmaringen, he marched west through Messkirch to approach Tuttlingen from the south-east. The plan was well-conceived, since the more direct route through Bahlingen to the north would have exposed his flank to Taupadel’s garrison in Rottweil and necessitated attacking across the Danube. The woods beyond Messkirch allowed Mercy to approach Tuttlingen unobserved by mid-afternoon on 24 November.

The Bavarian dragoons captured the French pickets, so Rantzau was caught completely unawares when the enemy burst from the trees and captured his weakly guarded artillery park in the cemetery outside the town. Other units surprised the French posted in near-by Homberg castle. Rosen rushed the ex-Bernhardine cavalry up from their billets downstream in Mühlheim. They were soon chased away by Mercy’s brother Kaspar, who destroyed the French infantry Rosen had left behind. Meanwhile, Werth and 2,000 horsemen hit the French cavalry upstream at Möhringen, riding down the 500-strong Mazarin infantry regiment in the process – an action that was regretted since the unit was largely composed of Spanish prisoners of war who would have welcomed an opportunity to change sides. The French cavalry fled, abandoning the rest of their infantry who surrendered Möhringen once the captured artillery was trained against them the next day. Rantzau and the two foot regiments in Tuttlingen now also capitulated, followed by the 2,000 men in Rottweil a week later.

All the French generals and the officers’ wives were taken, along with silver plate worth 100,000 tlr and a month’s pay in cash. Peasants hacked down stragglers and barely 4,500 reached the French garrisons

along the Rhine. Rosen, Taupadel and a few German officers escaped, but most of the remaining Bernhardines were lost. The French court downplayed the disaster so successfully that the battle scarcely features in most histories of the war, but it was a major setback. France had lost a veteran army and was still no further forward on the Rhine than it had been five years earlier.

SPAIN’S GROWING CRISIS 1635–43

Tuttlingen temporarily restored the balance in the Empire, but the general trend was turning against the emperor. France’s ability to rebuild its Army of Germany over the winter reflected a general improvement in its position since the initial setbacks against Spain. The latter’s growing internal problems in turn ended any prospect of further assistance for Ferdinand. As Spain weakened, it became harder to postpone the Westphalian congress agreed in the Hamburg Preliminaries. To understand these developments, we need to review the western wars since the mid-1630s.

These conflicts had grown considerably in scale. France had become a direct participant in the Dutch War in 1635 and the two allies continued to coordinate attacks against the Spanish Netherlands. France also began what would prove to be its own war against Spain by attacking that country’s Italian possessions. A new front was opened in the Pyrenees after 1637, precipitating revolts in Catalonia and Portugal in 1640.

The War in Italy 1635–42

French intervention in Italy trespassed on the emperor’s jurisdiction and disturbed the balance established by the Peace of Cherasco in 1631 (see above, Chapter 13, p. 458). In keeping with Richelieu’s general strategy, the attack on Spain’s possessions was not made alone, but in partnership with Italian princes. Known as the League of Rivoli, this alliance proved rather feeble. Savoy was the most potent member, fielding 12,250 professional troops in return for French backing for its royal ambitions and a promise of part of Milan. Mantua was still recovering from the earlier war and could provide only 3,000 men, while Parma sent another 4,500. The other Italian rulers remained neutral. Despite promises to his allies, Richelieu accorded Italy a low priority and it was not until October 1635 that the French army there reached 12,000 men. By then, operations had collapsed amid bickering between the French and Italian commanders.

Spain not only held its own in Lombardy but launched an amphibious counter-attack, capturing the Lérin islands off Provence in September. French attempts to recover them were repulsed in 1636–7, enabling Spain to disrupt the flow of aid to Richelieu’s allies. France made a more substantial effort against Lombardy in 1636, but still started a month late and at only two-thirds of intended strength. French forces helped repel an attack on Vercelli protecting Savoy, but the distraction allowed Spain to knock out Parma and Mantua by February 1637.³⁸

The fighting assumed some significance for the Empire by drawing imperial forces into the final struggle over the Valtellina. Spain’s use of the pass to intervene in Germany in 1633–4 convinced Richelieu that it had to be closed, and that the only way to do this was to restore Protestant Rhetian control over the Catholic inhabitants. He sent Henri de Rohan from Alsace across Protestant Swiss territory to join 2,000 Rhetians who had been raised with French money. The combined force of about 7,400 crossed the Splügen pass waist-deep in snow on 27 March 1635 to surprise the Spanish at Chiavenna at the south end of the valley. With this taken, the other garrisons further up were trapped and soon knocked out. Thus began one of the most daring and brilliantly led campaigns of the entire war. Rohan’s force was too weak to hold both ends of the valley simultaneously, so he took up position near the more vulnerable northern entrance at Bormio with detachments watching the south.

The Habsburg attempt to take the valley exposed the weakness in their military cooperation following Nördlingen. Gallas reluctantly detached 10,000 men under Fernemont and sent them to the Tirol to attack the northern end of the valley, but Cardinal Albornoz, the new Spanish governor of Milan, feared a Franco-Savoyard attack and only belatedly sent Count Serbelloni with 2,000 men to the south end. Fernemont advanced before the Spanish were ready. Rohan let him overrun the northern half of the valley, and then outflanked him using the Engadin, taking him by surprise and sending him packing by mid-July. Serbelloni had only just occupied the south entrance and quickly withdrew as Rohan turned against him. The failure of the Franco-Savoyard offensive against Milan by October 1635 emboldened the Habsburgs to take advantage of the mild autumn for another attempt. Fernemont had been reinforced to 15,000, while Serbelloni now mustered 5,000 men. Again, the Austrians moved prematurely and were defeated after heavy fighting by Rohan, whose superior understanding of mountain warfare enabled him to outflank them. The French then dashed south to rout the Spanish on 9 November.³⁹

Rohan had been welcomed by the Rhetians as ‘the Angel Gabriel in person’, but was put in an invidious position by Richelieu’s instructions not to let the Rhetians reimpose Protestantism on the valley. Spanish transit of the Valtellina in 1629–34 had brought the plague and halved the population. The 40,000 survivors struggled to feed even Rohan’s small force. The Rhetians had no interest in wider French objectives and refused to support Rohan’s attempted invasion of Milan in May 1636. The war’s return to the Alps heightened tension within the Swiss Confederation, where the Catholics allowed Spain to send its 10,000 German recruits through the St Gotthard pass that year to reinforce the Army of Lombardy, now under Leganés, who had replaced Albornoz.

Rohan was cut off. He owed his Rhetian infantry 1 million livres in pay arrears, and many of the officers shared their government’s suspicions of French intentions. Colonel Jenatsch, a former fundamentalist Protestant pastor who, for reasons unknown, had recently converted to Catholicism, led a mutiny among Rohan’s troops in October 1636 and seized strategic points along the valley. The Habsburgs were taken by surprise, but swiftly accepted his offer of an alliance on 17 January 1637, agreeing to drive the French out in return for Spain settling the soldiers’ pay arrears, while Austria rescinded its 1629 prohibition on Protestantism in the areas of the Ten Parish League under its jurisdiction. Rohan was obliged to withdraw his remaining French troops in April. The alliance with heretics was initially presented as a necessary evil, but by 1639 Spain abandoned its remaining scruples and formally returned the Valtellina to Rhetian control in return for guarantees the Free State would not tamper with the Catholic character of the valley and would allow Spain transit. The latter requirement was now largely worthless since French control of Alsace cut the Spanish Road. Nonetheless, the alliance secured the service of the Protestant Rhetians who comprised a seventh of Leganés’ army by 1640.

The Savoyard Civil War

French failure in Italy widened the divisions at the Savoyard court following the unsatisfactory outcome of the Mantuan War. Though Savoy had acquired the northern half of Monferrato, it had been obliged to surrender Pinerolo to France, giving that country access across its territory. Lorraine’s fate during the early 1630s underscored the dangers of such a position. French influence in the duchy grew following the death of Charles de Nevers in September 1637. French troops seized his part of Monferrato, including Casale, while the Venetians occupied Mantua. Tensions spilled over into war after Duke Vittorio Amedeo I’s death the following month.⁴⁰

The pro-French faction was led by Louis XIII’s sister, the duke’s widow Marie Christina, who acted as regent for her two young sons, the first of whom had already died by 1638. It is possible that she was jealous of her sisters, Henrietta Maria and Elisabeth who were respectively queens of England and Spain. Certainly, her own ambitions reflected those of a Savoy dynasty that already claimed royal blood based on alleged links to the kingdom of Cyprus. Richelieu manipulated these ambitions, saying that France could only recognize Savoy as a kingdom if it enlarged itself at Milan’s expense. Madame Reale, as she styled herself, was opposed by her two brothers-in-law, princes Tommaso and Cardinal Maurizio, whom she excluded from the regency. Tommaso had recently returned from serving in the Army of Flanders. He had married Marie, daughter of the duc de Bouillon, associating himself closely with the anti-Richelieu faction in France. Rumours circulated that Madame Reale had poisoned her husband to stop Savoy defecting to Spain. Tommaso and Maurizio also drew on resentment in the regions against Turin’s centralization. While these factors were important, the heart of the Savoyard civil war was a dynastic struggle for control of the regency.⁴¹

The conflict between the madamisti and the principisti seriously undermined France’s position in Italy just as Richelieu wanted to withdraw forces to concentrate on the other fronts. The French rarely mustered over 10,000 men in the duchy, half of whom were needed to hold Casale and other fortresses. Leganés joined the principisti with 13,000 Spanish to capture Vercelli, Ivrea, Verue and Nice in 1638. French relations with Madame Reale deteriorated as Richelieu used her current predicament to pressure her to surrender her other garrisons to French control. Emperor Ferdinand exercised his imperial jurisdiction and declared Tommaso and Maurizio regents in March 1639 as the Spanish pushed deeper into Savoy. Tommaso entered the capital at the head of 10,500 men on 27 July, but Madame Reale escaped into the citadel with her 2,000 French guards. The remaining French forces agreed a truce lasting until October, which allowed the Spanish to extend their control over the duchy, while Tommaso blockaded his sister-in-law.

A new French army of 7,000 men arrived under the comte d’Harcourt and though it defeated the Spanish field force, it was unable to relieve the Turin citadel before winter. Leganés tried to divert Harcourt by besieging Casale early in 1640 to give Tommaso time to take the citadel. Harcourt stripped the remaining French garrisons to increase his field force and relieved Casale. Having received further reinforcements giving him 19,000 men in total, he appeared outside Turin in May. An extraordinary triple siege began. Madame Reale defended the citadel against Tommaso and 12,000 men, who were besieged in Turin by Harcourt, while Leganés and 17,000 Spanish troops surrounded Harcourt outside the city. Tommaso ran out of supplies first and broke out, allowing the French to relieve the citadel in November 1640.

The result was a stalemate. With only 8,000 effectives in the field, the French were unable to dislodge the Spanish from the captured towns, but the Catalan and Portuguese revolts at the end of the year prevented reinforcements reaching Leganés. Both Madame Reale and the princes realized that what they were fighting for was being destroyed in the process. Despite Spain holding his wife and children hostage, Tommaso opened negotiations with the French. He and his brother were accepted as co-regents in May 1642 and given large French pensions and their own palaces. Tommaso assumed command of the combined Franco-Savoyard army, which increased to 20,000 by the later 1640s. France returned Turin to Madame Reale, but kept a garrison in its citadel until 1657, securing the duchy’s allegiance for the remainder of the war.

The Papacy

Pope Urban VIII was dismayed by French intervention in Italy after 1635, but was unable to respond because he relied on France to counterbalance Spain. He was also compromised by his own opportunism. Having already annexed Urbino in 1631, he used Spain’s distraction to try to enlarge the Papal States by attacking the small duchy of Castro in October 1641. Modena, Venice and Tuscany all had long-standing grievances against the papacy and joined the duke of Parma, who owned Castro, in counter-attacking in August 1642. Urban’s forces proved surprisingly successful in resisting the onslaught, but it was clear he had overreached himself, and he accepted a French-brokered peace, returning Castro to Parma in March 1644.

His death four months later dealt a severe blow to the French faction in Rome, already weakened by the departure of its leader, Mazarin, who was now in France. Spain was determined to recover its influence as fifty cardinals met in the blazing August heat to chose Urban’s successor. Spanish troops massed in Naples to the south, while those of their Tuscan ally moved to the northern frontier of the Papal States. Malaria hit Rome and the cardinals began dying or fleeing. Urban’s Barberini relations and their allies switched allegiance to Spain in return for a promise of protection, and duly elected Spain’s candidate as Pope Innocent X. The papacy’s new orientation was demonstrated when Innocent made Mazarin’s rival, Jean de Retz, a cardinal. France’s Roman clientele, like the Orsini, accepted Spanish pensions. The recovery of Spain’s influence in Rome stabilized that power’s presence in Italy and proved a significant factor in its ability to defeat the revolt that convulsed Naples in 1647. ‘Had Urban VIII been in power there is no question but that he would have tried to claim Naples for himself or given it to France.’⁴²

The Pyrenean Front

Fighting continued on the Savoyard–Milanese frontier, but Italy’s strategic significance declined after 1642 as France found it easier to hit Spain directly thanks to the Catalan and Portuguese revolts. Previous attacks along the Pyrenees had stalled against Spanish defences, but the cost of repelling them contributed to the outbreak of both revolts.

There were only two viable routes over the Pyrenees. France could attack at the western end from Gascony into Spanish Navarre, but this was guarded by the fortress of Fuenterrabia. Perpignan in the earldom of Roussillon at the eastern end blocked the way into Catalonia. Attempted incursions at either end in 1636–7 were frustrated by lack of money, peasant unrest and poor coordination between military and naval commanders. Spain then sent 15,000 troops from Catalonia against the French fortress of Leucate on the Mediterranean coast north of Perpignan. The assault was unexpectedly repulsed, while a 5,000-strong detachment that had taken St Jean de Luz just across the frontier in Gascony pulled back in October 1637.⁴³

This modest success encouraged Richelieu to divert additional resources for a new offensive. In place of provincial governors and local militias, the French now had Condé with a substantial army of 17,000 men to attack Fuenterrabia. The decision to concentrate on the western end of the Pyrenees was influenced by the growing importance of the Atlantic seaboard now that the French occupation of Alsace had cut the Spanish Road. A major programme of naval construction gave Spain 150 warships, and with additional vessels still on the stocks in Biscayan yards, it hoped to have 50,000 tonnes afloat for 1638. Command of a new squadron at La Coruña was entrusted to Lope de Hoces who had risen from the Dunkirk privateers. He had already convoyed 5,000 reinforcements to Flanders at the end of 1637, assisted by the Dunkirkers for the last stretch. Cruising back through the Channel, he captured 32 enemy vessels.⁴⁴

The French attack was intended to disrupt Spanish preparations and prevent the development of the Channel route. Richelieu’s protégé, Admiral Sourdis, led a fleet of 41 ships to blockade Fuenterrabia, which is on a promontory north of San Sebastian, while Condé besieged it from the landward side. Sourdis detached part of the fleet along the coast, destroying Spanish shipyards and catching Hoces at the small port of Guetaria on 22 August 1638. The Spanish lost 11 ships and 4,000 men; Hoces saved himself by swimming ashore. However, on land a Spanish relief force of 8,000 approached the French siege lines. Sourdis landed sailors to reinforce the army that Condé threw at Fuenterrabia in a desperate attempt to break in on 7 September. Repulsed, he abandoned the siege the next day and retreated into Gascony. The army’s failure negated the navy’s success, fuelling the endemic personal rivalries within the French high command. One general even fled to England for fear he would be made a scapegoat for the setback.

The relief of Fuenterrabia was hailed as a great success in Madrid where the mob broke into the royal wine cellar to toast Olivares as the architect of victory. Yet the year had really concluded in France’s favour. The losses at Guetaria, especially among experienced officers, impaired the Spanish navy’s efficiency. Perhaps more ominously, Philip IV had been obliged to recall two crack Irish regiments from Flanders to assist at Fuenterrabia. Future contingents of Irish recruits were now shipped directly to Spain, contradicting the overall Spanish aim of concentrating efforts in Flanders against the Dutch.⁴⁵

The pattern was repeated the following year when France switched to attack Roussillon at the opposite end of the mountains. Leaving 6,000 men to protect Provence and the Languedoc, Condé struck south with 16,500, taking Opoul on the border on 10 June and then the more significant fortress of Salces, just north of Perpignan, on 19 July. Viceroy Santa Coloma mobilized 11,237 Catalan militiamen, but Condé felt he had achieved enough, especially as sickness had reduced his force to 8,000 effectives. He retired to French territory, leaving a garrison in Salces. The Spanish counter-attacked with an army of 17,000 collected under Felipe Spinola, son of the great captain. Spinola lost 2,500 in fruitless assaults as Condé returned with 24,000 men to relieve the garrison. Having been repulsed from the Spanish siege lines on 2 November, Condé’s army dissolved in torrential rain, leaving just 2,500 with the colours. He retreated a second time, leaving Salces to surrender four days later.

The Salces campaign proved even more costly to Spain than the defence of Fuenterrabia. The Spanish lost 10,000 men, while only 2,146 of the Catalan militia remained by the time the town was retaken. Most of these went home over the winter, much to the disgust of Olivares who felt the province was not pulling its weight under the Union of Arms. Though Roussillon belonged to the kingdom of Catalonia, it had been saved by a largely Castilian, Irish, Walloon and Italian army.⁴⁶ Nine thousand Castilians were billeted on the southern part of the earldom, drawing protests from the Catalan authorities that their historical liberties were being infringed.

The Catalan and Portuguese Revolts

Olivares’ initial response was relatively mild, but he grew impatient when the Catalans continued their protests that by April 1640 had turned into armed resistance against the troops there to defend them. The troops were merely the focus of much deeper popular discontent at years of corrupt administration. The famed liberties were mainly restricted to the aristocracy that dominated the kingdom’s assembly (the Corts) and manipulated their privileges for their own ends. The right to bear arms, for example, was used to cloak widespread banditry as lords sponsored gangs to pursue feuds with their neighbours. ‘A mafia-type regime prevailed in parts of Catalonia, sustained by violence and extortion.’⁴⁷ Under these conditions, the protesters did not see their actions as disobedience but as an attempt to draw Philip IV’s attention to their plight.

Peasants armed with scythes entered Barcelona on 22 May 1640 and opened the jail. Alarmed, the viceroy cancelled the Corpus Christi procession scheduled for 7 June. Around 2,000 ‘reapers’ (segadors) protested anyway, triggering four days of rioting.⁴⁸ The viceroy and a leading judge were murdered, while other officials fled or went into hiding. Madrid and the provincial authorities blamed each other for the disorder that now spread across the kingdom.

The insurrection threatened the aristocracy’s privileges, but these would also be curtailed if Philip IV were to crush the revolt. The aristocrats sought another way out, opening negotiations with France, and agreeing on 29 September to open the ports to French ships and maintain the 3,000 auxiliaries despatched by Richelieu to assist them. Olivares believed he was facing a second Dutch Revolt and summoned an emergency levy of men across the loyal provinces. The marquis de los Vélez was sworn in as the new viceroy at the head of 20,000 men in southern Catalonia on 23 November. He retook Tortosa and the important port of Tarragona, which was also the seat of the archbishop of Catalonia.

Richelieu initially regarded the revolt as a welcome diversion from the crisis in Italy as the siege of Turin reached its climax. He was prepared to recognize Catalonia as an aristocratic republic that could serve as a useful buffer between France and Spain. The deteriorating situation following Los Vélez’s advance forced him to despatch another 13,000 men to reinforce the rebels. The royalists reached Barcelona at the end of December. Their appearance compromised the provincial government that was accused of failing to defend the kingdom. Following the murders of five more judges, the survivors placed themselves under French protection on 23 January 1641, accepting Louis XIII as ‘count of Barcelona’ and effectively ceding Roussillon. Three days later, the combined Franco-Catalan army defeated Los Vélez on Montjuic hill outside the city.

The rebels had passed the point of no return, but ‘acquired the burden of power without any of the fruits’.⁴⁹ Half the French effort was directed at conquering Roussillon where Spain still held Perpignan and other key fortresses. Only half the army was sent into Catalonia where fighting concentrated around Lérida (Lleida) to the west of Barcelona, the town that commanded the main road from Castile into the kingdom.

The Catalans were joined from December 1640 by the Portuguese, opening a new Iberian front to the west. The Portuguese had contributed a comparatively modest 1 million cruzados to Spain’s war effort after 1619. Madrid’s demand for 3 million in 1634 struck them as completely unreasonable. Tax revolts erupted in three of the kingdom’s provinces during 1637 just as key parts of the Portuguese empire were lost to the Dutch as well. These problems stirred the latent resentment at the loss of independence. Olivares’ suppression of the Council of Portugal in 1638 did nothing to help this. Anti-Hispanicism mixed with anti-Semitism as Lisbon Jews and Conversos were integrated into Spain’s financial system after 1627 to take up the slack left by the inability of Genoese bankers to manage the burgeoning debt. Anti-Semitism encouraged popular and clerical support for the break with Spain. The yearning for independence was expressed as the Sebastian myth – that the country’s last native king who ‘disappeared’ at the battle of Alcazarquivir (al-Qasr el-Kabir) in Morocco in 1578 would eventually return. Unlike in Bohemia or Catalonia, the presence of the native Braganza dynasty offered a powerful focus for the coming revolt.

Its trigger was the demand in June 1640 for 6,000 Portuguese troops to assist in crushing the Catalonians. Portuguese malcontents stormed the Lisbon palace of the vicereine, Margarita of Savoy, and threw her adviser, Miguel de Vasconcellos, out of the window in the Bohemian fashion on 1 December. The vicereine was bundled over the frontier and Spanish resistance collapsed. Apart from Ceuta in North Africa, the Portuguese colonial empire recognized the new regime in 1641.⁵⁰

The ensuing conflict is known in Portuguese history as the War of Restoration (1640–68). Left largely alone, the Portuguese were able to improvise an army almost from scratch and launch an offensive into Spain in June 1641. Pope Urban received their ambassador, implying recognition, in 1642, while the English agreed an alliance that was later (1660) renewed with the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II, the match that saw Bombay and, briefly, Tangiers pass to English rule. However, fighting remained limited until the 1650s because Olivares concentrated on combating the Catalan revolt, since this provided an open door to French invasion. The Portuguese opposed Spanish rule, but they still shared a common enemy in the Dutch who continued their conquests in the Portuguese colonies.

The Fiscal-Military Burden

The revolts indicated Spain’s imperial overstretch. The monarchy remained rich, but it could no longer cope with the mounting cost of war. Defence spending jumped from 7.3 million escudos in 1635 to over 13 million two years later thanks to the new struggle with France. The crown had already relied on reckless financial expedients in the 1620s, leaving few other options to meet the additional expenses. The fiscal system had reached diminishing returns by 1640. The government’s growing use of copper vellón coins encouraged creditors to insist on payment in silver. Silver imports remained high, despite periodic losses like the capture of the silver fleet at Matanzas, with the crown receiving an average of 6 to 8 million ducats every five years between 1618 and 1648. This was not enough, so it began confiscating private silver as it landed at Seville, seizing 5 million ducats worth by 1640. Merchants responded by falsifying their manifests and other fraudulent measures, thereby hitting the normal customs levy on private silver that now also fell. Meanwhile, taxpayers paid the government in its own debased currency, causing real revenue to fall by a third. The crown simply piled on new taxes, adding imposts on sugar, paper, chocolate, fish and tobacco in Castile in 1632, while doubling the existing indirect levy known as the millones.⁵¹

Manpower demands also grew. Over 3,000 Castilians were despatched annually to Flanders between 1631 and 1639, while total recruitment in Iberia was probably three times that level.⁵² The Castilian Cortes agreed to add another 8,000 men on top of the 18,000 it was already paying in response to the Fuenterrabia crisis in 1638. Though promised as a temporary measure, the crown proposed levying another 12,000 Castilians in 1640. Though Catalonia refused to provide the 6,000 demanded in 1637, Aragon, Valencia and Majorca were now sending more cash and recruits as well. The threat to the Pyrenees had already compelled the reinstitution of the militia in 1635, adding another burden since this had to be armed and maintained at provincial expense.

Altogether, recruitment increased between six and ten times between 1620 and the 1640s, depending on the region. The army reached its greatest strength of around 200,000 men by the early 1640s, but the opening of new fronts in Iberia meant that a higher proportion was now deployed at home. From a peak of 88,280 men in January 1640, the Army of Flanders declined slowly but steadily to 65,458 by February 1647. Though this was still higher than under Philip II, it was insufficient to fight both France and the Dutch Republic.

Even these numbers could no longer be sustained. Casualty and wastage rates may have reached 20,000 a year after 1635 and it was claimed widows formed a sixth of the population of Mérida by 1646. Emigration from Spain to the New World grew after 1621 as people sought a better life; the peninsula’s population probably declined by a quarter between the 1580s and 1630s, while agrarian output fell by 40 per cent. There were fewer people to carry the growing burden. Castilian taxes rose from the equivalent of less than 25 days’ wages in 1621 to 42 days’ by 1640. Arrears accumulated as taxpayers defaulted, owing 36 million ducats of millones alone by 1649. It proved harder to borrow to cover the shortfall. Expenditure through the central treasury totalled over 250 million ducats between 1621 and 1640. Of this, 30.5 million went to the civil budget; 44.2 million directly to the armed forces; and 175.8 million to bondholders and contractors for loans and interest.⁵³ The crown was compelled to decentralize, assigning the still-viable local sources of income directly to specific expenditures, such as fortress garrisons, losing oversight and accountability. The revolts only made this worse. By 1644 the crown was running out of assets to sell or pawn, having pledged revenue for the next four years to cover its existing liabilities.

Military service met growing resistance. Soldiers received only a third of what an agricultural labourer earned. Militia service was especially resented since it was obviously a disguised form of conscription. Only a quarter of the 11,000 Castilian militia mobilized in 1636 could be armed, while some of those serving in 1641 were given slings to hurl rocks, and even those with muskets had only four to six bullets each. Unsurprisingly, desertion was rife. Draft dodging extended to the grandees who were asked to raise their own regiments in 1632 in return for the dubious honour of calling themselves colonel. When the request was repeated in 1634, Olivares raised 1,500 men, but the others sent excuses.⁵⁴

Resistance to recruitment and taxation was motivated by more than fear of dying or inability to pay. There was also a growing sense that royal demands were no longer reasonable. Catalans felt justified in refusing conscription not only thanks to their kingdom’s traditional exemption, but because they were contributing in other ways, including sending their militia. Across society, people felt they were already doing more than they were obliged to. They did not feel responsible for the defeats, since command was reserved for the monarchy. Where the crown saw disobedience, its subjects saw ineptitude and injustice. The proliferation of special juntas created by Olivares to solve the mounting problems merely clogged an already slow administrative system, providing additional opportunities to dodge unwelcome commands.⁵⁵

Setting aside Philip IV’s personal shortcomings, which were detailed in Chapter 11, the Spanish monarchy was structurally ill-equipped to respond. Its ideal of majesty required the monarch to remain aloof to avoid association with potential failures. Olivares also had a personal interest in ensuring the king stayed out of daily affairs. To keep the monarch busy, he began expanding the royal apartments in the San Jerónimo monastery on the eastern outskirts of Madrid after 1630, creating what became the Buen Retiro palace. A cycle of twelve huge paintings was commissioned from leading artists to commemorate Spanish victories since 1621 to decorate the Hall of Realms inaugurated in 1635. The project entailed considerable risk – the paint was scarcely dry on Velázquez’s masterpiece depicting the capture of Breda when the Dutch retook the city in 1637. The temporary upsurge in patriotism following the French declaration of war was squandered as the king stayed in his pleasure palace while his subjects groaned under the oppressive burden.⁵⁶

The Colonial War

The general sense of failure was magnified by bad news from the Indies, the region that had come to symbolize Iberian wealth and power. The Portuguese held on to Goa and Mozambique, but were expelled from Japan by local opposition in 1639. A protracted struggle with the king of Kandy for control of Sri Lanka opened the island to the Dutch who joined the local campaign to eject the Portuguese after 1636. The conflict drained the resources of the Estado da India, undermining resistance elsewhere to the Dutch who had captured most of the Indonesian spice islands by 1641.⁵⁷

The situation in the West Indies was equally bleak. Using the Matanzas loot, the Dutch West India Company fitted out 67 ships, with 1,170 guns and carrying 7,280 men under Admiral Hendrik Loncq. This was twice the manpower and three times the number of ships deployed to defend Portuguese Brazil. Loncq captured Olinde and Recife, the principal ports of Pernambuco in February 1630. Olivares despatched Spain’s senior admiral, Antonio Oquendo, with 56 ships and 2,000 soldiers to retake the towns before the Dutch could penetrate the sugar-producing hinterland. Oquendo eventually defeated the Dutch off Abrolhos in September 1631. Battered and with no harbour in which to refit his ships, Oquendo was obliged to return to Lisbon.⁵⁸ The Dutch extended their positions, occupying the Guianan coast between the Amazon and modern Venezuela. The subsequent capture of Curaçao island in 1634 secured the local salt trade, vital to the Dutch herring industry.

A second relief effort in 1635 similarly failed to dislodge the Dutch, in stark contrast to the successful expedition a decade before. The Brazilian planters realized they would have to collaborate with the occupiers to safeguard their incomes. Portuguese control in Brazil shrank dramatically after the arrival of the energetic Prince of Nassau-Siegen as Dutch governor in January 1637. He won local support by allowing Catholic convents and monasteries to remain open, conducted the first scientific survey of the area and extended Dutch control to 1,800km of the coast by 1641 with a force of only 3,600 Europeans and 1,000 Indians. Two further Portuguese expeditions were repulsed in 1638 and 1640. Meanwhile, the Dutch capture of Elmina on Africa’s Gold Coast in 1637 gave them Portugal’s main slaving base. The Dutch exploited Portugal’s difficulties with Queen Njinga to take Luanda and other positions in Angola by 1641. Axim, the last Portuguese fort on the Gold Coast, fell the following year. Dutch slavers had shipped 30,000 Africans to Brazil by 1654. Dutch sugar exports to Europe between 1637 and 1644 already totalled 7.7 million florins, while other colonial produce worth 20.3 million was shipped over the same period.⁵⁹

Spain’s transatlantic trade collapsed in 1638–41. No treasure reached Seville in 1640. The Tierra Firme fleet brought only half a million ducats the following year, while the New Spain fleet sailed too late in the season and was hit by a hurricane as it left the Bahama Channel. Ten ships went down with 1.8 million ducats. The gross tonnage crossing the Atlantic by the later 1640s was nearly 60 per cent below that during the Twelve Years Truce. Silver continued to get through, but little more than 40 per cent of that produced in the New World was officially declared in Seville, while crown receipts were less than half those of the 1630s. Part of the decline was due to the increased cost of colonial defence, but much disappeared through fraud and the fact that the war forced the colonies to become more self-sufficient and develop their own trade outside the official system.

FROM BREDA TO ROCROI 1637–43

The Loss of Breda 1637

Spain’s mounting problems concerned the Empire because they undermined Philip IV’s war against the Dutch. A Spanish success in the Netherlands would enable Ferdinand III to withdraw his troops from Luxembourg, while a Spanish defeat would free France to reinforce its army in Germany. As the war dragged on, Ferdinand urged his cousin to at least settle with the Dutch and concentrate on the conflict with France. Spain viewed the events in the Empire with similar impatience, failing to understand why the emperor had not been able to crush Sweden after Nördlingen. Imperial commanders repeatedly promised Spain cooperation during the winter planning rounds, only to march in the opposite direction when the campaign opened to stop Swedish attacks on Saxony or Bohemia.

The effects were felt in 1637, dispelling the optimism following the Year of Corbie. The unexpected success of the unplanned invasion of France in 1636 encouraged Olivares to switch three-sevenths of the then 65,000-strong Army of Flanders to Artois and Hainault for an invasion of Picardy. However, he refused to surrender the remaining outposts on the Lower Rhine to obtain peace with the Dutch, tying down the bulk of the other troops in garrisons. Conscious that the strike force was insufficient, he pressed Ferdinand to make diversions along the Moselle and in Alsace that, as we have seen in the previous chapter, failed to materialize.

While Spain massed in the south, in the Republic Frederick Henry staked his political capital on a major blow against the northern frontier. He was under growing pressure to negotiate. Though he managed to sideline Adriaen Pauw, the leader of the Dutch peace party, by sending him as ambassador to Paris in 1636, his support was falling away. The open French alliance after 1635 split opinion among the Gomarist militants who had been the war’s principal backers, because Frederick Henry had promised Richelieu he would accept Catholicism in conquered areas. Moreover, Amsterdam merchants had no interest in liberating Antwerp, a city that might resume its former place as the region’s commercial centre. Increasingly, support for the war was restricted to three groups. The southern provinces of Zeeland, Utrecht and Gelderland still felt vulnerable and wanted Frederick Henry to capture more land beyond the Rhine as a buffer. These provinces were also home to the majority of Belgian Calvinist refugees who hoped military success would enable them to return home. Finally, there were those who benefited materially from the war, notably shareholders in the West India Company, an organization that proved remarkably successful in attracting investors from across the Republic.⁶⁰These groups were still strong in 1637, but it was significant that the Holland States implemented the first budget cut since the Twelve Years Truce, disbanding the most recently raised regiments in the winter of 1636–7.

Frederick Henry seized his chance to attack Breda on 21 July while the Spanish were still collecting troops on the southern frontier. Fernando had to march north again. Unable to break the Dutch siege, he tried to distract the stadholder by taking Venlo and Roermond. His absence enabled Cardinal de la Valette and 17,000 French to capture Landrecies and Maubeuge, forcing Fernando to retrace his steps southwards. Breda fell on 7 October, removing the last of Spain’s gains from its year of victories in 1625. The defeat prompted Olivares to revert to his Dutch strategy, instructing Fernando on 17 March 1638 to make a major effort to compel the Republic to accept reasonable terms in negotiations that were now reopened. Victory was no longer expected; the aim now was to leave the war with honour.⁶¹

The End of Imperial Assistance 1638–9

The planned Spanish offensive in Artois was aborted when well-coordinated Franco-Dutch attacks hit both the northern and southern frontiers of the Spanish Netherlands simultaneously in May 1638. Frederick Henry and 22,000 Dutch marched on Antwerp, while Marshal Châtillon and 13,000 French thrust towards St Omer, covered by La Force and another 16,000 troops in Picardy. The Spanish were pinned, but Frederick Henry retreated after a sortie from Antwerp captured 2,500 of the besiegers at Kallo, one of the worst Dutch defeats of the war. The reverse undermined the stadholder whose increasingly regal behaviour was attracting republican criticism. Piccolomini was obliged, as usual, to wait until sufficient troops had been collected to protect Cologne, before marching west to help Prince Tommaso of Savoy relieve St Omer in July. The French took a few minor posts and recovered Le Câtelet, but Louis XIII was disappointed.

The French command was entrusted to Richelieu’s relative, La Meilleraye, who marched on Hesdin with 14,000 men in 1639, covered by Châtillon and a similar number on the frontier. Feuquières and 20,000 troops were sent to pin Piccolomini in Luxembourg and prevent further imperial intervention by capturing Thionville, the town that gave access to the area between Namur and Koblenz. Spain had withheld its subsidy to compel Ferdinand to leave Piccolomini in Luxembourg.⁶² After being joined by Duke Charles of Lorraine, Piccolomini appeared unexpectedly at sunrise on 7 June with 14,000 Imperialists and Spanish outside Feuquières’ siege lines at Thionville. Unable to assemble from their billets, the French were routed, losing 7,000 prisoners and some of the best regiments in their army. Louis XIII’s presence with the main army meant the siege of Hesdin could not be abandoned without a serious loss of prestige and it was continued until the place surrendered on 29 June. Most of Piccolomini’s forces were then withdrawn from the area to confront the Swedish invasion of Bohemia, bringing the era of direct military cooperation between Spain and the emperor to an end.

The Downs

The diversion of French resources to Flanders and to the eastern end of the Pyrenees allowed Spain to collect a new armada at La Coruña tasked with breaking the blockade of Dunkirk and landing substantial reinforcements for a new offensive in 1640. It was a major undertaking, and negotiations were opened with England in February to secure naval assistance. The Spanish fleet comprised 70 warships and 30 transports, totalling 36,000 tonnes, with 6,500 sailors, 8,000 marines and 9,000 troops to reinforce the Army of Flanders. Admiral Sourdis raided the Spanish coast in June and August, but was unable to disrupt the preparations and withdrew exhausted, leaving it to the Dutch to intercept the armada when it finally sailed on 27 August.

Maarten Tromp attacked with seventeen ships as the Spanish entered the English Channel on 16 September. Oquendo was overconfident and failed to issue adequate instructions to his subordinates. He remained wedded to the traditional tactics of duels between rival ships, having won the battle off Pernambuco in 1631 by destroying the Dutch flagship. Tromp sailed in tight formation line ahead, so that each time a Spanish ship ventured to attack it was met by his combined firepower. An experienced Portuguese officer observed that ‘Oquendo, [was] like a brave bull which is ferociously attacked by a pack of hounds and blindly charges those which assault him, so he with his ship full of dead, wounded and mutilated gallantly tacked upon those which were nearest him.’⁶³Despite having pinned Tromp and his fleet against the French coast, Oquendo gave up around 3 p.m. because his own ship was too battered to continue. The two fleets were becalmed the next day, but Tromp was joined by another seventeen warships on 18 September and renewed the fight until he ran low on powder. With Dunkirk still blockaded, Oquendo realized there would be no safe port in which he could refit if he sailed beyond Calais, so he crossed the Channel to anchor at the Downs off Deal in Kent, believing the English would provide assistance.

Admiral Pennington appeared with thirty ships, but only to uphold English neutrality. The English did help ferry the troops and 3 million escudos in cash to Flanders by November, but apart from selling some overpriced gunpowder, did little to help the Spanish fleet. Most of the smaller ships escaped past the Dutch into Dunkirk, but Tromp had been reinforced by large armed merchantmen from the Dutch Indies companies’ fleets and now had 103 warships to Oquendo’s 46. Tromp entered English waters to attack on the morning of 21 October. Oquendo beached his twelve lighter ships and fought his way out with the rest. His flagship was hit 1,700 times, but made it to Mardyck. Ten of the beached ships were refloated early in November and also escaped to Flanders.

Tromp was severely criticized for his failure to capture the Spanish flagship. Oquendo refitted in Dunkirk and sailed back to Spain early the next year with 24 ships. While 1,500 troops had been intercepted, part of the mission had been completed successfully and the Army of Flanders mustered 77,000 men in December 1639, while the navy still totalled 34,131 tonnes. Despite the continued blockade, Spain managed to convoy another 4,000 recruits to Flanders from 1640 until Dunkirk fell in 1646. Nonetheless, the campaign cost at least 35 ships, over 5,000 dead and 1,800 prisoners. Losses in 1638–40 totalled 100 warships, 12 admirals and 20,000 sailors, or the equivalent of ten Trafalgars.⁶⁴

Spain could not sustain this rate of attrition. The effort was in vain since the entire strategy was flawed. As the 1640 campaign again proved, it was impossible to mount an offensive either north or south as long as France and the Republic coordinated their attacks against both frontiers. While the Dutch were repulsed, the French captured Arras on 9 August after a two-month siege. Following the armada’s defeat and the outbreak of the Catalan revolt, this was a major blow. Thousands fled to Lille as the French overran the rest of Artois. More bad news arrived in November when the French relieved Turin, but the situation worsened in December as the Portuguese rose in revolt.

The repeated setbacks altered the balance of Austro-Spanish relations. Having paid a respectable 426,000 florins to Austria in 1640, Spain was in no position to help any longer, delivering only 12,000 fl. the following year and 60,000 as a loan in 1642. Piccolomini had been recalled from Luxembourg and the emperor cancelled the Hohentwiel operation for which Spain had paid the Tirol to raise 4,000 men.⁶⁵ Spanish influence declined further as its experienced ambassador, Castañada, returned to Madrid in 1641, whereas Ferdinand was now represented in Madrid by Field Marshal Grana, a forceful character who shared the emperor’s opinion that Spain was wasting its resources and squandering opportunities for peace.

Clutching at Straws

Olivares grew increasingly desperate, renewing contacts with the French malcontents who had been plotting against Richelieu since 1636. Several had fled to London where they backed Spain’s fruitless efforts to persuade Charles I to join an alliance against Louis XIII. The outbreak of the British Civil Wars rendered this a lost cause. By 1640 Olivares had turned his attention to a group around Count Soissons who had fled to the sovereign duchy of Bouillon on the Netherlands frontier. Encouraged by the ambitious marquis de Cinq Mars, they believed they had the support of the French queen, Anne of Austria, and that a show of force would prompt Louis to dismiss Richelieu. Olivares regarded the conspirators as the ‘sole means of salvation from shipwreck’ and promised support.⁶⁶

The malcontents in exile in England were supposed to sail with a scratch fleet to raise the Huguenots in Guyenne, but never arrived. Details of the plot had already reached Richelieu by April 1641 and he altered his campaign plan to counter it, massing 12,000 men under Châtillon in the Champagne to block Soissons in Bouillon. The plotters panicked. Frédéric-Maurice de Bouillon declared that his current capacity as French commander in Italy prevented him from joining the rebels’ planned expedition. He nonetheless urged Soissons to act. General Lamboy arrived in Bouillon with 7,000 Spanish and Imperialists in June to give 9,500 troops altogether and they advanced south, defeating Châtillon at La Marfée on 9 July. Any hope of exploiting the victory was wrecked by Soissons’ death, allegedly self-inflicted by raising his visor with a loaded pistol that accidentally went off.⁶⁷ The revolt collapsed, enabling Richelieu to mop up the plotters by the following June once he had gathered more evidence and was certain of Louis XIII’s support. Cinq Mars was executed, while Bouillon escaped death by converting to Catholicism and surrendering his duchy. Implicated in treason again, Louis’ brother Gaston fled to Savoy.

Duke Charles of Lorraine had meanwhile accepted French terms on 2 April 1641 in order to recover his duchy as a French fief. However, his failure to assist France during Soissons’ invasion raised suspicions and led to his expulsion again in August. He invaded the duchy with 5,000 men from Luxembourg in April 1642, scoring a few minor successes, but lacked the means to exploit these and was back across the frontier within five months. The situation returned to that prior to April 1641, except that the duke had recaptured Sierck, La Mothe and Longwy.⁶⁸

The intervention of Soissons and Lorraine at least frustrated any immediate exploitation of the capture of Arras by France. Richelieu then switched resources to Catalonia, while the Dutch were distracted by the return of the war to north-west Germany at the beginning of 1642. At last the Spanish were able to go onto the offensive, but rather than being intended to force the Dutch to make peace, operations were now simply to distract France from attacking Spain itself. The new governor of the Spanish Netherlands, de Melo, advanced up the Scheldt into Artois, retaking Lens (19 April) and La Basseé (11 May). The two small French armies in the area under Harcourt and Guiche failed to coordinate an effective defence. De Melo and 19,000 troops caught Guiche’s 10,000 men at the abbey of Honnecourt on 26 May, killing 3,200 and capturing 3,400 along with most of the baggage and the pay chest.⁶⁹ The victory allowed de Melo to complete the recovery of northern Artois.

Changing of the Guard in Spain and France

The success did little to help Olivares who had become the scapegoat for Spain’s mounting problems. His fall from grace demonstrates how the exercise of power in early modern Europe rested as much on personal relationships as policy. Olivares had alienated those around him as his ‘method of government became more and more autocratic, his manner more tactless, his reactions more unreasonable’.⁷⁰ The poet Francisco de Quevedo was one of the many at the receiving end of the count-duke’s ill-temper, whisked away from his lodgings one night in 1639 to become one of the ‘disappeared’ (desaparecido) after he had passed the king a satirical attack on Olivares written on a napkin.

The discontent was fanned by the queen and other court ladies, notably Margarita of Savoy who blamed Olivares for failing to support her in Portugal. Their efforts were discreetly encouraged by Ambassador Grana on Ferdinand’s behalf. Philip IV sent Olivares a careful and tactful letter on 17 January 1643, presenting dismissal as a gracious response to his repeated requests to resign. Grandees rushed to Madrid to ensure the king did not change his mind and angry crowds gathered as Olivares finally left for his estates five days later.

A few of the count-duke’s closest associates were arrested, but policy remained unchanged. Philip intended to govern himself. He attracted some sympathy after the deaths of his wife (1644) and son (1646), but remained an uninspiring monarch. He relied increasingly on Olivares’ nephew Haro, who eventually emerged as the new prime minister after 1648. Many of Olivares’ other protégés retained their posts because their experience was invaluable. The problems remained the same and they were unable to think of an alternative to the count-duke’s strategy of conservación and reputación.

In France, Richelieu died on 4 December 1642, followed by Louis XIII on 14 May, leaving the crown to his son aged four and a half. Queen Anne had been largely ignored for the previous thirteen years, having been distrusted by her husband thanks to her Spanish birth. She now outmanoeuvred both Gaston and the prince de Condé to claim sole regency, distributing so many rewards to secure support that one courtier quipped that the French language had been reduced to the five words, ‘the queen is so kind’.⁷¹The government was staffed with men more inclined to the dévot peace policy, but continuity was symbolized by Anne herself, who took up residence in the Palais Cardinal bequeathed by Richelieu to the crown and now renamed the Palais Royal. She also relied on his protégé Mazarin, who had been involved in drafting French peace objectives.

Despite their foreign births, both Anne and Mazarin identified with France and rejected inducements from Philip IV to make a quick peace. They were determined to wear their opponents down by a war of attrition until they improved their terms. Mazarin was more pragmatic than Richelieu and was willing to abandon the chimera of universal peace and the slogan of ‘German Liberty’ that had been considered essential to French prestige. He was also more interested in larger territorial gains since these played better to the home audience that needed to be convinced he was the best man to guide the monarchy.

The Battle of Rocroi 1643

The Flanders campaign would test the two new regimes. De Melo was ordered to repeat his success of the previous year to distract France from attacking other Spanish territory. Leaving 15,000 men to protect the northern frontier, he advanced in four columns. They converged on the small fortified town of Rocroi near the Meuse valley and besieged it from 15 May. Despite de Melo’s claim that it was ‘the key to Champagne’,⁷² Rocroi had little strategic value, but the attack assumed great political significance given Louis XIII’s death the day before. The new regime in France could not afford to start with a defeat. Command of the northern army had just been entrusted to Condé’s son, the duc d’Enghien, as part of Richelieu’s strategy of neutralizing threats from the grandees by distributing patronage. Having removed the elder Condé as a liability, the cardinal persuaded Louis XIII to compensate the family by appointing the prince’s inexperienced son to what was expected to be a secondary front. It was now too late to change these arrangements that seem wise only with hindsight. D’Enghien has entered French history as the ‘Great Condé’ from the title he assumed on his father’s death in 1646. Fourth in line to the throne, he was prickly and self-important, but conviction in his own distinguished lineage gave him unshakeable confidence.⁷³

D’Enghien was determined to prove himself in battle and overruled advice to force de Melo to lift the siege by threatening his communications with the Netherlands. Instead, France’s stability was staked on an extremely risky direct attack. Rocroi could only be approached along tracks through a forest and the French army would be exposed as it emerged until it could deploy on the plain south-east of the town. D’Enghien was also slightly outnumbered, with 15,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and 12 guns to de Melo’s 18,000 foot, 5,000 horse and 18 cannon. The Spanish army also included many of the regiments that had helped destroy Guiche the year before.

Whether by luck or design, the French timed their arrival well as they appeared late on the afternoon of 18 May and the day was too far advanced for de Melo to begin battle. He deployed on the plain opposite the French, sending urgent orders to General Beck with the fourth and last of his columns to join him. Both armies slept on the plain, but d’Enghien was alerted to his opponent’s dispositions by a deserter who told him that de Melo had posted 500 musketeers on the edge of the forest. Three hundred French musketeers caught the Spanish here still fast asleep at 3 a.m. and routed them. The artillery then opened up on both sides, but visibility was still poor, giving time for the two armies to stand to. Both commanders placed their infantry in two lines in the centre with their artillery in front, flanked by two lines of cavalry on either wing.⁷⁴ The French also had a reserve of their best infantry and cavalry as a third line under Sirot behind the centre. The Spanish line stretched 2,500 metres between the eastern edge of the forest and the St Anne marsh to the west. The French would have to break through if they wanted to relieve Rocroi. The Spanish cavalry were still organized as independent squadrons, whereas the French had theirs under tighter control grouped into regiments. They copied the Swedish practice of attaching musketeers to the cavalry to increase firepower.

De Melo was happy to wait, expecting Beck’s imminent arrival. Impatient, d’Enghien led the French cavalry on the right to attack around 5 a.m., soon followed by La Ferté and the horsemen on the left. La Ferté began his charge too far away and his horses were blown by the time they neared the German cavalry under Isenburg on the Spanish right. The French were routed, many fleeing into the marsh or forest. The French infantry fell back, abandoning some of their artillery. Meanwhile, d’Enghien’s attack had been broken by Albuquerque’s counter-charge that overran most of the supporting French musketeers. It was now that the superior French organization made a difference. The Spanish cavalry had dispersed and took too long to rally, allowing Sirot to move the reserve to block Isenburg long enough for some of the French cavalry on the left to return and help him push the German troopers from the field. D’Enghien despatched Gassion with half of his cavalry for a second attack that eventually forced Albuquerque’s scattered men to retreat.

The Spanish infantry were now exposed. D’Enghien attacked their second line with the other half of his cavalry, hitting the Walloon regiments immediately on the left. He struck each regiment in turn, using weight of numbers and a combination of charges and supporting firepower from his infantry to break them. One by one, the Walloon regiments left the field, followed by the Germans further west. The French now turned on the stronger first line, hitting the Italians on its left. They repulsed the initial attack, but then left the field in good order, probably on their own initiative. The French were happy to let them leave since this isolated the five Spanish tercios. Three were broken after further hard fighting, but the other two repulsed three more attacks with a general salvo at fifty paces. It was now 10 a.m. and they were short of ammunition. The French were also exhausted and feared Beck’s arrival. D’Enghien offered terms. One regiment of about 2,000 men laid down its arms in return for being allowed to march home across France. The other soldiers remained defiant, but further resistance was hopeless and they soon surrendered as prisoners of war. De Melo had escaped, dropping his marshal’s baton, to join Beck on the other side of the forest. D’Enghien captured Thionville on 10 August after a long siege, and then Sierck on 2 September, eliminating the duke of Lorraine’s main base. These were welcome gains, but hardly indicative of Spanish collapse.

Rocroi owes its place in military history to the French propaganda that hailed it as a major victory, as well as Condé self-promotion, since it cemented d’Enghien’s reputation. This in turn ensured he influenced eighteenth- and nineteenth-century generals and found his way onto staff college syllabuses. The latter regularly cite the battle as a demonstration of the superiority of French linear tactics, combining infantry firepower with cavalry charges.⁷⁵ Victory was in fact due to superior regimental command and control. Spanish firepower successfully repulsed the French, but their key commanders were killed or wounded relatively early on, while de Melo failed to capitalize on the initial success by sending his infantry forward. Spanish losses were serious, especially because they included so many veterans and came in the humiliating form of surrender.⁷⁶ The French took 3,862 prisoners, excluding those they allowed to march home. Most of the prisoners were exchanged in July 1643 for the men taken at Honnecourt. Other Spanish casualties totalled 3,500, compared to 4,500 French killed and wounded. The French lost a further 7,000, mainly to sickness, in the rest of the campaign. The Army of Flanders remained potent, numbering 77,517 in December, compared to the Dutch establishment that had sunk to 60,000. Rocroi’s real significance was the French avoidance of a defeat that might have destabilized Anne’s regency and obliged the country to make peace.

France’s success was not matched by their Dutch allies who were losing interest in the European war. Many in the Republic began to see the Spanish Netherlands not as a threat, but as a buffer against an aggressive, expansionist France. Spain’s reception of Dutch envoys as full ambassadors signalled a willingness for peace on the basis of independence. The States of Holland forced a further reduction in the size of the army in 1641–2 and by 1643 had blocked the secret committees that had allowed Frederick Henry to manage war and diplomacy unsupervised. His own failing health contributed to the growing inclination for peace and by March 1644 only Utrecht and Zeeland still opposed a compromise with Spain. The Westphalian congress could begin at last.