19

Pressure to Negotiate 1644–5

THE WESTPHALIAN CONGRESS

The Westphalian peace congress began two years late and took a further five to complete, yet it proved to be a milestone in global relations. Its immediate achievements were mixed and fell short of contemporary expectations. The practical results were nonetheless substantial, while the ideals and methods of the peace-makers have profoundly influenced the theory and practice of international relations to the present. The emperor’s decision to participate proved decisive in the congress’s success. Ferdinand ratified the Hamburg Peace Preliminaries only in July 1642, followed reluctantly by Philip IV on 22 April 1643. The deteriorating military situation and the prospect of more princes declaring their neutrality persuaded the emperor finally to convene the peace congress in 1643. Johann Krane arrived in Westphalia in May and completed the formalities necessary for the delegates to assemble in the designated venues of Münster and Osnabrück. His Spanish colleague arrived in October, while the French delegation appeared only in April 1644, followed gradually by others – the Dutch not until January 1646. Most delayed sending delegates until their own circumstances improved enough to permit them to negotiate from a position of strength. Some found waiting to their disadvantage, however, and Spanish participation was dictated by a deteriorating situation and the desire to preserve a united front with Austria.

The congress had been intended to bring a pax generalis, but each participant understood this differently and there was no clear agreement of what constituted ‘Europe’ or how that continent should interact with other parts of the world. In practice, no attempt was made to tackle tensions in the Baltic and the Balkans, or to settle the British Civil Wars – the participants in the latter were not even represented, nor were Russia, the Ottoman empire and some minor Italian states like Modena. Instead, the congress addressed the three great conflicts of Central and western Europe, with the Thirty Years War paramount. Of the 194 official participants, 178 came from the Empire. These included the emperor, the electors and another 132 imperial Estates, as well as 38 other parties like the imperial knights and the Hansa.¹ The other sixteen participants were European states like France, Sweden and Spain. Denmark and Poland were present to safeguard their German interests and did not negotiate on their respective problems with Sweden. Italian concerns were treated as subsidiary to the Franco-Spanish war, as were the Catalan and Portuguese revolts, though Spain refused to discuss these. Colonial issues were subsumed within Spanish-Dutch talks with no attempt to involve non-Europeans.

Despite these shortcomings, the congress was a ground-breaking event. Medieval church councils were the closest precedent, but this was the first truly secular international gathering. It drew on established protocol and negotiating styles, but its sheer scale and the complexity of the issues compelled innovation and dissemination of common guidelines. First and foremost, the congress eroded the medieval principle of hierarchy. The presence of so many representatives from rulers of different rank required a new, simpler form of interaction. It was agreed that all kings had the title of ‘majesty’ and that all royal and electoral ambassadors were to be addressed as ‘excellency’ and could arrive in a coach pulled by six horses. Such matters were far from trivial. They represented a major step towards the modern concept of an order based on sovereign states interacting as equals, regardless of their internal form of government, resources, or military potential. The congress established a new way to resolve international problems through negotiation among all interested parties. Attempts to resolve later European wars drew directly on this precedent, notably the congresses of Utrecht (1711–13) and Vienna (1814–15), and the method was extended in line with the changing global order at the Paris Conference of 1919 and, ultimately, with the United Nations.²

Negotiating Methods

Acceptance of full equality lay far in the future, however. The delegations arrived to impress as part of a deliberate strategy to demonstrate status and overawe rivals. Altogether, 235 official envoys and representatives attended, but the total number of participants was far larger, since all were accompanied by additional staff. The Swedes rolled up with an entourage numbering 165 that included its own medical personnel, cooks, a tailor and a personal shopper.³ The two principal French envoys arrived with 319 assistants, while their chief negotiator, the duc de Longueville, had 139 bodyguards and 54 liveried servants. Even delegations from imperial cities could include seven or eight staff. Spain and France each spent over half a million talers on their representation, while that of the emperor, Sweden and the Dutch cost about a quarter of a million apiece. The total cost was around 3.2 million, which was chiefly spent on food and entertaining, rather than bribes or other costs.⁴

The presence of so many people nearly overwhelmed their hosts. The 29-man Bavarian delegation had to share 18 beds, while the Swiss representative lodged above a wool weaver’s shop in a room that stank of sausage and fish oil. The congress nonetheless represented a welcome boost to local economies hard hit by the war. Buildings were renovated as delegations sought accommodation appropriate for their political ambitions. The locals were regarded mostly with disdain as provincial bumpkins, who drank beer instead of wine and ate pumpernickel bread.⁵

The proceedings attracted wide public interest, which the delegates deliberately cultivated and manipulated. At least 27 German-language papers alone reported the negotiations, which ensured news reached the furthest corners of the Empire. Key documents, like the Franco-Swedish peace proposals, swiftly appeared in print, though not always accurately. There were visual depictions too, notably engravings of Gerard ter Borch’s painting of the oath ceremony sealing the Spanish-Dutch peace in May 1648.⁶

The congress broke new ground in that it dispensed with an official chair or mediator. Ironically, Fabio Chigi, the papal envoy, undermined the pontiff’s pretensions to broker peace by helping to simplify protocol. There were no plenary sessions. Instead, negotiations proceeded through bilateral talks, often held in parallel with multiple partners. Talks with the Swedes were held in Osnabrück, while those with France took place in Münster. Mediation was restricted to that by Chigi and his able Venetian colleague Alvise Contarini who acted as go-betweens for France with the Habsburgs who refused formal direct talks. This enabled the emperor and Spain to maintain a common front, though Spain could negotiate directly with the Dutch because Ferdinand was not party to that conflict. Religious differences mattered little and Protestants and Catholics were present in both venues. Major powers, like the emperor, maintained envoys in both towns, while representatives met frequently for more informal talks in Lengerich, Ladbergen and other villages half-way between the two. Such meetings were essential for France and Sweden to coordinate their common front at the congress.⁷ Münster remained the venue for Spanish-Dutch talks to settle their war. It also saw negotiations for peace between France and the Empire. Osnabrück assumed greater importance once the imperial Estates were admitted and became the venue where most of the Empire’s problems were resolved.

The process was slowed by the need to confer with home governments, especially as the military situation kept opening new possibilities while closing others. It took eight to ten days for letters to reach Paris, longer for those to Vienna and nearly a month to arrive in Madrid. The postal service was intended to be protected. The Dutch garrison in Maastricht, cut off from the Republic and a law unto itself, caused disruption until international protests finally encouraged better behaviour from 1646. Other, more covert interception also occurred as the envoys tried to discover their opponents’ intentions.⁸

The Representatives and their Objectives

The emperor had the most impressive negotiating team, though Maximilian von Trauttmannsdorff, its leading member, did not arrive until November 1645 when he became the ‘dominant figure in the congress’.⁹ Affairs were handled in the interim by the competent Count of Nassau-Hadamar, seconded by counts Auersperg and Lamberg who were chosen for their social status and experience in the Reichshofrat. Their non-noble assistants were men of real ability. In addition to the Westphalian Krane who helped open the congress, the other key figure was Dr Volmar, the Alsatian chancellor who had won the trust of both the emperor and Archduchess Claudia of the Tirol. Volmar was a disagreeable character who undermined colleagues to further his own career, but he was also an expert on the complex situation in Alsace and his advice proved invaluable in negotiations with France. The emperor’s presence was enhanced by additional envoys representing him in his capacities as king of Bohemia and archduke of Austria, as well as a delegation for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm on behalf of his eight ecclesiastical territories.

Spain had the weakest team, represented only by junior officials until Count Peñaranda arrived in July 1645. A protégé of Olivares, his career in financial administration had scarcely prepared him for a task that was made harder by his imperfect command of French. Worse, he hated being in Münster, complaining constantly that the wet Westphalian weather was ruining his health while the negotiations kept him from his family. His friend Castel Rodrigo was soon replaced as governor of the Spanish Netherlands by Leopold Wilhelm whom Peñaranda, rightly, suspected of promoting Austrian rather than Spanish interests. If this was not bad enough, he was at odds with his principal assistant Saavedra who, as Spain’s leading political thinker, resented his subordinate role. Both men were at least united in their pessimism over Spain’s prospects. Saavedra believed his country was in terminal decline. His recall in the summer of 1646 isolated Peñaranda still further. However, the real problem was that none of the Spanish representatives really negotiated, instead just relaying the wishes of their government, which were often overtaken by military events by the time they arrived in the post.

Jealousies likewise divided the French and Swedish delegations. Oxenstierna was reluctant to return to Germany and had already appointed his son Johan as principal envoy in October 1641. Johan waited in Stralsund until the congress opened in 1643. In contrast to his father, he was coarse and disagreeable, determined to assert Swedish power and extract the maximum for his country’s costly intervention in Germany. His presence was resented by Salvius, twenty years his senior, who had represented Sweden in the Empire since the chancellor returned to Stockholm in 1636. His long experience of imperial politics convinced him that peace could come only through compromise and he maintained a private correspondence with Queen Christina who thought the same and promoted this line in Paris through Grotius as her own envoy. The divisions in the French team were more personal than political. The two principal negotiators were both members of the administrative nobility, but d’Avaux was richer and more ostentatious, and sought to displace his colleague Abel Servien. The latter had Mazarin’s full support and was determined to obtain the maximum benefit for France, whereas d’Avaux was rather more flexible, though he was also concerned not to associate France with concessions to Protestants. The duc de Longueville was sent in June 1645 to stop the bickering and act as an imposing figurehead for the delegation.

The French and Spanish instructions each included the identically phrased objective of achieving ‘peace for Christendom’ (repos de la Chrestienté/reposo de la Christiandad).¹⁰ This was not intended in an abstract, unrealistic sense of resolving all European conflicts. Instead, both countries wanted to end all their own problems in a settlement the other could not overturn later. The French conceived this in line with their general policy to act as arbiter of Europe. Peace would bring a favourable alliance that would collectively guarantee the treaty and assist France to uphold it in future. The Spanish thought more in terms of traditional Habsburg dominance and this explains their reluctance for the emperor to make peace without them. Tragically, these aims were mutually exclusive, condemning both powers to fight on in the hope of achieving the military advantage necessary to arrange peace on their terms. Their objectives remained distinctly early modern, despite the underlying trend at the congress pointing to the future. Reputation remained paramount, since it was integral to sustaining pretensions to the pole position in a European order that was still conceived as a hierarchy. If the negotiations were to fail, both parties wanted to make sure the other took the blame. This engendered an atmosphere of mistrust and the rival delegations were quick to accuse each other of using religion as a pretext for seeking universal, hegemonic monarchy.

Spain’s proposals were drawn up in June 1643 using guidelines already prepared by Olivares in 1636 for the Cologne congress. They reflected an era when Spain had been stronger, and the overall objective of restoring the pre-war status quo with France was wholly unrealistic in the aftermath of the Catalan and Portuguese revolts. At the most, Peñaranda was authorized to cede some towns the French had already captured in Artois, and possibly also the indefensible Franche-Comté. These were to be disguised as a dowry for a marriage between Philip IV’s daughter Maria Theresa and the boy king Louis XIV, to preserve Spanish prestige. In return, the French were expected to withdraw from Lorraine, Italy and Catalonia. Spain really had only one card to play: a separate peace with the Dutch to concentrate on winning the war against France.

The imperial instructions from July 1643 were deliberately vague so as to preserve a united front with Bavaria and Saxony who were both sent copies. The emperor’s envoys were told to continue the existing policy of seeking a compromise peace with Sweden in order to isolate France. Formally, Sweden was to be offered the same terms as presented by Saxony in the 1635 negotiations, but secretly the emperor had already authorized the sacrifice of Pomerania. No such concessions were to be granted France, because the emperor considered all matters settled by the Treaty of Regensburg that Richelieu had failed to ratify in 1630. These international issues were to be arranged first to keep them separate from the constitutional issues that Ferdinand still hoped to settle on the basis of the Peace of Prague. France and Sweden already anticipated this by publicly championing ‘German liberty’ and insisting the imperial Estates be admitted as full participants at the congress. They deliberately omitted their own territorial demands in both their initial proposals of 4 December 1644, and their second, more specific set on 11 June 1645, precisely not to alienate German opinion. The French made a fuss about restoring the elector of Trier, Sötern, whose arrest featured so prominently in their declaration of war in 1635. In addition, the emperor was to grant a full amnesty extending to the Bohemians and return the distribution of land and religious observance to the situation in 1618.

Serious disagreements between the two crowns obliged them to omit other issues from their joint proposals. Sweden backed the full restoration of the Palatinate and the exiles to preserve its status as champion of constitutional liberties. France continued to court Bavaria and was prepared to give the Palatine title and the Upper Palatinate to Maximilian. Each wanted the other to give ground over territory to secure a compromise with the emperor. France rejected concessions at the expense of the imperial church, while the Swedes were divided among themselves over Pomerania. Horn opposed annexation altogether, Salvius would settle for half, while Johan Oxenstierna demanded the entire duchy. More fundamentally, the two allies found it hard to reconcile their diverging priorities. Sweden needed money to satisfy its army to disengage with honour, while France had to split the emperor and Spain to cope with its problem of fighting two wars simultaneously. The proposals were not yet intended to secure peace but to present a positive public face and gauge the enemy’s willingness to negotiate.

Diplomacy remained wedded to the warfare that would shape the congress over the next five years. The first round concentrated on deciding who could participate in the talks, since Spain objected to the presence of Catalan and Portuguese delegations, France refused to talk to the Lorrainers, Sweden rejected Danish pretensions to mediate, and the emperor struggled to exclude the imperial Estates. These issues were resolved by the military campaigns of 1644–5, opening the second round that discussed the dispute over the imperial constitution, and the demands for territory and compensation lodged by France and Sweden. These issues made up most of the peace settlement and were decided in a series of agreements during 1646–7. Progress was hindered by persistent anxiety, because all arrangements remained provisional and might be revoked unilaterally if one party’s fortunes improved on the battlefield. The congress resembled a construction site with rival teams of argumentative builders, some periodically dismantling parts of the structure the others were still working on. The final round involved the struggle to convert these provisional agreements into a common, definitive treaty and the decision over whether any participants would be excluded from the peace during 1648.

FRANCE IN GERMANY 1644

The Freiburg Campaign

The situation appeared promising for the emperor at the beginning of 1644. Sweden’s decision to attack Denmark at the end of the previous year (see below, pp.685–91) removed the threat to the Habsburg hereditary lands. The forces there were reduced to 11,000 men under the rehabilitated Field Marshal Götz, allowing Ferdinand to mass 21,500 under Gallas who marched down the Elbe to help the Danes. Buoyed by their success at Tuttlingen the previous year, Mercy’s Bavarians totalled 19,640, or twice the size of France’s Army of Germany despite Mazarin spending 2 million livres to rebuild it during the winter. This was the first time since 1637 that the emperor and his allies began the year with an army large enough to go on the offensive on the Upper Rhine.

General Turenne had been recalled to command in Alsace, but his forces were too weak to fulfil Mazarin’s expectations of conquering land beyond the Black Forest. Mercy attacked instead, retaking Überlingen on 10 May, eliminating the last French gain from 1643. Having been repulsed from the Hohentwiel, he left 1,000 men to blockade Widerhold’s garrison and crossed the Black Forest to recover the areas lost in the 1638 campaign. Turenne was forced to abandon his own advance through the Forest Towns, double back into Alsace and re-cross to save Breisach. Duke Charles broke off another of his periodic negotiations and renewed raiding into Lorraine. Mazarin was obliged to redirect d’Enghien from covering Champagne to retrieve the situation on the Rhine. Despite dashing 33km a day, d’Enghien arrived too late to save Freiburg, which had surrendered to the Bavarians after a prolonged bombardment on 29 July.

D’Enghien brought 4,000 elite French cavalry and 6,000 infantry, giving the combined force at Krozingen south-west of Freiburg 9,000 horse, 11,000 foot and 37 guns. Typically pugnacious, d’Enghien proposed an immediate attack to throw Mercy back over the mountains. Turenne pointed out the strengths of the enemy position at a council of war on 3 August. Freiburg lay near the western end of a deep valley narrowing further east in the mountains to a pass that gave access to Tuttlingen and the upper Danube. The entrance to the valley was flanked by the steep, wooded Schönberg hill on the south side, with the thick Moos Wood to the north. A stream close to the wood further restricted access, while Mercy had blocked the other side with two redoubts on the Bohl hill, part of the lower slope of the Schönberg above Ebingen village. Both were commanded by another, larger ‘star redoubt’ further up, while a smaller sconce represented a third barrier behind that at the St Wolfgang Chapel. These positions were held by five veteran Bavarian infantry regiments under Ruischenberg, the former Wolfenbüttel commandant. The rest of the army was further north on the other side of the stream behind a further series of entrenchments between Wendlingen and Haslach villages, with 340 men in Freiburg itself. Campaign attrition had reduced Mercy’s force, but he still mustered 8,200 cavalry, 8,600 infantry and 20 guns.¹¹

Turenne and Rosen proposed going north along the Rhine to cross the Black Forest through the Glotter valley at Denzingen above Freiburg, and so force Mercy to retreat by threatening his communications with Württemberg. Such a manoeuvre would become standard practice from

the later seventeenth century, but d’Enghien insisted on a frontal assault. He did consent to send Turenne’s army through the Bannstein Pass that separated the Schönberg from the Black Forest to the east and led to a narrow valley through Merzhausen behind Mercy’s main position. Turenne had a long march from Krozingen to reach the Bannstein Pass, but d’Enghien decided nonetheless to attack that day, so both assaults were scheduled for 5 p.m., leaving only three hours of daylight to achieve success. D’Enghien synchronized two watches and gave one to Turenne.

D’Enghien began on time, sending three infantry brigades from Ebingen to assault the Bohl redoubts. The French suffered horrendous casualties as they struggled under heavy fire across sharpened branches and other obstacles placed to slow their advance. The successive attacks of the first two brigades were thrown back. D’Enghien led the third forward covered by a screen of musketeers sent ahead to provide covering fire. The display of reckless bravery showed d’Enghien at his best. Allegedly, he threw his marshal’s baton into the first redoubt and told his men to fetch it. His presence induced some men from the first two brigades to rejoin the attack. The tired defenders had virtually exhausted their ammunition repelling the earlier assaults and fled when some Frenchmen appeared in their rear having worked they way through the trees. D’Enghien had lost 1,200 men, or one-in-three of his force and twice what the Bavarians suffered. It was now dark and raining heavily, and the Bavarian main defences had yet to be breached.

Turenne had begun his attack three-quarters of an hour early, sending 1,000 musketeers to clear the Bannstein Pass only to discover that Mercy had anticipated them and blocked the valley with five lines of entrenchments. An outpost on top of the Schönberg had already signalled Turenne’s approach, enabling Mercy to move four infantry regiments from his main army to reinforce the one already at the pass. They arrived in time to repulse Turenne’s advance guard. Turenne renewed the attack, but the confined space prevented him using his numerical superiority to full effect. He broke off the action at 4 a.m. having lost 1,600 men, or four times the enemy losses. The old Bernhardine infantry, already depleted at Tuttlingen, now effectively ceased to exist. However, Mercy recognized he would be cut off if another attack got through the pass and so ordered a general withdrawal to the Schlierberg ridge further up the Freiburg valley.¹²

The rain continued throughout the next day, turning the valley floor to mud. The French occupied Merzhausen and Mercy’s old camp at Uffhausen, but were too exhausted to do more, leaving the Bavarians the whole day to entrench their new position. A large redoubt was constructed at the northern end for ten cannon, with a further seven guns on the southern, higher end called the Wohnhalde. A third, smaller battery was placed on the saddle between the two peaks. The left could not be turned, because there was virtually no space between the Wohnhalde and the spur of the Black Forest leading north from the Bannstein Pass. Mercy thus massed his cavalry on his right between the Schlierberg and the Dreisam river flowing through Freiburg. The French now had no choice but to launch another frontal assault if they wanted to renew the fight.

It was a bright, sunny morning as the French moved into position on 5 August. D’Enghien ordered Turenne to make the main attack from Merzhausen against the Wohnhalde since the entire Bavarian position would have to be abandoned if this fell. Turenne’s approach would be protected by the Becher Wood composed of fir trees with limited undergrowth to hinder movement. D’Enghien would make a diversionary attack against the rest of the ridge to prevent Mercy reinforcing his left. Poor staff work frustrated this plan. Both generals rode to verify a report that the Bavarians were retreating and were not on hand to stop the commander on their left beginning a frontal assault by mistake. The sound of gunfire prompted Turenne’s subordinates to launch their planned attack as well. D’Enghien again dived into the fray, rallying the infantry of the Army of Germany as they were repulsed from the Wohnhalde, and leading further, equally fruitless assaults. By the afternoon he had used up most of Turenne’s army to little effect, and rode north to his own force on the left that had also been repulsed in the morning. He sent the infantry forward again. The slope here was less steep, but it was still a hard climb through vineyards under the steady fire of the Bavarian battery and musketeers on the top. Three attacks were repulsed, so d’Enghien dismounted his cavalry and sent these up as well. The Bavarians were tiring, so Mercy’s brother Kaspar led the cavalry round the north end of the ridge in a counter-attack to stem the French advance.

The sky was completely obscured by gun smoke when the French drew off at 5 p.m., having lost another 4,000 killed and wounded. Unsympathetically, d’Enghien is said to have exclaimed ‘Bah! So many will be conceived in a night in Paris.’¹³ The Bavarians lost 1,100, mostly wounded, but Kaspar was killed during his attack. There is considerable evidence that his brother’s death plunged Mercy into despair.¹⁴ He was certainly pessimistic and convinced he was outnumbered. His army was also exhausted and its horses were weak from lack of fodder.

D’Enghien had indeed been reinforced by over 5,000 men, drawn from every garrison in the vicinity. However, even he recognized the necessity of accepting his subordinates’ advice and set off four days later to turn Mercy’s position by marching through the Glotter valley. Mercy appreciated the danger and raced east to the St Peter’s valley that intersected the Glotter at the abbey of that name. His cavalry secured the abbey that evening, and the rest of the army began arriving at dawn the next day when Rosen appeared with the old Bernhardine cavalry. The Bavarian infantry broke Rosen’s charge with a well-timed volley and their cavalry chased him back up the Glotter. The Bavarians were nonetheless demoralized by having to retreat after such hard fighting. Their cavalry horses had been saddled for eight days due to the constant alarms. The entire French army arrived to support Rosen who gained the credit for Mercy’s precipitous retreat to Villingen. The French plundered the abandoned baggage, burned St Peter’s abbey and retired back across the Black Forest.

Freiburg was the longest and one of the toughest battles of the war. The damage done to the Bavarian army was serious enough, but what gave the action its true significance was the unexpected collapse of the imperial position on the middle Rhine. Turenne persuaded d’Enghien not to waste time retaking Freiburg, but to press northwards into the virtually undefended Lower Palatinate. The French overran Baden and the bishoprics of Speyer and Worms, and then captured Philippsburg after a three-week siege on 12 September. The latter had been in imperial hands since January 1635, but was defended by only 250 men and the hot weather had dried the marshes that protected it. Its loss was compounded by that of Mainz which surrendered without resistance five days later, because the cathedral canons wished to avoid a siege. Occupation by the Catholic French was an altogether different prospect from the earlier Protestant Swedish presence. The French installed a garrison of 500 men maintained at the citizens’ expense, but left the canons to administer the electorate throughout their occupation until 1650. The city’s rapid capitulation frustrated Mercy’s countermeasures as his reinforcements arrived to find the French already inside Mainz. He retook Pforzheim and Mannheim in early October, razing the latter’s defences to deny it as a potential French base. Gallas’s defeat (see below, p. 690) prevented him doing more and he retired to winter in Franconia, Württemberg and the Lake Constance area.

Mercy’s tactical victory at Freiburg had been completely overturned by the subsequent French strategic success. In Philippsburg, Speyer and Mainz, France at last had a viable route into Germany that avoided the Black Forest. The war shifted from the Rhineland into Swabia and Franconia, sealing Duke Charles’s fate. The emperor, Bavaria and Spain were all too busy to help him. The French captured La Mothe in 1645, and Longwy in 1646, eliminating his last Lorraine strongholds and leaving him a fugitive in the Netherlands.

Westphalia

Cologne was also left largely to its own devices. It was clear by 1641 that peace would entail concessions to Protestant princes at the expense of the ecclesiastical territories. Though not an hereditary ruler, Ferdinand of Cologne took his responsibilities towards the imperial church seriously. The Treaty of Goslar had recovered Hildesheim and reduced his immediate enemies by neutralizing the Guelphs. The start of the Westphalian congress extended neutrality to Münster and Osnabrück, removing the latter as a Swedish base. The elector widened this by agreeing in December 1643 to pay 5,500 tlr a month to Sweden in return for their recognition of Hildesheim as neutral.

These moves isolated Hessen-Kassel. Amalie Elisabeth had no interest in wider French objectives and recalled Eberstein’s troops from Guébriant’s army as it returned to the Upper Rhine in 1642. She had 4,000 men poised to attack her Darmstadt rival when news arrived of France’s defeat at Tuttlingen. Units then had to be redirected to East Frisia in 1644 to face down the count who was assembling his own troops to eject the Hessian garrison, leaving insufficient forces to attempt anything else that year. It was obvious the Hessians were too weak to act unilaterally.

Ferdinand of Cologne saw an opportunity to be rid of them for good, and summoned his neighbours to pool their dwindling resources and create a common army under the collective authority of the Westphalian Kreis. This would free them from dependency on imperial units that were recalled all too often at awkward moments. The army would expel the Hessians and then uphold neutrality against all-comers. Brandenburg refused to cooperate, preferring to reinforce its own garrisons in Cleves and Mark. Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg also objected, convinced the scheme would not work. Instead he opened negotiations with France in the summer of 1643 in the mistaken belief Mazarin would restrain the Hessians in return for his assistance in frustrating Cologne’s plans. The other Westphalians did agree in June 1644 to pay their war taxes directly to the new army. Since the elector had lost confidence in Hatzfeldt’s ability to stop looting, command was given to Geleen, an honest Liègois who had risen in the Catholic Liga service since 1618. Though many minor territories soon fell into arrears, the army nonetheless mustered 15,000, or only 4,000 below target. Ferdinand also had additional Liège and Cologne garrisons under Velen, replaced in 1646 by Otto Christoph von Sparr.¹⁵

Cologne assumed the emperor’s role in assisting Spain to defend the Mosel region. The Brussels government agreed in December 1644 to pay 260,000 tlr in return for 7,000 men in the coming campaign. These were entrusted to Lamboy who had paid his own ransom to escape French captivity after Kempen. The emperor accepted these arrangements as the only way of defending the Lower Rhine. The enlarged Westphalian army was to prove its worth when war returned to the region early in 1646 (see Chapter 20).

THE BALTIC BECOMES SWEDISH 1643–5

A New Baltic War

Early in October 1643 Torstensson received a letter dated 5 June from Oxenstierna telling him to prepare for war against Denmark. The general was reluctant to comply, fearing his recent gains in Bohemia and Silesia would be lost if he marched north. He nonetheless consolidated his garrisons by abandoning the more vulnerable posts and, having announced he was heading for Pomerania, set off on 13 November from Upper Silesia across Brandenburg.

This apparently sudden change in Swedish strategy had in fact been long planned. Oxenstierna had observed Denmark’s rapid recovery since 1629. The tight fiscal management imposed by that country’s aristocratic council in 1628 was an unwelcome intrusion on Christian IV’s prerogative, but it swiftly mastered the war debt and, together with the 2 million riksdalers Christian inherited from his mother, restored royal solvency by 1631. New taxes enabled the army to be rebuilt around a conscript militia that was doubled in 1641 to provide 16,000 Danish and 6,500 Norwegian infantry, plus 2,000 cavalry. A defence pact with the duke of Holstein-Gottorp helped expand the regular army, which totalled 11,000 by 1642, while the navy was maintained at 20,000 tonnes with 35 major warships.

These preparations enhanced Denmark’s defensive, not offensive capacity and posed no direct threat to Sweden. What concerned Oxenstierna was Christian’s dogged attempts to interpose himself as mediator in the Empire’s war. Pro-imperial mediation had already secured Bremen and Verden for Christian’s son Frederick at the Peace of Prague. Though Danish influence declined thereafter, the emperor’s difficulties allowed Christian to resume a greater role, notably in promoting north German neutrality after 1638 (discussed earlier in Chapter 17, pp.612–21). The shift of the stalled Cologne talks to Hamburg in 1641 brought negotiations within his sphere of influence. The Hamburg Peace Preliminaries were signed as Christian massed 10,000 men at Fühlsbüttel only 10km away. With the opening of the Westphalian congress it became imperative for Sweden to eliminate any chance of the king asserting himself as mediator. Oxenstierna’s fears were justified, since the Danish delegation was instructed to oblige Sweden to disband its German army and to prevent it obtaining any Baltic territory, including Pomerania. Attacking Denmark would both prevent this and silence Oxenstierna’s critics who were accusing him of neglecting Sweden’s ‘true’ Baltic interests.¹⁶

The chancellor carefully steered his colleagues into agreeing war during a seven-day debate in the council, the first attended by the seventeen-year-old Queen Christina, at the end of May 1643. The cause was presented as national indignation at Christian IV’s 2.5 per cent hike in the Sound tolls at the end of the 1630s. Danish warships had temporarily blocked the Elbe and had begun levying tolls on ships leaving the Pomeranian ports under Sweden’s control. These complaints were despatched in a letter carefully phrased not to arouse Danish suspicions that Sweden planned war, but which could be cited later as justification for Oxenstierna’s pre-emptive strike. The toll dispute also provided the ideal moment for such an attack, because the Dutch were also angry at the increase. Christian’s ban on arms exports through the Sound in 1637, issued as part of his peace-making, further alienated influential Dutch merchants, notably Louis de Geer who controlled most of the weapons and minerals trade with the Baltic.¹⁷ Denmark’s failure to reach agreements with Poland, Russia or England increased its isolation.

Sweden was better prepared than in its last Danish war of 1611–13. Despite the continual military attrition, Sweden still mustered 90,000 soldiers, of whom 50,000 were Germans. Unlike the Danes, its troops were battle-hardened and could draw on two decades’ experience of continental warfare. They also possessed what Wallenstein had lacked in the 1620s: naval superiority. Rapid construction since 1640 had increased the fleet to 35,000 tonnes by 1645, including 58 sailing warships plus galleys for coastal assaults, manned by 6,152 sailors and 3,256 marines. To be doubly sure, Oxenstierna hired de Geer to raise a mercenary fleet in the Republic, comprising 32 ships crewed by 3,000 merchant sailors under Maarten Thijsen, an experienced naval officer.¹⁸

Sweden’s Surprise Attack

The toll issue was played up at the Riksdag that finally authorized war on 26 November. By then, Torstensson was already well on his way, reaching Havelberg on 16 December. Only now did he tell his 16,000 men their true destination. Many objected, because they had not signed up to fight outside the Empire, and questioned how war with Denmark matched Sweden’s stated objective of fighting for German liberty. They were pacified by the prospect of wintering in the Jutland peninsula, a region that had been free from war since 1629. The army crossed into Holstein on 22 December without a formal declaration of war, as if they were simply seeking winter quarters.

Taken by surprise, the Danes sent a trumpeter to ask Torstensson what he was doing, while further protests were despatched to Stockholm. Oxenstierna deliberately delayed sending the formal declaration until 28 January 1644 to give Torstensson more time to exploit the Danes’ confusion. The Swedes meanwhile stormed the Christianpreis fort that guarded Kiel, massacring the sixty defenders and renaming it Christinapreis. The brutality demoralized the other garrisons in Holstein and these now surrendered, opening the way into Jutland. Duke Friedrich III of Holstein-Gottorp abandoned his defence pact and paid large contributions to Torstensson in return for neutrality.¹⁹ Knowing what to expect after Wallenstein’s campaign in the region, the rich fled into Hamburg or the Danish islands. Formal resistance collapsed, but like the Imperialists, Torstensson encountered resistance from peasant guerrillas. The Danes also still had 10,000 men in Glückstadt and the archbishopric of Bremen to the south west.

The second element of Oxenstierna’s plan now ran into difficulties. General Horn had been recalled from retirement and given 10,600 conscripts to invade Scania, the Danish-held part of southern Sweden. He took Helsingborg in February 1644 and blockaded Malmö, while another, smaller force occupied the (then) Norwegian province of Jämtland. The local population were already terrified by stories of Swedish behaviour in Germany and fled. However, the governor of Scania mobilized 8,000 militia, stemmed Horn’s advance and began retaliatory raids into Swedish territory. The Norwegians then blockaded Gothenburg on its landward side while a Danish squadron under Christian IV cruised outside its harbour. The Swedes were stuck until their navy asserted control of the seas.

Christian sailed south from Gothenburg with nine ships to intercept Thijsen’s auxiliary fleet, catching it off Lister Deep between Sylt and Römö islands on the south-west Jutland coast on 26 May. Though heavily outnumbered, the Danish vessels were purpose-built warships mounting guns up to 36-pounders, twice as large as the biggest Dutch guns. Thijsen’s fleet was battered and forced to shelter in the Deep. He ventured out again at Torstensson’s insistence, only to receive another drubbing. His now mutinous crews sailed home. The defeat turned Dutch opinion against Sweden and for a time de Geer, one of the leading supporters of the alliance, feared to leave his Amsterdam mansion.

Christian left a squadron to continue the blockade of Gothenburg and sailed through the Sound to join his main force under Admiral Mundt against the proper Swedish navy in the Baltic. His opponent, Admiral Fleming, had arrived at Kiel with 41 ships and helped Torstensson capture Fehmarn as a first step to invading the Danish islands. Christian’s arrival enabled the Danish fleet to attack on 11 July, catching Fleming in the Kolberger Heide, a stretch of water at the eastern exit of Kiel Bay. Neither side attempted boarding and instead relied on long-range gunfire. Christian lost an ear and his right eye to flying splinters, but refused to break off the action that continued till nightfall. Casualties were light, but Fleming chose to retire into the bay, allowing the Danes to trap him.

Imperial Intervention

The threat to the Swedish fleet exposed the risks of Oxenstierna’s policy of starting a new war without disengaging from that in the Empire first. Ferdinand III was not deceived by a renewed offer for talks that was obviously intended to dissuade him from aiding Denmark. Relations with Christian had been cordial since 1629, but Ferdinand II had done little to exploit the potential for cooperation against Sweden. His son now resolved to help Denmark even without a formal alliance.²⁰ Gallas advanced down the Elbe and then north into Holstein, arriving with 18,000 men in July 1644, ready to trap Torstensson in Jutland and Fleming in Kiel Bay. Contrary winds prevented the latter from escaping. The Danes landed guns and bombarded the stricken Swedish ships, one shot taking off Fleming’s right leg on 4 August. General Karl Gustav Wrangel assumed the role of admiral on Torstensson’s recommendation and reinvigorated the crews. The wind changed and with their lights extinguished they slipped past the Danish fleet on the night of 12 August. Gallas arrived at the edge of the bay just in time to see their sails disappear over the horizon the next day.

With Gallas distracting Torstensson, Christian ferried part of his army from the Danish islands to relieve Malmö in September and drive Horn from Scania. A Norwegian counter-attack had already recovered Jämtland in August. Oxenstierna’s strategy appeared to be unravelling. His new war strained relations with France just as the Westphalian peace congress opened. A success was urgently needed and Wrangel provided it. The main Swedish fleet had been repaired and had joined Thijsen, who returned with 21 survivors of the auxiliary fleet and slipped through the Sound in August. The combined force, now 37 strong, cruised westwards along the Mecklenburg coast towards Kiel, catching Admiral Mundt off Fehmarn island on 23 October. The Danes had not expected further naval activity that year and had already laid up half their fleet for the winter. Mundt had only seventeen under-manned ships, some of which tried to escape without orders shortly after the battle began. He was killed as his flagship was boarded, while the others were set on fire. A thousand men were captured and only three ships escaped.

The disaster forced Christian to drop plans to invade Sweden and even consider pawning Iceland and Scania to raise emergency loans. The situation worsened with the destruction of the imperial army through skirmishes, hunger and desertions. Gallas had captured Kiel and Rendsburg but was then outmanoeuvred by Torstensson, who forced the Imperialists to retreat over the Elbe and then retire up the river the way they had come earlier that year. The area was completely exhausted. Torstensson was reinforced by Königsmarck’s small detachment and the Hessian field force. With Gallas blind drunk, two of his disillusioned subordinates tried to escape with 4,000 cavalry but were intercepted in November. Around 3,000 survivors of the main force eventually reached Wittenberg in December. Overall losses were not as severe as often stated, but were amply sufficient to justify the soldiers’ protests at their general as an ‘army wrecker’.²¹

Gallas was dismissed on 24 January 1645, but the disaster was not entirely his fault. The imperial army had not operated in the region since 1638 and had to shift its base 750km from Bohemia to north-west Germany. Planning had been based on unrealistic expectations that supplies could be obtained in devastated Mecklenburg where the Swedes held the main towns. The troops were already on half rations by August, while a critical shortage of transport animals prevented fresh supplies reaching them in time.

The final blow came in January as Königsmarck and 3,000 Swedes turned north-west into the archbishopric of Bremen, while another detachment pinned down the remaining Danish units in the west Holstein marshes. Stade fell on 15 February 1645 and by March Königsmarck was master of both Bremen and Verden, capturing the principal gains of Christian’s diplomacy since 1629. Danish power appeared broken. Already in 1644 the Dutch could send a merchant convoy to the Baltic paying only the old toll rates. Their navy returned in July 1645 with 300 merchantmen who now paid no dues at all.

The Peace of Brömsebro 1645

France and the Dutch Republic had agreed in January 1644 to limit Swedish gains, however, since neither wanted to see Sweden simply displace Denmark as mistress of the Baltic. Talks opened at Brömsebro on the frontier between their possessions in southern Sweden in February 1645. Christian had already abandoned his pretensions to mediate at Westphalia in August 1644. He agreed peace at Brömsebro a year later, ceding the Baltic islands of Ösel and Gotland, as well as the Norwegian provinces of Härjedalen and Jämtland. Denmark also relinquished the province of Halland on the western Swedish coast for thirty years as a bond to ensure it stuck to a new toll agreement and abandoned claims to inspect cargoes. The Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck had supported Sweden diplomatically throughout the war and were included in the peace. Subsequent talks obliged Denmark to stop levying tolls at Glückstadt and accept Hamburg’s autonomy (though it did not renounce claims to the city until 1768).²²

The new toll arrangements severely reduced Danish royal revenue but they enabled Christian to escape diplomatic isolation by removing the main source of friction with other countries. He was obliged to make further concessions to his nobility, but in return received new taxes. His son and successor imposed an absolutism in 1660 that lasted until the 1849 revolution, but while the monarchy recovered its domestic position, its international status was in terminal decline. Attempts to recover the country’s former role ended in disaster by 1679 with the loss of its surviving possessions in southern Sweden. The Sound tolls remained until international pressure achieved their abolition in 1857.

Oxenstierna more than achieved his objectives, not only eliminating the threat of Danish mediation, but improving his bargaining position in Westphalia with renewed victories. New instructions were sent to the delegation in November 1645, expanding Sweden’s ‘Satisfaction’ to include Bremen and Verden, as well as Pomerania and Wismar.

1645: ANNUS HORRIBILIS ET MIRABILIS

The year 1645 proved to be a ‘year both terrible and miraculous’ for Ferdinand III.²³ A further series of defeats brought the Swedes to the gates of Vienna in the first threat to the imperial capital since 1620, only to be repulsed by tenacious Austrian resistance. All was not lost, but by the end of the year it was clear a turning point had been reached, obliging the emperor to move from form to content in the Westphalian negotiations.

The Battle of Jankau

Denmark’s defeat and the destruction of Gallas’s army prompted Elector Maximilian to open new talks with France. With his position crumbling, the emperor summoned his closest advisers for their candid opinion at New Year.²⁴ None thought victory was possible or believed in the Prague strategy of uniting the Empire to expel the foreigners. However, they were not yet prepared to relinquish the gains from 1635 and had little faith in achieving a satisfactory peace in Westphalia. They recommended renewed military effort to compel Sweden to agree more favourable terms, while remaining unrealistically hopeful that the election of Pope Innocent X in 1644 would assist a separate settlement with France.

The Austrian Estates had already been summoned and voted increased taxes and food supplies. The emperor sold part of the crown jewels and, following his example, the churches surrendered their silver, while nobles advanced loans. Ferdinand rejoined the army as part of a strategy to rally popular and divine support that culminated in his leading a religious procession in Vienna on 29 March. Here he announced his intention to build a monumental column dedicated to the Virgin like the one completed in Munich seven years earlier to commemorate White Mountain. Actual command was entrusted to Hatzfeldt who had spent most of 1644 in charge of the reserve army in Bohemia and Franconia. Maximilian was persuaded to despatch Werth with 5,000 Bavarian veterans despite the critical situation on the Upper Rhine, while Johann Georg sent 1,500 Saxon cavalry. This gave a combined field force of 11,000 cavalry, over 500 dragoons, 5,000 infantry and 26 guns that collected at Pilsen in January.²⁵

The Swedes were determined to exploit the unexpected bonus of the disintegration of Gallas’s army. They had 43,000 men in Germany at this point. Some were with Königsmarck completing the conquest of Bremen and Verden, while others garrisoned the Baltic bridgehead and positions in Silesia and Moravia. The main strike force under Torstensson numbered 9,000 horse, 6,500 foot and 60 cannon and was in western Saxony where it had arrived in pursuit of Gallas. Torstensson was already on the march by 19 January to deny the Imperialists time to recover. Hatzfeldt guessed correctly he was heading for Olmütz, but did not know whether he would go north or south of Prague to get there. Operations were disrupted by a February thaw that turned the roads to mud. Torstensson dodged south of Prague as it turned cold again and crossed the frozen Moldau. Hatzfeldt recovered quickly, and moved east to block him in the hills by Jankau (Jankov) on 6 March.

The imperial right was protected by steep, rising ground and thick woods. The left was more exposed, but the entire front was covered by the freezing waters of the Jankova stream and a network of ponds south of Jankau itself. Torstensson decided to feint against the enemy right, while going round their left to outflank them in a move that resembled Frederick the Great’s tactics at Leuthen in 1757. The Swedes set off at 6 a.m., around ninety minutes before dawn, heading for Chapel Hill, a small rise they had to secure to get safely past the ponds. Hatzfeldt had gone to reconnoitre, leaving Count Götz vague instructions to hold the hill. For reasons that remain unclear, Götz moved the entire left wing south into the valley leading to the hill. This move was constricted by thick woods either side of his route and Hatzfeldt returned to find the soldiers struggling across the very obstacles he intended to disrupt the enemy’s advance. It was too late to turn back.

The frozen ground gave the Swedes a firm footing and they were able to drag their heavy guns onto Chapel Hill, whereas the imperial artillery got stuck in the woods. Hatzfeldt moved his centre and right southwards in support as a fierce fight developed to prevent the Swedes advancing beyond the ponds. Werth and the Bavarian and Saxon cavalry overran two Swedish infantry brigades, before being compelled by artillery fire to retire. The Swedes then pushed east, gaining the high ground on the imperial flank and forcing Hatzfeldt to retire northwards. After an

hour of musketry, Hatzfeldt disengaged and withdrew further across his original position towards Skrysov village, where he redeployed facing south with his right on the Jankova and left on Hrin. Torstensson followed, taking up position between Jankau and Radmeritz. He had expected Hatzfeldt to continue his retreat, but noticed imperial musketeers entrenching on a small wooded hill in front of Skrysov. Hatzfeldt intended this as an outpost while he waited until nightfall to slip away. Once the Swedes had dislodged the musketeers he grew concerned and launched a counter-attack, renewing the battle around 1 p.m.

Werth, now on the left, led another successful charge, this time routing the best Swedish cavalry that had deployed opposite him at Radmeritz. However, his comrades in the centre and right were dispirited after the defeat that morning and cracked under the strain of renewed fighting. The Bavarian cavalry had dispersed to plunder, capturing the Swedish army’s loot and women, including Torstensson’s wife. The Swedes rallied and drove them off, rescuing the women. As the imperial horse on the right had also given way, the infantry in the centre were abandoned like the Spanish at Rocroi and their own comrades at both battles of Breitenfeld. They fought on till dark. Some escaped into the woods to the rear, but 4,500 were captured. Götz, along with several other senior officers, was killed, as were around 4,000 men, many during the pursuit. Hatzfeldt was caught because his horse was exhausted and, having been robbed, he was handed over to Torstensson.

The battle was clearly a disaster for the emperor. A muster of 36 regiments outside Prague a week later revealed that only 2,697 officers and men remained. Another 2,000 fugitives were left stranded by the rapid Swedish advance through Moravia and lived as marauders in a running conflict with local peasants. The veteran Bavarian cavalry had been virtually destroyed, while the loss of so many senior officers left the army leaderless. It is a sign of Ferdinand’s desperation that he even recalled Gallas to help reorganize the army. However, comparisons with Rocroi or White Mountain are exaggerated, as the battle was not followed by military or political collapse.²⁶

Torstensson claimed he lost only 600 men, but the later Swedish General Staff history puts the casualties at a more realistic 3–4,000. The victory allowed him to widen his objectives beyond merely resupplying Olmütz. He swept on through southern Moravia and over the frontier hills into Lower Austria to arrive outside Vienna with 16,000 men on 9 April. The advance renewed the possibility that Transylvania might intervene for another combined siege of the imperial capital.

Transylvania Rejoins the War

Sweden had courted the new Transylvanian prince, György I Rákóczi, since 1637, finally concluding an alliance on 16 November 1643. Rákóczi agreed to attack Upper Hungary and cooperate in Silesia in return for a subsidy and 3,000 infantry to stiffen his cavalry army. His domestic situation had become more secure and he wanted to resume Bethlen’s policy of expansion. The sultan had agreed another twenty-year extension to the 1606 truce at Szöny in March 1642, but Ferdinand had delayed ratification to avoid the humiliation and expense of paying the 200,000 florins in tribute needed to confirm the agreement. Therefore the sultan felt free to give his consent to Rákóczi who crossed into Upper Hungary in February 1644. Sweden saw the attack as a useful diversion to cover the withdrawal of Torstensson’s army for the invasion of Denmark.

The Transylvanian attack caused considerable alarm, delaying Gallas’s departure for Holstein and disrupting Götz’s operations against Olmütz. However, Rákóczi encountered unexpected resistance in Hungary where, unlike in the 1620s, most of the magnates were now Catholics loyal to the Habsburgs. He was also reluctant to risk his full force until his allies provided concrete support. This the Swedes were unable to do, as they were busy in Denmark. The campaign petered out as Rákóczi accepted Ferdinand’s offer of talks, and resumed only in the wake of Jankau and the promise of French subsidies in April 1645.

Ferdinand and Leopold Wilhelm were in Prague when news of Jankau arrived. The archduke went directly to Vienna to organize its defence, while his brother hurried through the Upper Palatinate to Bavaria to reassure Maximilian that all was not lost.²⁷ He then rejoined the archduke in Vienna on 20 March, displaying the same calm that had rallied support during Banér’s bombardment of Regensburg. The Austrian Estates summoned their militia, while 5,500 citizens and students reinforced the city’s 1,500 regular soldiers. The blockade of Olmütz was abandoned and all forces regrouped south of the Danube apart from a reinforced garrison in Brünn and the men holding Prague. After long negotiations Leopold Wilhelm accepted command on 1 May when the main army totalled 15,000. Another 6,000 cavalry were by then raiding the Swedish communication lines through Bohemia and Silesia, a flying column of 4,000 was heading for the Elbe pass into Saxony, and additional units confronted the Transylvanians in Hungary.

Torstensson now faced the same problems that had defeated Count Thurn in 1619–20. First, he could not cross the Danube to attack Vienna. His Finnish pioneers were accustomed to using local boats to build their bridges, but found that the Imperialists had already secured these to the south bank. The 14,200 Transylvanians who joined him in May and July proved unreliable, demanding pay he did not have. Above all, Torstensson was concerned about how far he had come from his Pomeranian bridgehead with only Olmütz to link him to the weak detachments holding Saxony and Silesia. He decided to capture Brünn to secure Moravia for the winter while he waited for reinforcements. The fortress was held by 1,500 dragoons, Jesuit students and unwilling burghers under de Souches, a Huguenot refugee from La Rochelle who had left Swedish service after falling out with Stalhansk. Torstensson threatened to hang de Souches as a deserter unless he surrendered, but he held out between 5 May and 19 August, providing the main ‘miracle’ in Ferdinand’s year. The Swedes and Transylvanians lost 8,000 men during the siege, mainly through a fresh outbreak of the plague.

The failure disheartened the Transylvanians, who renewed negotiations with the emperor. Ferdinand had sent the Bohemian Count Czernin and a deliberately impressive entourage of 160 to Constantinople in June 1644. Czernin arrived at a critical time. The Knights of St John had just captured a large Turkish ship in the Mediterranean. The sultan blamed the Venetians and faced a choice between fighting them or backing Rákóczi. Czernin skilfully outmanoeuvred his French and Swedish counterparts to persuade the sultan to accept the emperor’s belated ratification of the Szöny extension to the truce. The Ottomans launched an amphibious assault on Crete in April 1645, beginning a war with Venice that would last until the island’s fall in 1669. Rákóczi swiftly fell into line, accepting Ferdinand’s offer in August of the seven Upper Hungarian counties previously ceded to Bethlen for his lifetime.²⁸

The Transylvanians’ withdrawal obliged Torstensson to lift his siege of Brünn, but the Peace of Brömsebro that month encouraged him to return south for a second attempt against Vienna. The Imperialists had sent 3,000 men to aid Saxony and 1,200 to help Bavaria, but still mustered around 20,000 thanks to new recruits. Torstensson was by now so ill he could barely sit two hours in the saddle. His own force was down to 10,000 men by October when he gave up and retreated across Saxony into Thuringia, where he handed over command to Admiral Wrangel on 23 December. Having briefly helped Maximilian in October, Leopold Wilhelm returned with Bavarian assistance and expelled the remaining Swedish garrisons from Bohemia by February 1646.

Jankau, though serious, was not decisive and the Habsburg monarchy displayed considerable resilience and ingenuity in repelling the combined Swedish-Transylvanian attack. What proved critical, however, was that this prevented effective aid to Bavaria and Saxony for much of the year, leading to defeats that left Ferdinand dangerously isolated.

The Battle of Herbsthausen

The capture of Philippsburg and Mainz had given France secure access over the Rhine, but the Lower Palatinate was too devastated to provide an adequate base for them inside Germany. The local truce ruled out use of the Franche-Comté to the south, heightening the importance of securing Swabian territory east of the Black Forest to sustain French forces in the Empire. News of Jankau emboldened Mazarin to believe there was a real chance of knocking Bavaria out of the war and Turenne was ordered to achieve this.²⁹

Both sides spent the opening months of 1645 raiding each other across the Black Forest. Turenne was delayed by the need to rebuild his infantry shattered at Freiburg, while Mercy had detached Werth and most of the cavalry to Bohemia. Only 1,500 troopers returned in April. Turenne was able to attack first, crossing the Rhine with 11,000 men near Speyer on 26 March and advancing up the Neckar into Württemberg, which he thoroughly plundered. He then moved north-east, taking Rothenburg on the Tauber to open the way into Franconia. Mercy deliberately feigned defeatism, keeping to the south while he collected his forces. Turenne remained cautious, but was unable to sustain even his relatively small army in the Tauber valley. He moved to Mergentheim, billeting his cavalry in the surrounding villages in April.

Having received Maximilian’s permission to risk battle, Mercy planned to repeat his success at Tuttlingen. Werth’s arrival gave him 9,650 men and 9 guns at Feuchtwangen. He force-marched his troops 60km to approach Mergentheim from the south-east on 5 May. Turenne had been alerted by one of Rosen’s patrols at 2 a.m., but there was little time to collect his troops at Herbsthausen, just south-east of the town. He knew he could not trust his largely untried infantry in the open, so posted them along the edge of a wood on a rise overlooking the main road. Most of the cavalry were massed to the left ready to charge the Bavarians as they emerged from a large wood to the south. He had only 3,000 troopers and a similar number of infantry, though not all were present at the start of the battle and another 3,000 billeted in the surrounding area never made it at all.

Werth appeared first at the head of half the Bavarian cavalry to cover the deployment of the rest of the army on the other side of the narrow valley opposite the French. Mercy used his artillery to pound the wood, increasing the casualties as the shot sent branches flying through the air, just as the Swedes had done to the Bavarians at Wolfenbüttel. None of the six French cannon had arrived. Their infantry fired an ineffective salvo at long range and fell back as the Bavarians began a general advance. Turenne charged down the valley, routing the Bavarian cavalry on the left that included the units beaten at Jankau. However, a regiment held in reserve stemmed the attack, while the few French cavalry posted on Turenne’s extreme right were swept away by Werth’s charge. The French army dissolved in panic, many of the infantry being trapped around Herbsthausen. Turenne cut his way through almost alone to join three fresh cavalry regiments that arrived just in time to cover the retreat. The subsequent surrender of Mergentheim and other garrisons brought the total French losses up to 4,400, compared to 600 Bavarians.³⁰

The success was not on the scale of Tuttlingen, but it was sufficient to lift the despondency in Munich and Vienna after Jankau. The sequence of these actions underscores the general point about the interrelationship between war and diplomacy, as each change of military fortune raised the hopes in one party of achieving their diplomatic objectives, while hardening the determination of the other to continue resisting until the situation improved. In this case, Mercy was too weak to exploit his victory beyond securing the area south of the Main. Mazarin moved swiftly to restore French prestige before negotiations moved further in Westphalia. D’Enghien was directed to take another 7,000 reinforcements across the Rhine at Speyer, and in a new show of common resolve Sweden agreed to despatch Königsmarck from Bremen to join the

French. Having reinforced the garrisons in Meissen and Leipzig, Königsmarck arrived on the Main with 4,000 men. The return of the war to the Main area allowed Amalie Elisabeth to revive Hessian plans to attack Darmstadt under cover of the general war. She agreed to provide 6,000 men under their new commander, Geyso, who assembled at Hanau to invade Darmstadt in June.³¹

The Battle of Allerheim

Ferdinand of Cologne sent Geleen and 4,500 Westphalians south past the allies to join Mercy on 4 July, to give him about 16,000 men against the enemy’s 23,000. Mercy then retired south to Heilbronn, blocking the way into Swabia. The allied troop concentration soon broke up. One commonly cited reason was that d’Enghien had managed to insult both Geyso and Königsmarck. However, the real cause of the latter’s departure in mid-July was an order from Torstensson to knock out Saxony. The instructions, dated 10 May (Old Style), were later copied and sent to Johann Georg to put pressure on him to negotiate.³² Given Torstensson’s inability to take Brünn, there was only a limited period of time in which to intimidate Saxony before the Imperialists recovered sufficiently to send assistance. D’Enghien meanwhile resumed Turenne’s earlier plan and marched east through southern Franconia heading for Bavaria. The division of military labour evolving since 1642 was now complete. Sweden would eliminate Saxony and attack the emperor while France knocked Bavaria out of the war.

Mercy deftly checked the French advance by taking up a series of near impregnable positions, obliging d’Enghien to waste time outflanking him. The game ended at Allerheim near the confluence of the Wörnitz and Eger rivers on 3 August. Though it is also known as the second battle of Nördlingen, the action was fought on the opposite side of the Eger to the events of 1634. Mercy had deployed with his back to the Wörnitz between two steep hills on which he entrenched some of his 28 cannon. The infantry, who comprised less than half his army, were positioned behind Allerheim in the centre. The cemetery, the church and a few solid houses were filled with musketeers, while others held entrenchments around the front and sides of the village. The cavalry were massed either side, with Geleen and the Imperialists on the right (north) as far as the Wenneberg, and Werth with the Bavarians on the left next to the Schloßberg hill, named after the ruined castle on the top.³³

D’Enghien had not expected to find the enemy, but seized the opportunity for battle despite his subordinates’ reservations. Königsmarck’s departure had left him with 6,000 French troops, plus 5,000 more under Turenne and the 6,000 Hessians, with 27 guns. He placed most of the French infantry and 800 cavalry in the centre opposite Allerheim, while Turenne stood on the left with the Hessians and his own cavalry. The rest of the French were deployed on the right (south) under Gramont opposite the Schloßberg.

It was already 4 p.m. by the time they were ready, but d’Enghien knew from Freiburg how quickly the Bavarians could dig in and did not want to give them the night to complete their works. The French guns could not compete with the Bavarians’ that were protected by earthworks, so d’Enghien ordered a frontal assault at 5 p.m. He was soon fully occupied with the fight for Allerheim, leading successive waves of infantry over the entrenchments, only to be hurled back again by fresh Bavarian units fed by Mercy from the centre. The thatched roofs of the village soon caught fire, forcing the defenders into the stone buildings. The French commander had two horses shot under him and was himself saved by his breastplate deflecting a musket ball. Mercy was not so fortunate as he entered the burning village around 6 p.m. to rally the flagging defence. He was shot in the head and died instantly. Ruischenberg assumed command and repulsed the French.

Werth meanwhile routed Gramont who thought a ditch in front of his position was impassable and allowed the Bavarians to approach within 100 metres. The French cavalry offered brief resistance before fleeing, leaving Gramont to fight on with two infantry brigades until he was forced to surrender. Werth’s cavalry dispersed in pursuit and it is possible that the smoke from Allerheim obscured the battlefield. Either way, he discovered that the rest of the army was on the point of collapse only when he returned to his start position around 8 p.m. Turenne had saved the day for the French with a desperate assault on the Wenneberg that allowed the Hessians, the last fresh troops, to overrun the Bavarian artillery and hit Allerheim in the flank. Parties of Bavarian infantry were cut off in the confusion and surrendered. Werth assumed command, collected the army at the Schloßberg and retreated around 1 a.m. in good order to the Schellenberg hill above Donauwörth.

Werth attracted considerable blame, especially from later commentators like Napoleon, for failing to exploit his initial success by sweeping round behind the French centre to smash Turenne as d’Enghien had done with the Spanish at Rocroi. Werth defended himself by pointing out the difficulties of communicating along the length of the Bavarian army that probably measured 2,500 metres. His troopers were also short of ammunition and it was getting dark by the time they reassembled. Indeed, the late hour probably proved decisive, limiting what Werth could see. His withdrawal was prudent under the circumstances, depriving the Bavarians of a chance for victory, but at least avoiding a worse defeat that would have wrecked the army.

D’Enghien had been fortunate to escape with victory, losing at least 4,000 dead and wounded. The infantry in the centre had been almost wiped out and the French court was aghast at the extent of casualties that included several senior officers. Like Freiburg, it was the Bavarian retreat that transformed the action into a strategic success, partly because at least 1,500 men were captured as Werth pulled out of Allerheim in addition to the 2,500 killed or wounded. Retreat after another hard-fought battle eroded morale. The Bavarians vented their fury on the unfortunate captive Gramont, who narrowly escaped being murdered by Mercy’s servant and was grateful to be exchanged for Geleen the next month.

The Kötzschenbroda Armistice

The immediate repercussions were soon redressed. The French captured Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl, but got stuck at Heilbronn where d’Enghien fell ill. Mazarin refused to send reinforcements to replace the casualties, leaving Turenne outnumbered as Leopold Wilhelm and 5,300 Imperialists arrived from Bohemia in early October. By December, Turenne was back in Alsace having lost all the towns captured that year.

The stabilization of southern Germany was offset by a major blow in the north-east that indicated that the new allied strategy was working. Though the French had been unable to knock out Bavaria, their campaign in Franconia prevented relief reaching Saxony, which had been left isolated after Jankau. Königsmarck had force-marched the Swedish forces up the Main and burst into the electorate early in August. Johann Georg appealed to Ferdinand, protesting that the Swedes were deliberately ravaging his land. The emperor replied on 25 August that he had just made peace with Rákóczi and help was on its way. It was too late. Before the letter arrived, the elector had already given up hope; he concluded an armistice at Kötzschenbroda on 6 September.³⁴

Saxony secured a six-month ceasefire on relatively favourable terms. The Swedes accepted the electorate’s neutrality, but allowed it to continue discharging its obligations to the emperor by leaving three cavalry regiments with the imperial army. In return, Saxony had to pay 11,000 talers a month to maintain the Swedish garrison in Leipzig, the only town Königsmarck insisted on retaining in the electorate. The Swedes were allowed to cross the electorate, but they also agreed to lift their blockade of the Saxon garrison in Magdeburg.

Ferdinand Gives Way

Sweden and France had not achieved a decisive military dominance, but their successes at Jankau, Allerheim and Kötzschenbroda outweighed their defeats at Herbsthausen and Brünn. Sweden’s separate war with Denmark had banished the spectre of Christian IV’s mediation in Westphalia. France’s insistence on Portuguese and Catalonian participation at the congress was a ploy to put pressure on Spain. Spain blocked it with a counter-demand on behalf of Lorraine. Representatives from all three arrived, but their credentials were not recognized.³⁵ Ferdinand was unable, however, to prevent the admission of the imperial Estates. This settled the form of the congress and enabled discussions to move on to the content of the final peace.

The imperial Estates used the Deputation to demand access. Promised by the imperial Recess issued at Regensburg in 1641 (see Chapter 18, pp.624–6), the Deputation finally convened in January 1643 in Frankfurt where representatives of forty territories had been waiting since the previous September. Mainz used its arch-chancellor’s prerogative to place discussions about peace as the first item on the agenda.³⁶ The emperor was happy to let the Estates attend the Westphalian congress as observers but wanted to preserve his prerogative by denying them negotiating rights. Sweden and France appreciated the chance to weaken the emperor by involving all the Estates in the name of German liberty. To their surprise, Württemberg returned their invitation to attend unopened. The others also hesitated to defy the emperor.

Conveniently, Amalie Elisabeth was determined to participate and assumed the role abandoned by the Palatinate as champion of the aristocratic interpretation of the constitution. The Hessian position was even more radical, because their ruler was not an elector and had less interest in the established hierarchy. Buttressing their position with the writings of Bodin and historical examples, the Hessians pressed the two crowns to support constitutional changes. Other than Marburg, all Hessian territorial demands would come at Catholic expense. The Hessians accordingly renewed the old Palatine demand for the Estates to assemble as two confessional bodies (corpora) rather than the customary three hierarchical colleges. Sweden and France accepted the general aim of undermining the emperor, but had no intention of supporting specific Hessian proposals if these proved inconvenient later. France was more accustomed to dealing with the electors, but soon embraced the more expansive concept of German liberty and made this the central plank of its first peace proposal in December 1644. The victories of 1644–5 expanded French and Swedish territorial demands, but they agreed in April 1645 to conceal these and instead reiterated calls for constitutional change in their second joint proposal of 11 June. Both were happy to receive Hessian advice on the imperial constitution and had welcomed Amalie Elisabeth’s declaration on 30 August 1643 that all Estates should attend even without the emperor’s permission.

Sweden issued a general invitation to all Protestant Estates in November, followed by a similar one to the Catholics from France in April 1644. The Hessian envoy arrived in Osnabrück in June 1644 and was soon joined by his Brunswick colleague, but the rest stayed away, fearing that acceptance was tantamount to supporting French demands. French successes like the capture of Mainz (September 1644) made it harder to ignore repeated invitations. In addition, the delegates in Frankfurt were growing concerned at the lack of progress in Westphalia. The new bishop of Würzburg, Johann Philipp von Schönborn, persuaded the Franconian Kreis assembly to back calls for participation in November 1644, and the Swabians followed suit in January. The battle of Jankau prompted Ferdinand to reassure the princes he was serious about peace, but their replies simply urged him to make concessions to obtain it.³⁷ Elector Maximilian sensed the changing mood and swung behind it by demanding admission for all Estates, including the imperial cities. The emperor finally accepted the Bavarian argument, recognizing that full participation in the three colleges was preferable to the Franco-Swedish option of two confessional groups, since it would allow the Catholics to exercise their majority vote. He had already released Sötern of Trier on 12 April to take the sting out of French demands that made this a precondition for peace. Ignoring growing alarm among militant Catholics who feared concessions at their church’s expense, Ferdinand formally invited all imperial Estates to the congress on 29 August.³⁸

Then, in the wake of Brömsebro, Kötzschenbroda and Torstensson’s second attack on Vienna, Ferdinand personally drafted a set of secret instructions that were sent to Trauttmannsdorff on 16 October. At last, the imperial plenipotentiary was told to begin negotiations on the content of the peace and no longer to use excuses to delay matters in the hope the army could retrieve the situation. Operations would continue, but Ferdinand accepted the inevitability of major concessions. These were placed in a carefully arranged sequence of what the emperor believed he could sacrifice while protecting his core interests. Trauttmannsdorff was authorized to give way in stages until the enemy agreed terms.

The first step entailed giving Sweden the Baltic territory it wanted. Ferdinand had already accepted this by 1643, but now added Bremen and Verden to what could be relinquished. This was a significant step since both were ecclesiastical territories whose loss clearly contradicted the efforts at Prague in 1635 to retain the programme of Catholic restitution. Moreover, Magdeburg and Halberstadt were to be granted to Brandenburg to reconcile it to the loss of Pomerania. The second step entailed concessions at Austria’s expense to appease France. These were agreed to satisfy Maximilian who was convinced it was the only way to persuade Mazarin to end the war.³⁹ Trauttmannsdorff was authorized to surrender Alsace, because this was what France wanted and also because it belonged to the heavily indebted Tirolean Habsburgs who might be persuaded to part with it in return for French financial compensation. Step three entailed abandoning restitution, which was already implicit in the concessions to Sweden and Brandenburg. Here, Ferdinand was prepared if necessary to return the confessional balance in the Empire to 1618, provided the gains in the Habsburg hereditary lands were preserved. The problem of the Palatinate was next, because Ferdinand hoped to avoid anything that would alienate Bavaria, his principal German ally. Trauttmannsdorff was authorized to agree that the electoral title would alternate between the two Wittelsbach branches, or, failing that, to agree to the creation of an eighth title to compensate the Palatinate. Abandoning Spain in a separate peace was the fifth and last step, to be conceded only if peace could be obtained no other way. The campaigns of the next three years would decide how far Trauttmannsdorff would have to go.