20

War or Peace 1646–8

A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE 1646

Preliminary Agreement

The start of serious talks in Westphalia focused attention more clearly on the choice between war or peace. With the military balance shifting towards his opponents, Ferdinand struggled to retain German loyalty while his generals recovered the strength necessary for an acceptable compromise. He began 1646 with a solid success, scored not on the battlefield but by Trauttmannsdorff in the negotiations.

The imperial Estates had gratefully accepted the emperor’s invitation to participate. Though the Protestants and Catholics gathered separately in the two venues, they debated in their three colleges of electors, princes and cities by exchanging written statements. France and Sweden had not wanted this, partly because it would delay matters, but they could not oppose it without contradicting their professed support for the constitution. The emperor regained the initiative as the three colleges discussed the second Franco-Swedish proposal in October 1645. It was obvious that the two crowns were trying to break the Habsburgs’ grip on the imperial title. Most of the Estates felt that there was no realistic alternative to the Austrians and endorsed the emperor’s interpretation of the constitution in December.

The two crowns ignored this in their third proposal, delivered on 7 January. They wanted to leave the constitutional questions open until they obtained their territorial demands and raised minor issues as a distraction. Some doubt still surrounded the rights of the imperial cities, for example, but the emperor’s decision to invite them to the negotiations as well cemented their status as imperial Estates. Most other matters were settled in May when Ferdinand conceded he needed the Reichstag’s consent for a formal declaration of war or peace to be binding on the entire Empire. Sweden tried to delay matters further by promoting the aspirations of Erfurt and Eger to be recognized as imperial cities. This was blatant opportunism since its negotiators singularly failed to support similar petitions from Rostock, Stralsund, Osnabrück, Münster, Magdeburg, Minden and Herford, because these crossed other Swedish objectives. Already embroiled in their own dispute with the imperial knights over status, the existing cities refused to admit any new members and all bids ended in failure. The knights also lobbied for a voice in imperial institutions. They were not without influence at that point when over eighty of them were colonels or generals in the imperial army. However, the rather too enthusiastic support by some knights for Gustavus Adolphus had left them fatally compromised and they were happy to settle for imperial confirmation of their existing status.¹

The fate of the Palatine lands and titles posed a more serious problem. Elector Maximilian realized his own status would never be secure until he obtained international recognition to counter the influence of his Palatine rival’s wide dynastic connections. The issue allowed the two crowns to press their own territorial demands in January 1646, though these were only presented orally to minimize the damage to their reputations in Germany. Maximilian swung behind Mazarin’s demands for Alsace, presenting this as a defence of Catholic interests on the grounds that peace with France would allow Ferdinand to save the church lands by defeating Sweden. Trauttmannsdorff saw through this immediately, and informed Ferdinand that ‘the elector of Bavaria wants to buy French favour by giving them Alsace’.² Maximilian persisted, supplying the French negotiators with detailed information about the complex network of jurisdiction and property rights in Alsace. His interest in further military operations was mainly to pressure France into presenting its demands in a form the emperor could accept, and on 7 April he threatened to follow the Brandenburg and Saxon examples and sign a truce unless Ferdinand relinquished Alsace. Meanwhile, Mazarin accepted Maximilian’s assurances that Bavaria would do nothing provided Turenne remained west of the Rhine.

The emperor was naturally reluctant to surrender the territory, since giving up Alsace would antagonize his Spanish and Tirolean relations. Trauttmannsdorff nonetheless still had a few cards to play. Despite Bavarian assistance, the French remained confused about Alsace and acquired a map of the province only in March 1646. By contrast, Trauttmannsdorff could draw on Dr Volmar’s 26 years’ experience in Alsatian administration. On Volmar’s advice, he offered France sovereignty over the impressive-sounding ‘Landgraviate of Upper and Lower Alsace’, as well as the Sundgau. Since Elector Sötern had already conceded France the right to garrison Philippsburg on 19 July, Trauttmannsdorff included this as well. Other terms, again carefully phrased, suggested the emperor confirmed sovereignty over Metz, Toul and Verdun. The exact status of the other Alsatian territories, including Strasbourg and the ten imperial cities known as the Decapolis, was left deliberately vague. Thinking they had got what their master wanted, the French delegation of Servien and d’Avaux readily accepted Trauttmannsdorff’s other conditions in a draft treaty on 13 September. France would pay 3 million livres (1.2 million talers) compensation to the Tirolean Habsburgs, as well as assume two-thirds of the debts attached to their Alsatian possessions. French demands for the Breisgau and the Forest Towns were dropped. Ferdinand withheld ratification in the hope Alsace might yet be saved on the battlefield or by Trauttmannsdorff dividing France and Sweden through a separate deal over Pomerania.³

The 1646 Campaign

The military situation nonetheless looked bleak. Ferdinand’s inability to send assistance to Saxony convinced Johann Georg not to rejoin the war and instead to extend the Kötzschenbroda armistice. He agreed the Treaty of Eulenberg on 31 March 1646, promising to remain neutral until the end of the war. In return, the Swedes accepted a reduction in the monthly contribution to 7,000 tlr. Saxon neutrality consolidated the buffer zone protecting the Swedish bridgehead. The Swedes could easily block an attack down the Oder that would, in any case, position the imperial army too far east to help the Bavarians. Indeed, it took two small imperial armies most of 1646 to recover the Lower Austrian and Silesian towns captured by Torstensson the year before. The absence of both Saxon and Bavarian support deepened Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s pessimism and the main imperial army remained in billets around Bayreuth in Franconia until May.

The Swedes still held Olmütz as a forward base from where they could either renew their attack on Austria, or strike into Bohemia. Having knocked out Saxony, Königsmarck rejoined the main army under Wrangel that had wintered in Thuringia. Together they numbered 15,000 cavalry and 8,000 infantry with a further 17,000 conscripts on their way from Sweden. The Swedes, however, were reluctant to jeopardize their bargaining position at the congress by risking battle. After long consultations, the generals decided to attack Westphalia as a softer target than the Habsburg hereditary lands.

This decision was also influenced by the delay in renewed French operations. France not only had to rebuild its Army of Germany after the costly 1645 campaign, but did not want to rupture its tacit understanding with Maximilian. To maintain their allies’ goodwill, the French delegation in Münster hired General Bönninghausen to recruit reinforcements for the Swedes. Bönninghausen had quit imperial service in 1640, believing his talents were receiving insufficient recognition. He used his former imperial credentials to dupe 2,300 men into thinking they were enlisting in the emperor’s army, whereas they actually found themselves in Hessian service.⁴

Wrangel advanced westwards in April, picking up the Hessians and overrunning the weak imperial cordon along the Weser that screened Westphalia. He repeated the tactics Königsmarck had used to intimidate Saxony, demolishing houses, blowing up churches, destroying crops and cutting down fruit trees, murdering and raping those who got in the way.⁵ Ferdinand of Cologne refused to be browbeaten, especially as his core territories were still defended by the recently enlarged Westphalian army. Leopold Wilhelm finally arrived from Franconia in June to join Bavarian and Westphalian troops in the Wetterau. This concentration of 40,000 men forced Mazarin to direct Turenne’s 8,000 field troops across the Rhine at Wesel on 15 July to bring the allies’ numbers up to 34,000. Turenne’s advance into north-west Germany was a calculated risk to bolster France’s allies without breaking relations with Bavaria. The French arrival accelerated Trauttmannsdorff’s discussions over the surrender of Alsace.

The Hessian War

The presence of both armies disturbed the fragile peace between the two Hessian dynasties. Amalie Elisabeth had twice postponed an invasion of Darmstadt – once after Tuttlingen and again in the summer of 1645 as the Hessian commander Geyso was drawn into the Allerheim campaign. Colonel St André attacked from Westphalia in September 1645 but was too weak to take Gießen or the other towns. Like Torstensson in Holstein, the Hessians maintained the fiction they were only looking for winter quarters. The ruse was exposed when they shelled Marburg in late October. The sons of the Darmstadt landgrave were studying at its university along with those of many other princes who raised a storm of protest. Darmstadt indignantly pointed to its 1631 neutrality treaty with Gustavus Adolphus, while Württemberg and Saxony offered mediation.

Amalie Elisabeth risked alienating all Protestant Germany but pressed on, rightly suspecting the two crowns would sacrifice her objectives if necessary at the peace congress. Her Estates refused support, claiming she was ruining the country. The return of Geyso’s contingent from Allerheim enabled her troops to capture Marburg on 15 January, but the local officials refused to cooperate, and the university collapsed as staff and students fled. Darmstadt re-raised its army under the command of Count Ernst Albrecht von Eberstein, a Franconian relative of the former Hessen-Kassel commander.⁶ The force eventually mustered around 5,000, while Landgrave Georg formally aligned himself with the emperor on 26 July 1646.

The allies received supplies from Kassel, whereas imperial logistics broke down, forcing Leopold Wilhelm to shift position. Wrangel and Turenne slipped past him at the end of August, crossing the Main and sweeping south in two columns through Württemberg and Franconia without serious opposition. Ferdinand of Cologne refused to let Geleen’s 8,000 men accompany the archduke as he set off in pursuit. Geleen retired northwards to confront the perennial Hessian raiding on the Lower Rhine, leaving Darmstadt and Kassel to fight their own war unaided. By October Eberstein had recovered all the lost ground except Marburg itself, and launched a counter-invasion of Hessen-Kassel. His defeat by Geyso at Frankenberg on 20 November forced Darmstadt to accept a new truce.

Leopold Wilhelm, meanwhile, had marched eastwards through Bamberg and then south into Bavaria, crossing the Danube at Regensburg in late September. This route was a safe one, but it allowed Wrangel and Turenne to raid across the Lech and devastate western Bavaria. Only Augsburg defied them. Unlike 1632, the city did not open its gates, because its now bi-confessional council rallied the Protestant inhabitants with religious concessions. The city withstood a three-week bombardment until Leopold Wilhelm appeared on the other side of the Lech to lift the siege on 12 October.⁷

The imperial army was exhausted and unable to prevent Wrangel and Turenne from consolidating their hold over Swabia. The Swedes went into winter quarters at Isny near Lake Constance. Patrols had alerted Wrangel to the vulnerability of Bregenz at the lake’s eastern end where the surrounding population had deposited their valuables. He appeared outside the pass on 4 January 1647 with 8,000 men and 24 guns. The Klause (defile) by the lake shore was the only viable route over the mountainous Bregenz forest along the Tirolean border. It was blocked by three successive fortified gates, plus a line of palisades up the hillside to the east manned by 2,200 Tirolean soldiers and militia who had spent the previous few days shivering at their posts during a heavy snowfall. They resisted stoutly until a Swedish detachment gained a mountain path and overran the palisades, turning the positions along the road. The defenders joined the civilian population that had already started fleeing that morning. The Swedes broke into Bregenz and took over 4 million florins in booty – ‘more than the Swedish army had taken before’.⁸

Wrangel spent two weeks plundering the western Tirol. Unlike Horn’s operations in 1633, he had no intention of forcing the Valtellina, which had lost its strategic value. Instead, he tried to consolidate his grip around Lake Constance where he organized a gunboat flotilla that captured Mainau island, another treasure trove of hidden valuables. He then blockaded the imperial city of Lindau located on another island just north of Bregenz, while Turenne besieged Überlingen.

The Ulm Truce, March 1647

The repeated failures convinced Maximilian that the emperor could no longer protect him. He despaired at the woeful condition of the imperial army and Leopold Wilhelm’s defeatism. The archduke resigned at the end of December, only to be replaced by Gallas who was incapable of exercising command now and died on 25 April 1647. Maximilian was now 73, while his son was a mere boy aged 9. Anxious about his legacy, the elector pinned his hopes on a general truce to hasten a definitive peace. Wrangel felt a truce would merely allow Bavaria time to recover. The Swedish government also feared France would disengage from the Empire if Bavaria left the war, since the creation of a neutral Catholic alliance was a long-standing French objective. Under French pressure, Wrangel reluctantly consented to talks in Ulm on 8 December 1646, concluding terms with Maximilian’s representatives on 14 March.

The terms were more favourable than those imposed on Brandenburg and Saxony. Bavaria was not obliged to pay contributions, but it did have to surrender its Swabian outposts in Memmingen and Überlingen to Swedish garrisons and hand Heilbronn over to the French. In return, the allies evacuated their positions in western Bavaria. Maximilian promised to remain neutral until a peace settlement. Augsburg and the Lower Palatinate were included in the arrangement on the condition Maximilian signed on behalf of his brother in Cologne, imposing upon the latter the obligation to eject the imperial garrisons from Westphalia. The Upper Palatinate was specifically excluded because Wrangel wanted access to attack Bohemia.

Sötern had already confirmed Trier’s neutrality in a new treaty with France on 29 November 1645. Anselm Casimir saw no choice but to do the same for Mainz on 9 May 1647. All the electors bar Ferdinand had now left the war, many other princes were effectively neutral and Spain appeared on the point of collapse as revolt engulfed its kingdom of Naples (see pp.728–31 below).

TOWARDS CONSENSUS

The Territorial Settlement

News of Bavaria’s negotiations prompted Ferdinand to renew efforts to settle with Sweden. Matters had stalled on the Pomeranian question. Sweden was not ready to risk its standing in the Empire by forcing Brandenburg to give up Pomerania. Elector Friedrich Wilhelm realized Swedish hesitation offered him little security. He was also concerned about his Pfalz-Neuburg rival in Westphalia. As he had snubbed a dynastic alliance to resolve their feud over Jülich-Cleves, the elector only had himself to blame when Wolfgang Wilhelm’s son Philipp Wilhelm married the king of Poland’s daughter in June 1642. Moreover, with interest arrears totalling over 1 million tlr, there was no prospect of paying the Hoefyser loan from 1616 that legitimized the Dutch presence in Cleves and Mark. As the Republic’s garrisons offered more effective protection than the elector’s weak forces, this lessened the already tenuous loyalty of his Westphalian subjects.

Fearing he might lose the provinces altogether, Friedrich Wilhelm resolved to acquire a more ‘impressive reputation’ through a programme of militarization.⁹ Much trumpeted by later Prussian historians as the appropriate response, this policy was seriously misguided. It was encouraged by Johann von Norprath, a former Neuburg officer who had defected to become Brandenburg’s governor in Cleves and Mark and was bent on revenge against his former master. Brandenburg forces in the region were increased to 4,100, with another 2,900 in the electorate and 1,200 more plus 6,000 militiamen in Prussia. The elector moved his court from Berlin to Cleves in 1646 to be nearer the peace congress. The increased military presence had some positive results as the Hessians evacuated some towns in Mark. Negotiations were opened to win French support, while his marriage to Stadholder Frederick Henry’s eldest daughter helped minimize potential Dutch objections. Overconfident, the elector now tried to settle his dispute with Pfalz-Neuburg by invading Berg in November 1646.

The results were other than he expected. Wolfgang Wilhelm had suffered foreigners in his lands throughout his reign. He refused to be intimidated by the new arrivals who soon ran out of bread and went home. All that Friedrich Wilhelm achieved were minor revisions to the last (1629) partition treaty assigning him Pfalz-Neuburg’s share of Ravensberg.

The major players had no intention of letting ambitious princes settle matters themselves. Brandenburg’s rejection of the by-now very stale carrot of a Swedish dynastic marriage prompted Oxenstierna to accept Trauttmannsdorff’s offer to partition Pomerania. Sweden obtained the richer, western part, including Stralsund, Stettin, Garz and the islands securing the Oder delta, on the condition these remained part of the Empire. Exposed by his failed invasion of Berg, Friedrich Wilhelm hastened to make sure he was not left out. The emperor was prepared to be generous, appreciating the utility of Brandenburg support over other issues. He rejected a Franco-Bavarian suggestion to save the church lands by compensating Brandenburg with Silesia instead. In addition to eastern Pomerania, Ferdinand agreed Brandenburg could have the bishoprics of Kammin, Halberstadt and Minden, as well as the archbishopric of Magdeburg when its current Saxon administrator died. The latter measure alienated Saxony, but since that electorate had left the war, there was little Johann Georg could do. Brandenburg accepted on 19 February 1647, acquiring considerably more land than Sweden and enlarging its total territory by well over a third (see Table 5).¹⁰

Table 5: The territorial settlement

Swedish Gains	Size (km2)	Brandenburg’s Gains	Size (km2)
Western Pomerania	9,600	Eastern Pomerania	19,635
Archbishopric of Bremen	5,170	Archbishopric of Magdeburg	5,005
Bishopric of Verden	1,320	Bishopric of Kammin	2,365
Port of Wismar	181.5	Bishopric of Halberstadt	1,705
	16,271.5	Bishopric of Minden	1,198
			29,908

One factor behind Ferdinand’s largess was the desire to bolster Brandenburg as a buffer to contain the Swedish bridgehead. Another was that the concessions were part of a remarkably favourable settlement brokered by Trauttmannsdorff. Friedrich Wilhelm dropped his earlier support for the radical Hessian constitutional programme and swung behind the other electors in asserting their collective pre-eminence over the other imperial Estates. Realizing their own status depended on preserving the Empire’s hierarchical character, the electors stoutly defended the emperor’s remaining prerogatives.¹¹ Sweden dropped its support for constitutional reform in return for the Pomeranian deal. Mazarin fell into line in April 1647 in return for Trauttmannsdorff’s confirmation of the September 1646 agreement to cede Alsace. Both crowns now accepted his face-saving device of postponing discussion of the remaining constitutional issues as negotia remissa to be tackled by the first Reichstag after the peace.

Agreement on the Normative Year

The Pomeranian deal dealt a powerful blow to militants on both sides of the confessional divide. The redistribution of ecclesiastical land was in line with a new consensus over the thorny problem of church property. Three solutions had been employed since the mid-sixteenth century.¹² The Peace of Augsburg had used dissimulation in a deliberately ambiguous document both parties could accept without losing face. This reflected the early modern ideal of a compromise peace without clear winners or losers. This ideal guided the Westphalian discussions, where it was increasingly accepted that lasting peace depended on preserving the honour of all signatories. It was equally clear, however, that the settlement needed to remove the more problematic ambiguities from the 1555 Peace.

A second method was also present in the 1555 Peace, which both sides saw as providing guidelines for temporary co-existence until they persuaded the other to accept the exclusive validity of their interpretation of Christianity. The Edict of Restitution attempted a definitive verdict favouring the Catholic interpretation. However, imperial political culture always left room for exceptions to defuse tensions by postponing difficult decisions. The emperor had already extended de facto toleration to Calvinists from the 1560s though it was obvious their beliefs differed from those protected by the 1555 Peace. The Peace of Prague simply added further provisional arrangements by suspending the Edict for forty years. Trauttmannsdorff opened negotiations at Westphalia by offering to extend the suspension for a century.

The third approach entailed compromise on the basis of actual possession (uti possidetis) that had also been employed in 1555 through the use of 1552 as a ‘normative year’ that allowed Lutherans to retain church lands they held on that date. Later problems stemmed largely from the diverging interpretations of these arrangements. Catholics regarded it as a fixed limit, whereas Protestants refused to see it as a barrier to the further advancement of their faith through peaceful persuasion. Catholics countered with the principle of restitution, insisting peace could only be restored if Protestants redressed the wrong they had done by returning the ‘stolen’ property. This argument underpinned the 1629 Restitution Edict that Catholic militants still considered valid.

The solution entailed combining restitution with the law of possession in a permanent settlement. This fourth option had already been suggested by moderate Lutherans in the decade before 1618. They offered to renounce their elastic interpretation of the normative year in return for Catholic acceptance of the additional land they had acquired in the meantime. This foundered on the Catholics’ mistrust and the sheer scale of what they were being asked to relinquish. Nonetheless, the idea gained ground with Darmstadt and Saxon attempts to moderate the 1629 Edict by brokering cross-confessional compromise. Crucially, it shifted the debate from a clash over which interpretation was ‘correct’, and focused attention on the practical consequences of alternative normative years. Restitution and possession ceased to represent opposing positions, since both principles would apply to each side: Protestants and Catholics would retain much of their existing land while exchanging some areas to restore the situation to the new chosen date.

The challenge was to find a mutually agreeable date. Matters were complicated by the amnesty question, since the emperor’s interpretation of the war as rebellion provided the grounds to expropriate his opponents’ lands. From Ferdinand’s perspective, there had been two wars. The first began in 1618 with the Bohemian Revolt and had been settled in 1629–30 with the Restitution Edict, the Peace of Lübeck and the unrati-fied Treaty of Regensburg with France. The second war began in 1630 with the Swedish invasion and had been partially resolved at Prague five years later. Trauttmannsdorff was instructed to begin negotiations in May 1646 on the premise that the amnesty could only go back to 1630, while the normative year should be 1627 as agreed at Prague. Only as a last resort should he offer 1618 in both cases, though Ferdinand was extremely reluctant to extend the amnesty to the Bohemian exiles since this would imply the Habsburgs had failed to defeat their revolt.

The Swedes backed the radical Protestant insistence on 1618 for both the amnesty and restitution, but France only supported the former as the latter would entail a significant reduction in church property. The deadlock was broken by the Saxon representative who, for reasons that remain unclear, suggested 1 January 1624 as the new normative date for the Empire, excluding the Habsburg monarchy where the situation could remain as agreed at Prague. The proposal encouraged both sides to produce lists of land that would have to be restored, depending on which normative year was adopted. Confessional solidarity was weakened as each group divided internally between those who stood to lose and those who could accept or even profit from the Saxon proposal. By November 1646 it was clear that three groups were emerging. The largest, composed of both Protestants and Catholics, accepted the Saxon proposal. Bavaria joined this group once Maximilian negotiated an additional exception to preserve the re-Catholicization of the Upper Palatinate that only began after 1624. Ferdinand was naturally pleased with the blanket exemption for the Habsburg monarchy, though the guarantees extended by Johann Georg to the Silesians in 1621 were to remain in place to preserve Saxon prestige. The amnesty was settled on the same basis, because the special arrangements for the Habsburg monarchy and Bavaria meant Ferdinand and Maximilian could accept a full pardon elsewhere in the Empire. This would restore the elector Palatine, but permit Maximilian to retain the title and the Upper Palatinate (see p.726 below). Many Lutherans were won over by the more favourable date that ended the emperor’s attempts to place a Habsburg prince in Magdeburg and Halberstadt, and removed Catholic claims to other north German bishoprics and the Württemberg monasteries.

The emergence of this broad cross-confessional consensus marginalized the militants as two small groups of uncompromising extremists on either flank. The Catholics were led by Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg, bishop of Osnabrück, Verden and Minden, who was entrusted with the votes of a third of the other ecclesiastical princes. He was backed by Adam Adami, Benedictine abbot of Murrhardt, who represented the Swabian prelates. Further support came from Dr Johann Leuchselsing, a bigoted magistrate from the city of Augsburg who also wielded additional votes from several Swabian counts. Their collective position was summed up by Carafa, the new Jesuit superior general, who declared ‘a peace that will enslave souls is worse than any war and the ruin of souls is more to be avoided than that of bodies’.¹³ The papacy had already resolved in 1641 to reject any concessions, not with the intention of preventing peace entirely, but to preserve the legitimacy of the hardline Catholic position in case the situation improved.

The death of Bishop Knöringen of Augsburg in 1646 deprived the group of an important, long-standing member. The rest were compromised by the Ulm Truce that allowed Trauttmannsdorff to claim Catholic Bavaria and Cologne had taken the weapons out of Austria’s hands, forcing the Catholic emperor to grant concessions. Bavarian support for the zealots had only been tactical and Maximilian now pushed his brother Ferdinand to remove Bishop Wartenberg from the official Cologne delegation. Elector Ferdinand was careful not to associate himself openly with the concessions, but he now ignored Wartenberg and allowed the pragmatic Paderborn chancellor, Peter Buschmann, to accept the deal over the normative year.¹⁴

Wartenberg remained at the negotiations on his own account with Adami, but both were isolated. Many of their core supporters were disillusioned. A good example is Georg Gaisser, Benedictine abbot of St Georgen that was recovered from Württemberg in 1630. Though a beneficiary of the Edict of Restitution, he had spent most of his time in fruitless negotiations with Catholic officers to curb soldiers’ indiscipline and destruction. The experience led him to reject Adami’s view of the war as divine punishment for the Empire’s ‘sinful’ toleration of heresy, instead seeing it as the product of human failings.¹⁵ A more influential case was Johann Philipp von Schönborn, already bishop of Würzburg, who succeeded Anselm Casimir in Mainz on 19 November 1647. He recognized the need to salvage the bulk of the imperial church by making wider concessions, not only over territory, but also freedom of conscience (Freistellung) for recognized minorities. His representative spent more time talking to the Protestants in Osnabrück than with his fellow Catholics in Münster. With Austria, Bavaria, Mainz and Cologne backing the moderate position, others like Salzburg fell into line to avoid isolation.

Brandenburg’s acceptance of the compromise by February 1647 likewise marginalized the Protestant militants who were already divided due to Saxony’s dogged opposition to the inclusion of Calvinists. Johann Georg had lost credit by accepting minority rights for Catholics when he received full possession of Lusatia in the Peace of Prague. Led by Duke Friedrich Wilhelm of Altenburg, his Ernestine relations saw a chance to reassert their leadership of the German Protestants lost with the transfer of the Saxon electoral title in 1547. Their stance combined confessional objectives with the long-standing resentment of the minor territories at their subordinate place within the constitution. Dr Lampadius, representing Brunswick-Grubenhagen, advocated imposing a capitulatio perpetua to fix imperial prerogatives and stop the electors bargaining new privileges from each new emperor. Together with Thumshirn, his Altenburg colleague, Lampadius proposed extending German liberty to ordinary people by granting full freedom of conscience. This was further than most Protestants were prepared to go, especially when they realized it would be difficult to deny Catholic minorities similar rights.¹⁶ Calvinist millenarianism had encouraged many to go to war. Though diehards were still predicting the imminent end of the Habsburg monarchy ten years after the war, most had long stopped believing such nonsense. War had become part of everyday life and had lost its impact as a sudden scourge of God.¹⁷

The Spanish Succession

Trauttmannsdorff tried to use the growing consensus to wrap up the remaining issues in April 1647, negotiating over compensation claims lodged by Hessen-Kassel, Baden-Durlach, the Guelphs and the Bohemian exiles. Sweden and the Protestant imperial Estates had largely agreed by July. However, Sweden still needed money to ‘content’ its soldiers, demanding 20 million tlr, whereas the imperial Estates offered only 1.6 million. It also had to pay some regard to the exiles, many of whom were serving as officers in its army. Having previously ignored Lampadius’s proposals, Sweden now championed them as another device to force the emperor to improve the money offered to its army.

The real sticking point was France’s insistence that Ferdinand make peace without Spain. Spain’s position had improved with a draft treaty with the Dutch in January 1647 that suspended operations along the Netherlands frontier (see below, p.734). It now saw less need to grant Mazarin’s terms, obliging France to redouble its efforts to split the Habsburgs. Despite the lack of Spanish assistance since 1642, Ferdinand was now even more concerned not to alienate Spain. Philip IV’s wife had died in October 1644 and he did not remarry until 1649. Since his younger brother Fernando died in 1641, while his own son followed in October 1646, his Austrian relations were currently next in line to the throne. The situation remained open until the birth of the future Charles II in 1661, who proved to be the last of the Spanish Habsburgs. Madrid appreciated that the open question of the succession gave it far better leverage over Austria than the earlier subsidies.

Philip IV accepted Archduke Leopold Wilhelm as the new governor of the Netherlands. Arriving in April 1647, he remained until July 1656, disrupting the previously good relations between Brussels and the Spanish delegation in Münster. The king also dangled his daughter Maria Theresa as a possible match for the emperor’s son Ferdinand, but concealed that he had been negotiating since 1644 to end the war with France by marrying her to Louis XIV. Meanwhile, Spain spun out talks for the emperor’s daughter, Maria Anna, to become Philip’s new wife. With the succession to the entire Spanish empire at stake, Ferdinand did not want to offend his cousin by abandoning him through a separate peace. Bishop Wartenberg’s continued objections to the religious concessions offered a convenient excuse to delay peace and give the generals more time to force France to drop its demand.¹⁸

Operations During the Truce

Wrangel’s concern about the Ulm Truce proved well-founded. France benefited most, as the surrender of Heilbronn at last consolidated its positions east of the Black Forest. Turenne spent the rest of March 1647 eliminating some small imperial outposts not included in the terms, while Wrangel suspended his fruitless siege of Lindau and evacuated his positions in the Tirol. With Bavaria no longer a target, Wrangel headed north-east through Ravensburg and Nördlingen into Franconia, detaching Königsmarck to assist the Hessians on the Main. The importance of the Upper Palatinate’s exclusion from the Truce now became clear as Wrangel arrived there to attack north-western Bohemia. He believed all previous invasions of Bohemia had failed due to insufficient manpower and preparation. He summoned the 7,000-strong corps under Wittenberg from Silesia to cross Saxony and join him at Eger, and he fattened his own troops at the Franconians’ expense while he waited.

French strategic priorities had changed. Mazarin was concerned that the Spanish-Dutch truce from January would allow Leopold Wilhelm to switch troops to the southern frontier. Secret instructions were sent to Turenne to launch a diversionary attack into Luxembourg. At first his men thought they were simply heading to help the Hessians until Turenne turned left across the Rhine at Philippsburg. By the time they reached Saverne on 15 June it was obvious they were leaving the Empire. Eleven regiments under former Bernhardine officers refused to go any further. The officers voiced the usual concerns about their pay arrears, not wanting to march far from Breisach and the other towns still held by their comrades as security for payment. This time, however, the mutiny had a genuinely popular element, since the majority of the 3,000 men involved were Lower Saxons recruited during the operations there in 1640–2. Like the French who had crossed the Rhine in the opposite direction since 1637, they feared they would never return home. Anxieties were stoked by unfounded rumours that their real destination was Catalonia. Rather than trust their officers, they elected a comrade, Wilhelm Hempel, a former student from Jena University, as their leader and re-crossed both the Rhine and the Neckar rivers later in July.

General Bönninghausen now defected back to the emperor in return for a pardon and was sent to negotiate with the mutineers. Three hundred were won over to the imperial cause, but Turenne re-crossed the Rhine and surprised the rest. Around 1,660 escaped northwards in August to join Königsmarck, who had meanwhile moved to Hildesheim. It was a welcome reinforcement but the Swedish government was not entirely happy, suspecting Königsmarck might become another Duke Bernhard with his own army.¹⁹

In addition to depriving Sweden of French support, the Ulm Truce allowed the Imperialists to recover. With Bavaria as a neutral buffer, they could concentrate on defending the Austrian lands. Command was given to Melander who had led the Westphalians since 1645. He took over on 17 April, a week before Gallas’s death. He enjoyed not only the emperor’s support, but the backing of Imperial Vice-Chancellor Kurz and the confidence of the army. A concerted effort was made to improve discipline and overcome logistical difficulties. Incompetent or corrupt officers were punished and each company received a wagon loaded with hard tack packed into barrels to feed it if the regular bread supply was interrupted.²⁰

The main force, only 20,000 strong, was concentrated in Bohemia to receive Wrangel’s expected attack. Defence of Silesia was left to the Saxon contingent still with the imperial army under the terms of its elector’s truce, backed by some Croats and imperial cavalry, while Polish troops secured Oppeln and Ratibor for the emperor. Melander waited around Pilsen, because Ferdinand hoped the 18,700 Bavarians would defect. These were summoned on 8 May to return to imperial authority. Though he assured Maximilian this call was directed only towards four recently disbanded regiments, it was clearly intended to suborn the entire army. It was a conflict between the emperor’s appeal to ‘German patriotism’, and the soldiers’ loyalty to Maximilian as their lord and territorial master.

Werth had consistently opposed the Truce, and had felt personally slighted when he was passed over in favour of Gronsfeld to replace Mercy as the Bavarian commander. He moved twelve regiments towards Passau claiming he was looking for recruits. Realizing what was happening, Maximilian placed a 10,000 tlr reward on his head, dead or alive. Bavarian officials refused to give him transport or supplies, but loyal regiments evaded their mutinous comrades rather than confront them. However, most of the mutineers were reluctant to cross over into Bohemia where food was scarce. General Gayling encouraged a counter-mutiny, reducing Werth’s followers to General Sporck, 800 dragoons and two isolated garrisons in Swabia that declared for the emperor. General Sparr, Melander’s replacement in Westphalia, secured several more garrisons with the cooperation of the Cologne canons who also opposed the Truce. However, local loyalty won out and the vast majority of the men remained true to Bavaria. Maximilian never forgave Werth, giving his position as cavalry commander to Gayling instead.²¹

Waiting for Werth delayed Melander’s departure and he failed to reach Eger before it surrendered to Wrangel and Wittenberg on 18 July. Undaunted, he sat across the Eger valley, blocking the way into Bohemia. Ferdinand’s arrival boosted morale, and Melander brought off another of his celebrated coups by surprising Wrangel’s camp at Triebl on 22 August, inflicting 1,000 casualties and taking 300 prisoners for slight losses.

The End of the Truce

This minor victory greatly improved the emperor’s position in negotiations with Bavaria and Cologne. Elector Ferdinand had accepted his brother’s truce only with reluctance because it did not include the Hessians. He had no intention of forcing the small imperial garrisons from Westphalia and they predictably refused to go voluntarily. This provided an excuse for Königsmarck to attack once he arrived in Westphalia from Hessen-Kassel, taking Vechta in May and Wiedenbrück in June. Cologne formally renounced the Truce on 15 August, resuming operations with its army under Lamboy. The latter showed his deficiencies as a general in a bungled attack on the Hessians’ position in East Frisia that was foiled when the defenders flooded the countryside. By November, he had been driven back into the Sauerland.

Bavarian support was more important if the emperor was to turn the war sufficiently to avoid peace without Spain. Ferdinand had consistently postponed the Palatine question at Westphalia to retain his hold over Bavaria. As talks opened with Maximilian in April, Ferdinand rapidly gave way, concluding a deal in August that represented the first modification to the Empire’s fundamental charter since 1356. An eighth electoral title would be created for Karl Ludwig who would recover the Lower Palatinate. Maximilian would retain the more senior, former Palatine title, as well as the Upper Palatinate and 660,000 florins in compensation from the emperor for relinquishing the Lower Palatinate.²²

As it became clear that France would not offer a better deal, Maximilian renounced the Ulm Truce in the Passau Recess on 7 September. This enhanced his military autonomy, bringing him the Bavarian, Franconian and Swabian Kreise to maintain his troops, as well as command of the imperial units in these regions. In return, Maximilian rejoined the war, but only against Sweden, trusting the tensions between the two crowns following Turenne’s departure to Luxembourg would prevent the need to fight France. The return of both Cologne and Bavaria also boosted the imperial cause, briefly raising hopes of a full ‘conjunction’, or the arrival of Saxon and Brandenburg troops as well.

Around a third of the Bavarian army joined General Enkevort who had been harrying Swedish positions around Lake Constance since Wrangel’s departure in March. From Brabant, Enkevort is another of those competent imperial officers military history has overlooked. Out of deference to Maximilian, he avoided French-garrisoned towns like Heilbronn, but retook Swedish-held Memmingen on 23 November after a two-month siege, as well as other less-significant places in Swabia and Franconia. He continued his energetic operations against the Swedes throughout 1648, building a gunboat flotilla to contest control of Lake Constance.²³

The march of the other 12,000 Bavarians under Gronsfeld to join the Imperialists was delayed by Maximilian’s fury at the presence of the former mutineers Werth and Sporck in the imperial army. Eventually, Ferdinand agreed to remove them from active command and they retired to Prague having been richly rewarded. Gronsfeld finally joined Melander in Bohemia on 15 October. Coordination remained poor, because Gronsfeld had never forgiven Melander for defeating him at Hessisch-Oldendorf in 1633, while Maximilian did not want the Bavarians to move too far west into Germany for fear of provoking France. They could neither retake Eger, nor stop Wrangel retiring along the Saxon frontier, across Thuringia and Lower Saxony to the Weser.

Melander followed slowly, eventually moving into Hessen-Kassel in November. Amalie Elisabeth had benefited greatly from the Truce. Königsmarck and Turenne helped her as they passed through on their way out of Swabia in April. With the local balance in her favour, she tried to settle with her Darmstadt rival before the congress imposed a less agreeable settlement. The same urgency had driven Brandenburg’s abortive invasion of Berg six months earlier. She failed to learn from its mistake. Her troops likewise scored initial success, taking Rheinfels on 18 July and forcing Darmstadt to agree another truce. Melander’s arrival then encouraged Darmstadt to retaliate. Though the Imperialists failed to take Marburg in December, their presence frustrated Amalie Elisabeth’s objective.

The other princes were heartily sick of the dispute, regarding it as a private matter that was delaying the general peace. Sweden and the German Lutherans were alienated by Amalie Elisabeth’s vocal championing of Calvinist rights, while even her closest supporters were shocked when she revealed the extent of her territorial demands on 25 April 1646. These were opposed by France since they would be at the expense of the imperial church. The congress gave both sides an ultimatum on 2 April 1648 to accept arbitration, which led to a settlement twelve days later. Darmstadt retained a few districts, but otherwise accepted the loss of Marburg and Rheinfels to Kassel. Kassel agreed to tolerate Lutheranism in Marburg, and both would share administration of its university. Meanwhile, France persuaded Amalie Elisabeth to renounce her territorial claims in return for 800,000 tlr, a quarter of which was to pay off her troops.

Melander’s modest success had reinvigorated the imperial army which again appeared a credible force, and helped persuade Maximilian to rejoin the war. The tide was still against the emperor, however. Swedish pressure forced France to send a trumpeter to Munich at the end of 1647 to announce it no longer felt bound by the Truce. Bavaria’s temporary neutrality had re-emphasized Maximilian’s importance to Ferdinand, especially as nothing more could be expected from Spain.

SPAIN’S PEACE WITH THE DUTCH

The Neapolitan Revolt 1647

The convulsions of the Catalan and Portuguese revolts threw Spain onto the defensive by 1643. Thereafter, its energies were consumed fighting multiple fires. It kept these under control, but it could not extinguish any. As soon as progress was made in one theatre, resources had to be switched to deal with a new threat elsewhere. The situation in Italy quietened temporarily as the Castro War diverted the Italian princes, whose armies therefore became unavailable to either Spain or France. Spain’s own Army of Lombardy had fallen from nearly 25,000 men in 1635 to 15,000 by the mid-1640s. A resurgence in raiding by the Barbary pirates on the Sicilian and Neapolitan coasts was another sign of Spain’s weakness.

Mazarin launched a major expedition in 1646 against the Spanish possessions on Elba and the Tuscan coast intended to cut communications between Naples and Genoa and encourage the princes to re-enter the war. The Neapolitans were known to be restive and Mazarin thought a bold stroke would prompt a rising against their Spanish government. Prince Tommaso of Savoy presented himself as a potential candidate for the Neapolitan throne. The French Mediterranean fleet ferried him and 8,000 men to the Tuscan ports known as the Presidencies that were separated from the rest of the mainland by the malarial strip of the Maremma. Landing in April, Tommaso stalled before the fortress of Orbitello, while his soldiers died from typhus and malaria. The arrival of the Spanish fleet forced him to evacuate the survivors in June.

Despite the setback, the Neapolitans rose anyway in July 1647. Like the events in Catalonia and Portugal, the revolt had both long-term causes and immediate triggers. The economy was distorted by investments in Spanish government bonds that earned high interest when Neapolitan export markets were contracting. Investment spread throughout society, with some holding bonds worth several thousands, but many owning just one ducat’s worth. The consequences were felt after 1622 when the Spanish government fell into arrears on the interest, defaulting entirely in 1642. Bonds rapidly lost value. An official devaluation in 1637 alone wiped out over 20 million ducats. The local economy was starved of capital. Small farmers were driven into debt bondage and other forms of dependency. The barons owning the countryside exploited the situation, manipulating debt as a means of social control and using the poor and landless as bandits in feuds with their neighbours. Meanwhile, food supply became a pressing concern as rural emigrants fuelled the growth of Naples to 225,000 inhabitants, making it the largest city in the Spanish empire.

Spain’s viceroy was preoccupied meeting Madrid’s demands for soldiers and taxes. The kingdom of Naples supplied 48,000 men and 5,500 horses in 1631–6 alone. Though its revenue rose from 4.3 million ducats (in 1616) to 5.8 million (1638), much of the effort was funded by borrowing. The debt quadrupled to 40 million ducats, consuming four-fifths of current revenue just in interest payments.²⁴ Expedients like the sale of offices spread corruption, especially because the government sold jurisdiction over the smaller towns to the barons. Ordinary people suffered food shortages, debt, corruption and violence, but the political situation remained confused. Local elites were split between those who represented Spain, those profiting from Spanish policies and those who were losing out. Some barons conspired with the French, but most remained aloof, generally concentrating on their own immediate advantage.

The situation worsened as winter flooding, plague and a succession of poor harvests caused famine across much of the Mediterranean in 1647. Unrest on Sicily forced the authorities there to suspend some taxes in May. News of the Palermo disturbances reached Naples on Sunday 7 July when the city was crowded for a religious festival. The situation resembled that in Barcelona seven years earlier as the violence escalated once the authorities lost control of the streets. Leadership of the revolt passed to Tommaso Aniello, a fisherman better known in Italian folklore as Masaniello, who focused popular violence against symbols of general repression. Alongside ransacking the viceroy’s palace, the crowd also attacked the bandits used by the barons for their feuds. Masaniello was proclaimed ‘king’ by his supporters, but was unable to control the escalating cycle of ritualized murders and decapitations.

Unlike in Catalonia, the viceroy escaped death and remained in charge of government. He won over the moderates who were appalled by the violence and had Masaniello beheaded, claiming he was seeking a dictatorship. In the continuing anxiety over escalating food prices, Masaniello quickly acquired superhuman status. The government was obliged to give him a state funeral where it was claimed his head miraculously rejoined his body. He was already compared to Cromwell in the 1650s and was a source of inspiration for the overthrow of the Neapolitan monarchy in 1799. Though the viceroy now lost control of the city, he escaped to the Castel dell’Oro fortress on a spit in the bay. The Spanish fleet under Don Juan José, Philip IV’s illegitimate son, landed reinforcements and shelled the city on 1 October, prompting the rebels to declare independence three weeks later.

France was caught unprepared by the revolt. The delay in offering assistance was lengthened by the distaste for aiding rebellion. Eventually, the rebels persuaded Henri de Guise to become their leader. In Rome arranging his divorce, the duke had a distant claim to the Neapolitan throne and offered a more respectable partner for the French. The French Mediterranean fleet arrived on 18 December, forcing Juan José to re-embark his troops. The rebellion then stalled. Mazarin distrusted Guise as a member of the Lorraine clan whose involvement had frustrated the earlier plans to back Prince Tommaso of Savoy. The duke was also unable to assert his authority. The Neapolitans were conscious of Catalonia’s fate and were divided over the question of French intervention. Much time was lost in worthy debates over social justice and utopian reforms. Those on the mainland failed to coordinate action with the Sicilians whose own divided leadership was unable to prevent Spain reoccupying the island by July 1648. When the Spanish fleet returned and landed an army, Naples opened its gates on 6 April 1648 and handed over Guise in return for a general amnesty. The French fleet appeared on 4 June with Prince Tommaso, but it was now too late.

The revolt dealt Spain another serious blow. There was no possibility of balancing the budget, and the crown was forced to declare another bankruptcy, suspending interest payments and meeting its obligations with another bond issue. Nonetheless, the feebleness of French intervention and the revolt’s ultimate collapse demonstrated Spain’s continued resilience. Despite its regional significance, the revolt made little difference to the monarchy’s overall position. As always, the Netherlands proved the decisive theatre.

The War against the Dutch

The Franco-Dutch alliance had been renewed on 1 March 1644, each party promising to continue fighting until both were satisfied. A coordinated effort was made to eliminate the Dunkirkers by conquering the Flemish coast. The Dutch provided naval support by blockading each position as itwas besieged by a French army advancing from Artois. The fall of Gravelines breached Dunkirk’s outer defences in July 1644. The French took Mardyck a year later and Courtrai in June 1646. The Spanish offered stiff resistance, retaking Mardyck in December 1645, only to lose it again the following August. Under d’Enghien, now Prince de Condé, the French went on to capture Furnes in September 1646 and finally Dunkirk in October. The effects were immediate. Whereas the Dunkirkers had sunk or captured 2,029 Dutch ships between 1627 and 1635, the numbers fell to 547 in 1642–6.²⁵

Dutch land operations were rather less successful. Frederick Henry faced a difficult task, having to start each campaign north of the Rhine, whereas the French had no natural obstacle between them and the Flanders coast. Like the French, he also had to thin his forces, detaching troops along the frontier to repel possible Spanish raids. He wanted to expand the Republic’s buffer to the south and east. The 1626–7 campaign had conquered land east of the Ijssel, while the capture of s’Hertzogenbosch in 1629 widened the south-eastern salient providing security for Gelderland. The conquest of Maastricht in 1632 secured an outpost further up the Meuse and helped disrupt Spanish communications between their remaining positions on the Lower Rhine and those in the rest of the Netherlands. The Breda campaign of 1637 improved the situation further west, offering protection for Utrecht. Frederick Henry’s subsequent operations expanded this by taking Sas van Gent in 1644 and Hulst in 1645, giving the Republic control of the western side of the Scheldt estuary.

The 1646 campaign was intended to complete this by taking Antwerp. Sensing their ally was flagging, France increased its subsidy and promised 6,000 troops under Gramont to assist. Gramont managed to dash from France across Flanders to join Frederick Henry as he approached Antwerp. The operation nonetheless failed and the Dutch retreated. The French were angry that the Dutch fleet arrived late off Dunkirk, and Gramont thought Frederick Henry had gone insane.²⁶ The Dutch retorted with complaints at French ill-discipline and eventually shipped Gramont’s contingent home.

News from the colonies proved equally disappointing, and the Dutch now lost the commanding position they had attained by 1644. Despite their tolerant regime in Pernambuco, many Brazilians remained loyal to Portugal and moved south to develop a rival sugar industry in Bahia. Another new colony was founded at Maranhão, north-west of Pernambuco towards the Amazon basin, and together they soon outstripped Dutch sugar production. The cost of defending its new conquests placed the West India Company under great strain and it needed a government subsidy to remain in business. Its share value had already fallen after 1629, despite its continued conquests. By 1640 the WIC’s debts had reached 18 million florins and share prices crashed from 117 points to 14 by 1650. Already under pressure from investors, the directors slashed the defence budget in 1644. This coincided with the recall of Johan Maurits as governor and cleared the way for a Brazilian revolt in 1645. Neither side could put more than 1,000 men in the field. Dutch reinforcements arrived in 1646, but the rebels received assistance from Portuguese Bahia and the WIC was soon reduced to Recife and three other coastal forts.

WIC activities seriously compromised Dutch diplomacy by preventing effective cooperation with the Portuguese rebels who were natural allies in Europe, but enemies in the colonies. The Republic did agree a truce with Portugal for the East Indies in 1644 that lasted until 1652. King John of Portugal stopped helping Brazil in the hope that the Dutch would support Portuguese independence at the Westphalian negotiations. However, the Brazilians simply organized their own expedition that crossed the Atlantic in 1648 and retook Angola and Sao Tomé. Though Portugal lost most of its remaining East Indies posts to the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) by 1663, it exploited the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–4) to expel the WIC altogether from Brazil by 1654. The company was in terminal decline and was dissolved in 1674.

War no longer seemed profitable to the majority of the Dutch by 1645. The WIC directors dropped their earlier opposition to peace and began considering alternatives, especially as their rival VOC’s trade with Asia, Spain, the Levant and Archangel was now worth 50 million fl. a year. Other sectors suffered too. Textiles and agriculture had profited from the slump in the Spanish Netherlands following France’s entry into the war. Combined with the sugar boom and the slave trade, this overheated the Dutch economy, symbolized by the tulip craze in 1636–7 as speculators cashed-in on the fashionable passion for exotic flowers. The subsequent downturn made the Dutch less willing to continue paying for the war. There were signs that their famed financial system had reached its limit. Large sums were still raised in taxation, but the armed forces relied on private financiers (soliciteurs militair) who advanced captains money to maintain their company or crew in return for a cut when their official pay arrived. Credit depended on prompt repayment, but by January 1643 the seven provinces owed 5 million in arrears. The States General reduced the army’s official establishment by 20,000 to 60,000 two months later.²⁷

The reduction also acknowledged that the majority no longer shared the war party’s faith in total victory. Ironically, Frederick Henry’s military successes were his political undoing. The conquest of land beyond the Rhine made the Republic’s southern provinces feel more secure. Calvinism had also changed, growing stronger with deeper roots and a more established church structure. Most Calvinists no longer felt like an embattled minority in their own home. Some were prepared to be more tolerant, while religious fervour found alternative outlets in a range of small groups of spiritualist dissenters.²⁸

Spain’s Negotiations with the Dutch and French

These considerations created a favourable climate in the Republic for Spain’s renewed offer of a truce on 28 January 1646. Though obliged to consult France, the renewed alliance of 1644 allowed the Dutch to negotiate separately and the Republic now sent representatives to Münster. Talks opened in May, but led swiftly to a draft treaty effectively offering formal independence to the Republic. Backed strongly by Holland, the other provinces agreed to convert this into a permanent peace with Spain on 8 January 1647. Hostilities were suspended pending formal ratification, but a joint Spanish-Dutch commission already began marking the new frontier on the basis of what either side currently held.

Some feared the Republic would be exposed if it lost French goodwill by ratifying the peace, but most of the dwindling war party opposed the treaty for more selfish reasons. Frederick Henry’s impatient son, William II, at last became stadholder on his father’s death in March 1647 and wanted a chance to cement his new status by acquiring military glory. The three van Reede brothers who dominated the Utrecht States were sons of a South Netherlands refugee. Godard van Reede, who represented Utrecht at Münster, had invested heavily in the WIC and the arms trade with Sweden. He lived beyond his means and accepted a 100,000 fl. bribe from France to oppose ratification. He persuaded his colleague, Johan de Knuyt representing Zeeland, to do the same.²⁹ The Republic’s constitution made their personal feelings significant, because the founding Union of Utrecht (1579) required unanimity between the seven provinces for treaties to take effect.

The French envoy Servien left Münster on 29 December 1646 to arrange campaign plans for the coming year. He reached The Hague on 8 January, the day that the Dutch concluded their draft peace. The moment was unfortunate for France because its own talks with Spain had stalled, having scarcely moved beyond the exchange of initial proposals over two years earlier. It had become clear that the emperor was prepared to concede France’s territorial demands in the Rhineland and that the remaining obstacle to peace was Mazarin’s insistence that Ferdinand agreed to neutrality in the Franco-Spanish war. Concerned that Trauttmannsdorff would agree to this, Peñaranda at last offered Spanish concessions in March 1646, but the French regarded these as derisory. Spain increased its offer to include giving Roussillon to France and an amnesty to the Catalan rebels. Mazarin was overconfident, believing another campaign would bring the cession of Artois and Catalonia as well.

French confidence waned during the summer of 1647. The truce along the northern frontier enabled Spain to switch its forces southwards to retake Armentières in June and Landrecis in July. The French commander La Gassion skilfully consolidated his hold over Artois, capturing La Bassée in July, but he was killed at Lens in October. The mutiny in the Army of Germany, meanwhile, delayed the diversionary attack against Luxembourg that had scarcely begun when Turenne was redirected back to the Empire following the end of the Ulm Truce.

The situation also deteriorated for the French in the Pyrenees. Olivares’ dismissal produced a more flexible approach towards the Catalans, especially once Lérida’s capture in August 1644 enabled Philip IV to offer concessions as a magnanimous gesture. Entering the city in triumph, he solemnly swore to uphold Catalan liberties. This stood in stark contrast to France as it revealed its intentions after capturing Perpignan in September 1642. French laws were introduced into Roussillon as it was treated as Louis XIII’s possession. Most of the Catalan elite swung over to support Philip, whose troops repulsed an assault on Lérida in November 1646. Condé was sent to make a second attempt, but was also repulsed in June 1647. Though the French took Tortosa (July 1648), the Spanish remained entrenched in Lérida and Tarragona. The reassertion of Spanish authority in Naples was accompanied by a successful defence of Cremona against two assaults by the French and the duke of Modena, the only Italian prince to rejoin the anti-Habsburg alliance.

Chigi and Contarini, papal and Venetian mediators respectively, managed to restart Franco-Spanish talks in April 1647. It was a sign of Spain’s trust in the Dutch that it let them help broker peace. Forty-three articles were agreed on 16 November, leaving just six outstanding issues, of which territorial concessions to France were the chief obstacle. Both sides remained mistrustful, especially Spain that saw a chance to contain France by ratifying its draft treaty with the Dutch. This helped convince the Dutch of Spanish sincerity and they confirmed their draft treaty as the Peace of Münster on 30 January 1648. Spain recognized Dutch independence and agreed to keep the Scheldt closed to trade. The Dutch retained their conquests south of the Rhine, including Maastricht, but without the obligation to respect Catholicism previously demanded by Spain. They also retained their overseas conquests and right to trade there.³⁰ These were very good terms and were ratified by six of the seven provinces on 9 March. Pressure mounted on van Reede who, in failing health, finally consented on 30 April and peace was formally sworn on 15 May 1648 in the ceremony commemorated by ter Borch’s great painting. The last Spanish-Dutch fight occurred in the forests of Ternate island in July 1649 before news of the peace finally reached the East Indies.

France lost its ally at a critical stage. The ten-year-old Louis XIV was only just recovering from potentially fatal smallpox, while his younger brother remained ill. The Spanish government was convinced Mazarin would soon be toppled by French aristocrats who would offer more favourable peace terms. D’Avaux was recalled in March 1648 to satisfy criticism from the princes of the blood. Longueville, who opposed Mazarin, had already left the month before, reducing French representation to just Servien. Ratification of the Spanish-Dutch peace coincided with the end of the Neapolitan revolt. Not surprisingly, Philip IV rejected the draft peace with France on 6 May 1648 and ordered Peñaranda to negotiate an entirely new one. Peñaranda finally persuaded his master to let him leave Münster on 29 June by saying it impinged Spanish honour to leave him there now the main French representatives had gone. Negotiations were delegated to junior officials, reflecting the low priority they now received from both governments.

From Lens to the Pyrenees

France needed a success and Mazarin ordered Condé to secure it, reassigning him to the Flanders front with instructions to capture Ypres. Operations were delayed by bad weather and a shortage of fodder, but Condé took Ypres on 28 May 1648 after just two weeks. The gain was offset by the recapture of Courtrai by Leopold Wilhelm who, as governor, had replaced Piccolomini in command of the Army of Flanders. A French attack on Ostend was repulsed, while the Spanish also retook Furnes on 2 August. Even such relatively minor Spanish successes were doubly damaging, affecting both public opinion in Paris and the French position in Westphalia.

The French army was in tatters, ill-fed and demoralized. Mazarin persuaded Erlach to take 3,500 men from the Army of Germany and march from Alsace to reinforce Condé. This time the troops did not mutiny and his arrival gave Condé 16,000 troops and 18 cannon. Leopold Wilhelm had retaken Lens on 17 August and drew up his 18,000 men and 38 guns on a ridge to the west covered by a marsh. Condé deployed on the plain opposite on 19 August, tired and thirsty. It was obvious the Spanish position was too strong and he began to retreat. Part of Leopold Wilhelm’s army left the ridge to pursue, breaking the French rearguard. Their success fatally persuaded the archduke to move the rest of the army forward, which led to a general engagement. Condé recovered quickly, defeating the Spanish cavalry who fled, taking Leopold Wilhelm with them and exposing the infantry as at Rocroi. The French took 5,000 prisoners, having killed 3,000 more for a loss of only 1,500.³¹

Lens was a mixed blessing. The victory boosted Mazarin’s prestige and encouraged him to reject the new Spanish proposals. He used the thanksgiving service on 26 August to attempt the arrest of his two most vociferous opponents in the Parlement of Paris. The move failed and simply led to rioting, known as the Days of the Barricades. These started the Fronde, or struggle in France for the control of the regency government.³² Open warfare followed when the Parlement declared Mazarin an outlaw on 8 January 1649. Though temporarily pacified in March, the country again erupted in more serious violence when Condé, regarding himself as the saviour of the monarchy, rebelled in 1650. Mazarin had thwarted all attempts to oust him by 1653, obliging Condé to flee into Spanish service.

Negotiations were to continue in Münster for form’s sake until the last envoys departed in March 1649. The Franco-Spanish war lasted a further decade. The duke of Modena had already made peace with Spain in February 1649. Though he defected back to France in 1654–8, the Spanish held their own in Italy. The Fronde prevented reinforcements reaching Catalonia where the French lost support. Plague killed one in ten Catalonians between 1650 and 1654, further undermining enthusiasm for the war. Don Juan José besieged Barcelona from 1651. With no prospect of French relief, the city surrendered on 13 October 1652, accepting Juan as viceroy. Spain recovered the rest of Catalonia, as well as (briefly) Dunkirk and Gravalines in 1652, but hard fighting prevented it from fully exploiting the Fronde. Nonetheless, Marazin was obliged to accept far less satisfactory terms in the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659 than he could have obtained in November 1647. Spain ceded only part of Artois, plus Roussillon (without the fortress of Rosas) and part of Cerdagne (Cerdanya) disguised, as Philip had hoped, as a dowry for the Infanta as wife of Louis XIV. France was obliged to restore the duke of Lorraine, while it had already surrendered Dunkirk to the Cromwellian regime that had intervened against Spain after 1655. France did not recover Dunkirk until Charles II sold it back in 1662.³³

THE FINAL ROUND 1648

The Last Campaign

Spain’s partial recovery in 1647–8 limited what France could do in the Empire, where the exact outcome of the war remained unclear. It was obvious the emperor was losing, but even a local victory could still upset the two crowns at Westphalia. They had gained ground, but still lacked a decisive preponderance and reports that they outnumbered the imperial and Bavarian forces two-to-one at the end of 1648 are exaggerated.³⁴

The proportion of Swedish nationals in that country’s army was now much higher, at 18,000 out of 63,000, due to mistrust of the Germans. A major effort was made to improve the cavalry as these represented 22,000 of the 37,500 field troops. The eleven German cavalry regiments that defected from Turenne were reorganized into four larger units, while 14,000 horses were rounded up across Lower Saxony as remounts. The ratio of horse to foot was now the reverse of that in 1618. Logistical reasons continued to propel this, but the Swedes also needed to be mobile to assist their negotiators in Westphalia.

Nearly a third of the garrison troops were left to secure the Baltic bridgehead, while 1,000 held Benfeld in Alsace for political reasons, as the only Swedish outpost in the province coveted by France. Others were spread across the remaining bases, while 7,500 field troops were positioned in Franconia and Thuringia, with Wittenberg and another 5,700 in Silesia and Moravia. Other detachments left only 12,500 cavalry and 6,000 infantry in the main strike force under Wrangel, with an additional 1,500 cavalry under Königsmarck as the advance guard.³⁵ The Hessians, still numbering around 10,000, were fully occupied holding their existing positions. This greatly increased the significance of Turenne’s return to the Upper Rhine at the end of 1647 with 4,000 horse and 5,000 foot. A further 8,000 French held Breisach and other posts in the Rhineland.

Melander’s hardest task for the emperor in 1648 was to prevent a conjunction of Turenne and Wrangel, since he mustered only 10,000 Imperialists and 14,000 Bavarians. Around half his army were cavalry, and there were other imperial and Bavarian detachments in south-west Germany and Bohemia. He ended the 1647 campaign between the upper Weser and the Main, between Wrangel on the lower Weser and Turenne on the Upper Rhine. His position was not only exposed, but also in a region already exhausted by the fighting in 1645–7. He could not move against either enemy without endangering his communications with Bohemia and Bavaria. It was more important politically to confront the Swedes, so Melander planned to draw them towards Bohemia while Lamboy and the Westphalian army advanced up the Rhine to threaten Turenne’s communications with France. Cologne autonomy helped frustrate this, because Elector Ferdinand refused to let Lamboy out of Westphalia. Instead, Lamboy continued his fruitless war against Geyso’s Hessian outposts for the rest of the year.

French possession of the middle Rhine gave them bridges nearer the Swedish position. Turenne crossed at Mainz with 6,000 men on 15 February and marched east up the north bank of the Main while Wrangel moved south up the Weser to join him. Melander escaped their clutches by retreating south east to Nuremberg. The allied onward march was temporarily blocked by snow and disagreement between their commanders. Eventually they advanced south over the Main into Franconia, picking off minor garrisons. Melander retired slowly, while Gronsfeld positioned the Bavarians at Ingolstadt. The allies captured Donauwörth together, but then parted; the arguments over the Swedes’ incorporation of Turenne’s mutinous cavalry into their army the year before masked deeper political disagreements about the direction of the war. Mazarin was still reluctant to fight Bavaria and Turenne withdrew north-west to the Tauber valley to benefit from the spring grass and recuperate while the dispute was resolved.

Wrangel meanwhile marched north-east to capture imperial posts in the Upper Palatinate and relieve Eger, which had been blockaded since the autumn. His shift of focus was in line with Sweden’s overall strategy of delivering a substantial blow to the Habsburg hereditary lands to force Ferdinand to make peace. However, Swedish generals also saw a renewed attack on Bohemia as their last chance to plunder that country before the inevitable peace.³⁶ As Wrangel was unable to break through from Eger, he won Turenne’s agreement to further joint operations intended to knock out Bavaria and invade Austria along the Danube instead.

The Battle of Zusmarshausen

Melander was too weak to exploit his enemies’ brief estrangement, and had received secret instructions not to risk the army. Ferdinand recognized that a victory would now bring only modest benefits at the congress, whereas a defeat could be catastrophic. Melander moved westwards to between Ulm and Augsburg to ease the supply situation and was joined reluctantly by Gronsfeld and the Bavarians. Their combined effective strength had dropped to 15,370 and around 2,000 of the 7,220 cavalry were now without horses.³⁷

The allies marched south-west to Württemberg, before swinging back east to Lauingen, a French-held outpost on the Danube downstream from Ulm. They crossed on 16 May and headed south to cut Melander off from Bavaria. Already aware of their approach, Melander had withdrawn eastwards through Burgau to Zusmarshausen. Nonetheless, news that the enemy was actually across the Danube caused alarm when it reached him that evening. He rejected Gronsfeld’s advice to march north to confront them, because it was unclear how many were already over the river. Instead, he continued eastwards heading for Augsburg to escape over the Lech into Bavaria. The decision placed him in a position similar to Mansfeld’s at Mingolsheim or Duke Christian’s at Höchst and Stadtlohn of having to retreat encumbered with baggage in the face of the enemy. He had to cover a 20km stretch through wooded hills between the Zusam and Schmutter streams to reach the Lech valley. Raimondo Montecuccoli was left with 800 musketeers and 2,000 cavalry and Croats as a rearguard, while Melander set out with the rest of the army at 4 a.m. on 17 May.

Wrangel and Turenne had a considerable numerical superiority at 14,500 cavalry and 7,500 infantry, but were hindered by the terrain from deploying this to full effect. The action developed as a running battle with Montecuccoli’s rearguard as it fell back along the narrow route through the forest. The allied vanguard of three French and six Swedish cavalry regiments attacked around 7 a.m. Montecuccoli held for more than an hour, before retiring over the Zusam stream once it became clear the entire enemy army was arriving. He fell back to where the forest narrowed at Herpfenried village, intending to resist until Melander could establish another position further on at Horgau. The French cavalry worked their way along the easier southern side of the road and outflanked Montecuccoli. Melander dashed back with his bodyguard to rescue him. The rush to get going that morning had left Melander no time to put his armour on and he was hit in the chest by a pistol shot and killed shortly before midday. Imperial detachments continued to resist, but the fighting became confused as the French and Swedes pushed up the road, capturing part of the baggage.

Montecuccoli’s resistance nonetheless bought time for Gronsfeld to get the bulk of the army across the Schmutter just east of Biburg and to dig in on the Sand Hill on the other side. The Bavarian entrenchments had already reached knee height by the time Montecuccoli crossed with the survivors of the rearguard at 2 p.m. Bavarian pioneers then destroyed the bridge before the allies could appear in strength. The French used six captured cannon to support an attempted crossing, but were beaten back. Their infantry were still toiling along the road, denying them the advantage of numbers. Gronsfeld was able to slip away at night to Augsburg, having lost 1,582 casualties, but only 315 prisoners and 353 wagons. Melander’s objective had been achieved, but it could have been done with less cost had the baggage been sacrificed.

The allies had failed to destroy the emperor’s last army and it continued to repulse probes along the Lech. Gronsfeld had learned from Tilly’s experience in 1632 and remained well back from the river, ready to pounce as the enemy crossed. Wrangel wanted to win fame by repeating Gustavus’s feat and began sending cavalry swimming across on 26 May. One of Gronsfeld’s patrols encountered them and mistakenly reported that the entire enemy army was already across. Gronsfeld retreated to Ingolstadt, exposing southern Bavaria to the enemy as in 1632–3 and 1646. The main imperial army dissolved in the retreat, falling to only 5,000 effectives, with the Bavarians numbering not many more. Gronsfeld had been shaken by Zusmarshausen and the constant

alarms of the previous two weeks. This final retreat cost him Maximilian’s confidence and he was arrested along with two subordinates on 3 June and replaced by General Hunoldstein, who was followed in turn by Enkevort in August.

The elector vented his frustration on the army, and commandants of minor positions like Windsheim found themselves executed if they surrendered. More realistically, the crisis prompted him to drop his objections to Werth who was ordered to collect 6,000 imperial cavalry from Bohemia to reinforce the Bavarians. Ferdinand meanwhile entrusted imperial command to Piccolomini who had been without a position since resigning in the Netherlands in 1647. They were all competent officers, but it would take time to reorganize the demoralized army behind the river Isar. In the meantime, Maximilian joined 12,000 of his subjects and fled to Salzburg, where he had already placed his archive and treasury for safe keeping two years before.

Modest Recovery

Wrangel and Turenne invaded southern Bavaria with 24,000 men. Though Munich was spared, the rest of the area between the Lech and the Isar was plundered systematically to pressure Maximilian into another truce. Operations slowed as the generals waited for news from the peace conference. Wrangel then punched over the Isar at Freising. He reached the Inn in late June but found it swollen by heavy rain and strongly fortified by Hunoldstein. Piccolomini arrived with 3,100 Imperialists, followed by Werth and the cavalry on 3 August. Their arrival boosted morale, assisted by Piccolomini’s gesture of distributing his own salary to the unpaid troops. The Imperialists now mustered 14,000, while the Bavarians were back to 10,000 with additional militia and garrisons along the Inn and other positions across the electorate. They were on the march by 17 July.

Wrangel and Turenne retired slowly to avoid a reverse that might disrupt the final peace negotiations. Wrangel additionally wanted to deny Queen Christina an excuse to replace him as army commander. In fact, she had already named her cousin Carl Gustav of Pfalz-Zweibrücken as commander of all Sweden’s forces in the Empire on 2 June. The decision was part of her complex manoeuvres to resolve the problem of the succession without the need to marry. She recognized the difficulties she faced in persuading her subjects to accept Carl Gustav as her successor and wanted to raise his prestige by associating him with the final victory in the Empire. He had already proved himself a good subordinate under Torstensson. She now overruled objections from the Council of State and sent him with 7,150 native troops to Pomerania in late July.³⁸

Despite having to send 2,000 men to redress the situation in Bohemia, Piccolomini continued his strategy of harrying the enemy. This placed Werth in his element. He learned that Wrangel, Turenne and a large entourage had gone hunting in the Dachau woods north of Munich on 6 October. Despite the allies posting 1,400 cavalry around the edge for security, no one noticed additional firing as Werth’s troopers attacked, until a Swedish captain collapsed, followed by the lieutenant next to him. Werth had overrun the cordon and was in the wood. The hunters became the hunted. Twenty officers disappeared in the treacherous bogs. Wrangel found himself sinking until, so he claimed, a deer sprang over the marsh showing him the way through. He escaped, but Werth took 94 prisoners and 1,000 horses. The allies burned nearby Bavarian villages in retaliation for this unsporting behaviour.³⁹

The Final Confrontation at Prague

The real action had meanwhile shifted to Bohemia. Königsmarck had set out from the Lech on 18 May through the Upper Palatinate and the Eger valley, picking up garrison troops to arrive with 3,000 men in Pilsen on 22 July. His task was to drive a rift in Austro-Bavarian relations by forcing the emperor to recall his army to protect Bohemia. Piccolomini had drained the kingdom of troops to rebuild the main army, leaving Prague weakly held. Königsmarck decided to score a coup by surprising the city that offered the last chance of a really big prize before peace prevented further plunder. He had been contacted by Ernst Ottovalsky, a Protestant lieutenant-colonel who had lost his right arm in imperial service and was disgruntled at the lack of compensation he had received.

Having given Königsmarck an address list of the rich and famous, Ottovalsky guided a party of a hundred Swedes across the battlefield of White Mountain on the night of 25 July to the western ‘Little Side’ of the city left of the Moldau. He led them to a place where the wall was being strengthened and the workmen had left a pile of earth. The Swedes used this as a ramp to get over the defences, overpower the guards and open one of the gates to Königsmarck and the main body of troops. The Swedes swiftly captured the entire Little Side, including the Hradschin, but Rodolfo Colloredo, the imperial commander, escaped by boat to the other side of the Moldau and the mayor rang the bells sounding the alarm. Prague had surrendered without a fight in 1620, 1631 and 1632, but this had taught its inhabitants what to expect from enemy occupation and they were now determined to resist. Students and citizens blocked the Charles Bridge, preventing the Swedes from entering the larger New Town east of the river.

Königsmarck let his troops loose for three days. They murdered two hundred inhabitants and plundered the vast treasures of Bohemia’s aristocracy and clergy, including Schlick’s hoard, alone worth half a million talers. Further valuable monastic libraries were shipped to Stockholm to please Christina, along with what remained of Rudolf II’s art collection. Those aristocrats unfortunate enough to be caught were held to ransom. The Swedes also threatened to hold the bones of St Norbert to ransom, until they discovered these had been removed to safety. At around 7 million tlr the loot exceeded even the haul from Bregenz.

Other Swedish detachments headed for the honey pot. Wittenberg arrived on the opposite bank with 6,000 men from Silesia on 30 July, followed by Carl Gustav and 8,000 from Saxony on 4 October. However, Puchheim and 3,500 Imperialists beat them to it, racing up the Moldau to reach Prague three days before Wittenberg. The Swedes had expected an easy success and were disheartened by the tenacious resistance from the New Town. Wittenberg temporarily drew off to ravage the countryside, giving the defenders a chance to strengthen the fortifications and drill their militia. It was not until Carl Gustav arrived that the Swedes were strong enough for a regular siege and planted batteries on the north and south-eastern sides of the New Town. Further guns fired across the Moldau from the Little Side, while infantry tried to cross the Charles Bridge protected by a movable barricade. Fighting intensified on 11 October as the besiegers tried to break in before peace was signed. Colloredo persuaded the citizens to hold out. News of the peace arrived on 5 November, but the Swedes continued their assaults for another five days until the advance guard of Piccolomini’s army finally arrived from Bavaria.⁴⁰ The Imperialists had followed Wrangel who had also headed for Prague in October but had stopped at Nuremberg once he heard reports of the peace. Piccolomini continued his march and by 20 November the entire imperial army had withdrawn into Bohemia. Talks were already under way with Carl Gustav to demarcate the areas both sides would occupy until demobilization could be completed.

Concluding the Peace

The fighting added urgency to the last round of negotiations in Westphalia. Under pressure from Bavaria and Mainz to settle with Sweden, Trauttmannsdorff held separate talks with representatives of the moderate Protestants and Catholics in Johan Oxenstierna’s residence in Osnabrück from early March. The remaining obstacles fell away as Trauttmannsdorff extended confessional parity to the Reichskammergericht as well as the Reichshofrat when it judged religious cases, and then agreed to include the Calvinists in the peace. Saxony lodged a formal protest at the latter concession, but still cooperated with Brandenburg in persuading most other Protestants to accept the rest of the deal, while Bavaria and Mainz accomplished the same with the Catholics. Sweden finally dropped its tactical support for the exiles, and accepted Trauttmannsdorff’s proposal on 12 June to postpone the remaining constitutional issues until the next Reichstag. In return, the imperial Estates promised to pay 5 million talers as ‘contentment’ for the Swedish army, which would remain at their expense in the Empire until the money could be raised. The level of compensation had delayed the settlement, yet the loot from Bregenz and Prague alone totalled 11 million tlr, suggesting that the Empire’s aristocracy and clergy could have paid the Swedes to leave much earlier. These agreements were combined in a settlement on 6 August that was essentially the Peace of Osnabrück. Sweden remained in the field only because France had not yet agreed peace, and Carl Gustav wanted to plunder Prague.

Given that the Spanish-Dutch war had already been settled at Münster in January, only France’s disputes with the Habsburgs remained unresolved. Mazarin presented the Empire with an ultimatum in June: either the imperial Estates excluded the Burgundian Kreis (i.e. Spain’s territory in the Empire) from the peace, or France would continue operations east of the Rhine. After some hesitation, the Estates agreed his terms on 9 September, enabling the French and Mainz representatives to complete the Franco-imperial Peace of Münster six days later. Ferdinand was left with the choice of alienating Spain by accepting this, or fighting on without German support. At least the Estates’ prior agreement allowed Ferdinand to blame them for leaving him no choice but to abandon Spain. Philip IV was disappointed and issued a formal protest on 14 October that also upheld his claims to Alsace (something which he did not renounce until 1659). Privately, however, he accepted Ferdinand’s arguments.⁴¹

The two treaties concluded the Thirty Years War. The emperor and Empire settled their own problems and those with Sweden in the Peace of Osnabrück (Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugense or IPO) that simultaneously served as a new statement of the imperial constitution applying across the Empire. The parallel Peace of Münster (Instrumentum Pacis Monasteriense or IPM) with France was less complete, because it excluded the Burgundian Kreis, as well as the duchy of Lorraine that remained occupied by French troops. It covered Austria’s territorial concessions to France, as well as articles confirming the constitutional arrangements agreed with Sweden and the imperial Estates in the IPO. Both treaties were formally sworn on 24 October accompanied by a seventy-gun salute. Two copies of each were prepared for the ceremonies, followed by further copies over the subsequent days that were witnessed by the envoys to ensure no changes were slipped in. These were despatched to the relevant courts, while at least another 42,000 copies were printed for an eager public over the coming year.⁴²