The Thirty Years War, 1618 - 1648: The First Global War and the end of Habsburg Supremacy 1526775751, 9781526775757

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The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

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The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 The First Global War and the end of Habsburg Supremacy John Pike

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First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Pen & Sword Military An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd Yorkshire – Philadelphia Copyright © John Pike 2022 ISBN 978 1 52677 575 7 The right of John Pike to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing. Maps by Amy Wilkinson ([email protected]) Typeset by Mac Style Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.

Pen & Sword Books Limited incorporates the imprints of Atlas, Archaeology, Aviation, Discovery, Family History, Fiction, History, Maritime, Military, Military Classics, Politics, Select, Transport, True Crime, Air World, Frontline Publishing, Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing, The Praetorian Press, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe Transport, Wharncliffe True Crime and White Owl. For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk Or PEN AND SWORD BOOKS 1950 Lawrence Rd, Havertown, PA 19083, USA E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.penandswordbooks.com

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Contents

Introduction1    Madrid and Vienna, two coup d’etat1    The Defenestration of Prague 18 May 1618 7    Background to the Holy Roman Empire 8 Chapter I: The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium15    The Ottoman challenges 19    Challenges within and without the Empire before 1600 20   New intellectual and religious challenge to Universal Christendom’s   political order 22    Nationalism and identity politics 24    The ‘perceived’ Habsburg threat 32   Civil war and the dynamics of intervention; fear, the security   dilemma, and balance of power 37 Chapter II: Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague46    Internal development of Spanish politics, 1600–1621 46   Olivares 47   Olivares’s policy 51    Spain; financing, social and economic problems 52    Spanish politics and foreign policy, 1619–21  53    Defenestration of Prague 54   Ferdinand II 56    The Dutch economy 1600–1648: military-industrial complex 59 Chapter III: The Thirty Years War: Military developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–163466    From Vienna to the White Mountain and the wars of the interveners 66   Wallenstein 73    Wallenstein and war finance 77    The grudging acceptance of the offer, 17 April 1626 78

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vi  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Chapter IV: Gustavus: the War in the Baltic86   Gustavus Adolphus 86   Baltic War 93 Chapter V: The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War104    Richelieu’s policies and political developments, 1620–27 104    The Edict of Restitution 1629 111   Louis XIII 114    Cardinal Richelieu: Machiavelli’s disciple 117    Duchesse de Chevreuse 121   The concept of frontiers and contrasting world views of ‘devot’ and  Gallicans 122    The Mantuan War and the dismissal of Wallenstein 123   France, Italy, and the Huguenots and the development of French   foreign policy 127   ‘Day of the Dupes’: Three in a room - Turning point in the fight   against Habsburg supremacy 128 Chapter VI: The Dutch Front and Naval War133    The Dutch front 133   Naval War 136 Chapter VII: Gustavus Invades Germany139    Enter Gustavus: Germany 1628–32 139   Swedish economy, military-industrial complex – sinews of war,  1600–1648 141    The Swedish army 144    Battle of Breitenfeld 1631 145    Gustavus’s march to the Rhine 150    Richelieu’s vexation with his maverick ally  152   Gustavus rampant 153 Chapter VIII: Wallenstein Returns and the Battle of Lutzen155    The return of Wallenstein: Gustavus falls off the critical path 155   Götterdämmerung 157 Chapter IX: Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague163    Oxenstierna takes power and the fall of Wallenstein 163    Spanish reaction to the Swedish occupation of the Rhine valley 165    Journey to Nordlingen May 1634–Sept 1634 168    Another Spanish army crosses the Alps, 1634 169    Wheel of fortune; The battle of Nordlingen, 6 September 1634 171

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Contents vii    Dutch campaigns 1633–4 and reactions to the Battle of Nordlingen    Dutch war financing    The war of Smolensk and the Swedish loss of Prussian tolls,  1632–1635   Oxenstierna’s odyssey, and the end of the Heilbronn League,   September 1634–May 1635    The Peace of Prague, 30 May 1635    Spanish policy and the progress of the Imperial armies 1634–5

178 179 179 180 183 185

Chapter X: France Declares War and the Dutch Alliance186    Richelieu sends a herald to Brussels, 5 April 1635 186    Pre-emptive onslaught, Battle of Avin May 1635 187    Fault lines: Franco–Dutch campaign, summer 1635 189   The Rhineland 191    Rohan’s Swiss campaign, the Valtellina, 1635 191 Chapter XI: Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Defects and the Swedish Army Mutiny193    Recruiting Saxe-Weimar, 1635 193   The ‘Gunpowder Convention’ and the French alliance, August   1635–February 1636  195    Saxon disillusion and decline, 1635–6 197   The Hessian ‘long march’ 1636 and relations with the Dutch and  French 198    Imperial-Bavarian financing of war 1618–1648 200 Chapter XII: French Economic and Military Mobilisation202    The French economy and war finance, 1618–1648 202   Social stress 207    War on the home front 209    French army and military efficiency 1635 209   France: Recruitment and officers and the changing role of Europe’s  nobility 211    State development and ‘absolutism’ 212   French nobility, constitutional crisis, role in warfare, and modern   military state 1629–1632 212    Richelieu’s regime of terror 213    Invasion of France: the year of ‘Corbie’, 1636 215    Rohan’s Swiss campaign and the Valtellina: 1636 218 Chapter XIII: Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse220    The Dutch Front and the English Channel, 1636  220    Baner’s masterpiece: Swedish recovery  220

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viii  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648                     

Battle of Wittstock 4 October 1636  Death of Ferdinand II February, 1637 Ferdinand III  Baner’s campaigns 1636–1641 Campaigns in Europe 1637 Amelia of Hesse Landgravine Amelia of Hesse holds out, 1637–1639

223 226 226 227 228 230 231

Chapter XIV: Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’234    Campaigns in Europe 1638 234    Dutch debacle at Kallo 22 June 1637 236    Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar 237    Battle of Rheinfelden, February 1638 239   Consequences of Rheinfelden and the serendipity of war, March   1638–April 1638 242    The Breisach campaign and siege, April–December 1638 243    The battle of Poligny 18 June 1638 and war in Franche-Comté 244    The battle of Wittenwier, 9 August 1638 245    Battles for the siegeworks October 1638 246    The surrender of Breisach, 17 December 1638 246    Cutting the Spanish Road: Consequences 247    Death of Saxe-Weimar, 1638–1639 248    England’s last eccentric intervention February 1637–October 1638 248 Chapter XV: Global War250    Dutch and English attacks on Spain’s Empire 250    The Portuguese Empire and trading riches 256    The Habsburg Asian Empire 262    War in the Atlantic, South America and Caribbean 1618–1640  281    Fortresses on the Spanish Main  281    War in the Caribbean 1620–1641 284    Sugar and slaves 286   Bahia 1624–1625 289    The battles for El Mina and the Gold Coast 1600–1625 290    Luanda and ‘The Heart of Darkness’ 291    Mozambique and Mombasa 292    End of Imperium 293 Chapter XVI: Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution294    The Pyrenees front 1637–1640 and siege of Salces 294    Military stalemate, Flanders and Germany, 1639 296

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Contents ix                           

Spain’s fleet 1630–1640 The Battle of the Downs, 18 September to 21 October, 1639 Dunkirkers: Spanish maritime raiders 1621–1646 Campaign in Germany 1640 and Amelia returns home The Artois–Luxembourg front, the siege of Arras, 1640 Dutch campaign 1640 Regensburg Diet, Campaigns in 1641 and Baner’s last hurrah Soissons rebellion, Battle of La Marfee, 9 July 1641 The Dutch-French land campaign, 1641

299 302 305 306 306 308 309 310 312

Chapter XVII: Iberian Revolutions and the Fall of Olivares313    The revolutionary road: Catalan revolt May 1640 313    Revolution in Catalonia 1640–1642 314    The secession of Portugal, December 1640 316    Spain’s economic problems 1640s 318    The fall of Olivares, January 1643 319 Chapter XVIII: Origins of Peace320    Origins of the Peace of Westphalia, 1640–1643 320    Sweden’s negotiating issues, pressures for peace, 1636–1642  322    Dutch moves towards peace, 1640–1646 323    Spain sues for peace, 1640 324    Bavaria’s need for peace, 1636–1640 324    The Emperor considers peace 324    France: Peace talks and revolt 1636–1639  325    Hesse and German supplicants at Westphalia 325    Other interests at Westphalia 326 Chapter XIX: Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion327    Mazarin, the gambler 327    Mazarin’s progress to power 1634–1639 332   Savoy: a small state’s struggle for survival, 1635–1640 and the war   in Italy 333    Savvy Christina of Savoy and the war in Italy 1638–1641 334    De Campion’s transition into high politics and misdemeanours 336   The Cinq Mars affair, usual suspects, and the Death of Richelieu,  1642 337    French military and political triumph in Savoy 1641–1643 341   Interregnum, death of Louis XIII, Mazarin and Anne of Austria   consolidate power 341    Anne of Austria 342    Power struggle at court 344

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x  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648    Massacre of the Tercios: Battle of Rocroi, 19 May 1643   Consequences    Dutch campaign 1643   The battle of Tuttlingen, military masterclass by Franz von Mercy,   November 1643    The Bavarian army and postscript to Tuttlingen    Torstensson identity: Enter the ‘artilleryist’, 1641–1645    The German campaign in balance 1641; Brandenburg makes peace    Torstensson’s invasion of the Hereditary lands, 1642     The invasion of Moravia and capture of Olomouc, June 1642    Torstensson’s retreat to Silesia and Saxony, July–November 1642   Torstensson supremacy: Second Battle of Breitenfeld, 2 November  1642    The strategic outcome of the battle of Second Breitenfeld    Torstensson’s campaign in 1643

352 356 357 357 358 359 362 363 368 369 372 374 375

Chapter XX: Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark376   Torstensson’s ultimatum: The Swedish-Danish war, 1643–1645:  causes 376    ‘Torstensson’s War’: Swedish war aims 1636–1642 378   The invasion of Denmark and the War at Sea, 1643–44: Opening  Gambits 379    Disquiet amongst the anti-Imperialist alliance, 1644 380    Baltic Naval strategy 381    Gallas; ‘the army wrecker’ and last hope for the Danes, 1644 382    Transylvania stirs again 383   The Baltic naval war and Torstensson at bay July 1644: Middle  Game 384    Military manoeuvres in Jutland and Holstein 386    Naval battle of Ferman, 23 October 1644 386    Gallas’s long retreat autumn-winter 1644: Endgame 387    The Peace of Bremsebro, 1644: Checkmate 389   The accession of Queen Christina of Sweden, her character and   policy, 1644 390 Chapter XXI: War and Peace: Mazarin and France Ascendant394   Turenne 394    The ‘Great’ Condé, duc d’Enghien 398    The five-day battle of Freiburg, August 1644 401    The siege of Philippsburg, August 1644 407   The French and Dutch attack on Gravelines and Sas-van-Ghent,  1644 409    The Battle of Jankov, Bohemia, 7 March 1645  410

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Contents xi    Advance to Vienna, March 1645    Diplomatic tremors after Jankov, June to August 1645    Imperialist popular mobilisation, Spring 1645    The battle of Mergentheim (Herbsthausen), May 1645   After Jankov: Joining Rákóczy and the siege of Brno, April–   August 1645    Battle of Allerheim, 3 August 1645    In Flanders field 1645    Diplomatic consequences for the Peace of Imperial defeats in 1645 

421 422 423 423 427 430 437 438

Chapter XXII: Setting up the Conference 1643–1645440   The delegations 440    Main issues at the conferences 1645 443 Chapter XXIII: Peace and the End of Habsburg Supremacy in Europe444   Germany 1646–1648 444    The Dutch triumph 444    Peace at last, October 1648 446   Bohemia betrayed 449   Last fighting 450    End of the Habsburg Imperium 451 Chapter XXIV: Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity454    Europe and hegemony; the struggle to master Europe 454 Notes469 Index496

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Town/Village

Map Key Infantry

Lagoons/Lakes

Cavalry

River/Canals

Tercio

Road Coastline Land Gradient Sea Bridge

Killing Zone Battle Musket Cannon Fire

Houses

Cheveaux de Frise

Windmill

Ditch

Wat/Pagoda

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Evergreen Trees

Palm Tree

Chains Explosion Wind Direction

English Ship Swedish/Danish Warship Spanish Galleon Dutch Warship/ Merchant Ship Portuguese Galleon/Nao

Cannon

Redoubts/Fieldwork /Siege Lines

Wagon Train

Deciduous Trees

Attack

Church

Camp

Mountain

Mixed Forest French Warship Banyan Tree

Chinese Junk

Marshland

Dutch Herring Fleet

Elephant

Oared Galley/Galiotte (Lateen rigged)

Horse Grazing

Dutch & Spanish Barges

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Introduction

Habsburg Imperium and the Challenges Madrid and Vienna, two coup d’etat

A

t the Spanish court, Count Olivares was gaining influence behind the scenes as the confidant of Philip III’s son (to become Philip IV). Olivares with his uncle Zuniga organised a progressive coup d’etat to replace chief Councillor Duke of Lerma; contriving firstly to insinuate his uncle Zuniga onto the Royal Council they then instigated a new assertive foreign policy on behalf of Philip III and his Jesuit confessor. Lerma received his coup de grace in October 1618, but power had already shifted from the moment that ambassador Zuniga at Vienna was recalled to join the Royal council in July 1617. Through 1617-18 power slipped away from Lerma who was forced into a more pro-active policy. With Philip III’s support a reluctant Lerma was forced to offer money to the Emperor in the form of a 200,000 ducat subsidy in July 1618, to help Ferdinand in the Bohemian crisis, ‘since if the Empire should be lost to the House of Austria through the lack of it (money),’ advised Lerma, ‘nothing in Italy will be safe’. [Lerma to Salazar 26 Aug 1618]. He was replaced by his own son Ucueda who had backed the reformist faction. Completion of the coup had to wait until Philip III’s death in 1621, at which point Philip IV’s favourite, Olivares, would boast ‘now everything is mine’. New ambassador Onate in Vienna actively aided the launching of a coup against Emperor Matthias by grooming Counter-Reformation hawk Ferdinand of Styria as the future emperor. The Habsburg alliance was renewed and set on a stable course by the clearing of potential disputes. Spain dropped its dynastic claims which were compensated by transfer of Franche-Comte to Spain, the territory that covered the region between Switzerland and Burgundy. It heralded a major policy shift to an assertive foreign policy with the aim of winning the war against the Dutch Republic when the truce ended in 1621. Motivation was expressed by Zuniga: ‘In my view if a monarchy has lost its reputation, even if it has lost no territory, it is a sky without light, a sun without rays, a body without soul.’ Recovery would involve increased military spending and a second coup d’etat in Vienna. The Habsburg dynastic alliance between Vienna and Madrid was therefore committed to a multi-faceted revanchist policy across Europe in parallel with the Counter-Reformation; an adventurist policy which would disturb the balance of power in Germany and in Europe, and test the strength, stability and supremacy of the Habsburg alliance.

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Habsburg Imperium and the Challenges  7

The Defenestration of Prague 23 May 1618

On the morning of 23 May 1618, rebellious nobles, their retainers, and a mob of citizens surged across the Charles Bridge then swept up the steep cobblestone path to the Hradčany Castle perched high in Prague’s Old Quarter. Pouring through the main gate conveniently left open, they stormed into the building, forcing an entry into the council chamber, a small wood panelled room with a large German-style tiled fireplace. There they confronted the four terrified Imperial councillors, including Slawata and Martinitz. There followed angry questioning as to the origins and authorship of the orders in respect of the Braunau incidents, where Protestant churches and congregations had been suppressed. According to Count Martinitz the Protestant delegation replied to the Imperial letter which had already been addressed to them; the reply went like this: ‘his Majesty declared all our lives forfeit, thereby greatly frightening all three protestant estates.  … it is clear that such a letter came through the advice of some of our religious enemies. …’1 The Imperial councillors prevaricated amid the rising anger of their noblemen accusers who demanded, according to Martinitz’s testimony, ‘No no … we want to have a clear answer now from the four of your graces who are now present.’2 Pistols were produced from under a cloak by Litwin von Rican: after further heated declarations and an assault by Thurn on Martinitz who was thrown to the floor, Rican, Kinsky, and Smirizcky declared: ‘It is clear that the Imperial letter goes against our letter of majesty.  … You are enemies of us and our religion, have desired to deprive us of our letter of Majesty, (1609 guarantee of rights) have horribly plagued your protestant subjects … and have tried to force them to adopt your religion against their wills or have them expelled for this reason. …3 (Martinitz). Most notably the Government ‘had pulled down, razed to the ground, and levelled’ the newly built church at Klostergrab. This and other breaches… had legitimised the revolt. In the Hussite tradition, the angry mob of noblemen eventually rushed at the two councillors deemed the guiltiest intending to defenestrate them. Martinitz recounted that the rebels pinned him down then took him to the open window whilst they shouted, ‘Now we will take our just revenge on our religious enemies’; he feared that his end was nigh.4 When Martinitz realised the nature of his impending death he claimed in his embellished account to have called out loudly, ‘Since this concerns the will of God, the Catholic religion, and the will of the Emperor we will gladly submit…’ He was then thrown head first out of the window. Martinitz plunged down screaming ‘Jesus Maria Help!’ accompanied by the laconic comments of the rebels, ‘We will send a villainous Jesuit to follow you.’5 Slawata, scratching at the windowsill and crying in anticipation of death, ‘God have mercy on me a sinner,’6 followed soon after, having had a dagger jabbed at his fingertips to release his grip on the sill. As the rebels later remarked, and by way of a legitimising excuse, ‘we threw both of them out of the window in accordance with the old custom. …’7

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8  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Secretary Fabricius was also ejected for good measure. Later ennobled, he was given the title von Hohenfall (of the highfall). Cushioned by accumulated rubbish, they all survived with minor injuries. Seemingly a miracle of survival, Catholic propagandists published cartoons of the Imperial officials being held aloft by a flock of angels! The shocked Imperial councillors scampered quickly away as they heard cries from the window above, ‘Shoot them and finish them off.’8 Crack of pistol shots rang out as they fled and hurried them on their way. In the following days a revolutionary directorate was established to rule Bohemia and so began a jostling for power with leading aristocrats combining to prevent Count Thurn becoming the leader although he would secure generalship of the army. Having provoked the crisis, Emperor Matthias’s Imperial policy directed by Cardinal Klels now sought to calm matters and reach a compromise settlement. But the the emperor in waiting, Ferdinand of Styria, and the Spanish had another plan. Exploiting the crisis they would seek to crush the revolt as part of a general objective of strengthening the Emperor’s political power in the Holy Roman Empire and at the same time support the Counter-Reformation in Germany. A coup d’etat backed by the Spanish ambassador Onate saw Cardinal Klesl arrested and Emperor Matthias removed from power. For Spain the aim was geo-political positioning prior to the ending of the 1609 truce with the Dutch republic and consequent resumption of war in 1621. Spain’s vital interests included securing its lines of communication and reinforcement along the Spanish Road to Spanish Flanders which ran the length of the Rhine before debouching over the Alps to Spanish-controlled Milan and Genoa.

Background to the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg supremacy

After his election as Emperor in 1519, a youthful Charles V was told by his chancellor, Gattinara, ‘God has set you on a path towards a world monarchy.’9 There was nothing subtle or nuanced about the meaning of Imperial election to the Holy Roman Empire; its ambit extended well beyond Europe. Even before being elected emperor he styled himself, ‘Roman King, future Emperor, semper augustus, King of Spain, Sicily, Jerusalem, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, the Indies and the mainland on the far shore of the Atlantic, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Luxembourg, Limburg, Athens, and Patras, Count of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol, Count Palatine of Burgundy, Hainault, Pfirt, Roussillon, Landgrave of Alsace, Count of Swabia, Lord of Asia and Africa’. Charles had inherited vast territories and wealth from the New World, underpinned by the silver of the Cerro Rico mine that, since its founding at Potosi in the Andean highlands of Bolivia in 1645, continued to be scooped out in huge quantities, accounting for 60 per cent of world silver production.10 He had just become crowned head of the largest empire or polity that the world has ever experienced, before or since. It encompassed the globe: most of Europe and the Americas, and the Philippines. Within a generation the Habsburgs, through Charles’ son, Philip II of Spain,

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Habsburg Imperium and the Challenges  9 would have added most of coastal Africa, the Persian Gulf, India, Ceylon and the most important trading regions of South east Asia and China, not to mention a monopoly on trade with Japan. All of this included monopolistic control of the international spice and bullion trades, including Japan’s. The Emperor was also the temporal leader and protector of Christianity who, theoretically at least, discharged this function in tandem with the Pope’s spiritual leadership. The Habsburg Imperium in Europe and its associated ideas of ‘Universal Christendom’ or universal monarchy was based on a troika of concepts: power, tradition, and religion. It was an idea supported and built up through the late medieval period by vested interests within the papacy and the Habsburg family who held the title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Much earlier, Charlemagne, as King of the Franks and recent conqueror of Lombardy, attracted the interest of Pope Leo III because he was the most powerful political force in Europe. Pope Leo, who notified Charlemagne of his nomination as Holy Roman Emperor and sent him the keys of St Peter, needed Frank protection against his enemies; so began the close association and the idea of recreating the Roman Empire as a single unit detached from any claims of the rival at Byzantium (Constantinople) which was then ruled by Empress Irene in tandem with her son Constantine. They had the prime claim on legitimacy, but a Greek-speaking woman in distant Constantinople was not politically desirable in Rome, nor could Constantinople offer the sort of ‘temporal’ protection that Charlemagne could provide. Led by the papacy, theological and political momentum developed into a coalition of interest from the Carolingian house as well. The idea and propaganda was cultivated by Alcuin of York who acted as a theologian to the Carolingian court. Alcuin saw a need for ‘a chief in whose shadow the Christian people repose in peace and who on all sides strikes terror into the pagan nations, a chief whose devotion never ceases to fortify the Catholic faith with evangelical firmness against the followers of heresy’.11 This sense of legitimacy, always highly prized by kings and political leaders, was enhanced still further in 800 ad when Charlemagne was designated protector of the Holy Sepulchre by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. From the start, the Roman Imperator title signified the papacy and the Emperor working in a mutually reinforcing temporal-spiritual tandem. Charlemagne built a suitably grand palace at Aachen, placing himself in a Germanic orbit, a tradition that continued to modern times. By myth and tradition, the Empire traced itself back to the crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor in 800 on Christmas day; the reality was that Otto I may have been the real progenitor of the Holy Roman Empire, but the legend had already been recreated and established. The name was officially changed in 1512 by decision of the Diet of Cologne to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nations, although the title tended to be abbreviated to exclude the reference to Germany. By the mid-sixteenth century the Empire had a greater meaning than that, not least because the Habsburg Emperor’s personal

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10  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 hereditary patrimony extended well beyond it. As the Habsburg dynasty spread, the narrow German definition became increasingly irrelevant and, in any case, it lacked the universal lustre that was sought after. It is important to consider that this vague, legalistic and traditional idea of Empire was an evolving one that became appropriated and adapted by the demands of realpolitik, as a front for the ambitions of the Habsburgs and the papacy. We should note that the latest reincarnation and adaptation is the European Union, whose founders’ appropriation of the concept and legitimacy derived from Charlemagne’s Europe and the idea of ‘European Christendom’ were eagerly adopted by European Christian Democratic parties after the Second World War. It is no coincidence that the highest honours award of the European Union is the Charlemagne Prize, awarded to one individual annually in Aachen for work done for promotion of European unification. The notion of Holy Roman Emperor came to fit neatly into the idea of an ordered feudal and hierarchical world. Ideas elaborated on this theme underpinned a Catholic world view as well as the temporal interests of the Habsburgs. How did this idea come about and flourish? Firstly, the concept was underpinned by the idea that temporal legitimacy of the Imperium had been legally transferred or inherited from the Roman Empire. It was an antique idea but it had a natural hold on the medieval mind. By way of example, Charles V, ever keen to associate the Empire with the Roman tradition, adorned Emperor Trajan’s monumental Roman bridge and triumphal arch over the Tagus, at Alcantara in Spain, with his shield and insignia. The second factor in Habsburg success, by luck and calculation, was in building up a vast dynastic patrimony, a patchwork of territories, titles, constitutional entitlement and elective monarchical licences, not just in Germany but across Europe and extending to Spain, much of Italy, Burgundy (Flanders) and the Netherlands. The critical period of dynastic expansion occurred in the reign of Maximilian I (1459–1519). It was the successor dynasty to the Hohenstaufen. It more resembled a diversified property holding company than a state as such. By 1600 the Habsburg Imperium encompassed both directly and indirectly the following territories: Germany, Austria, Bohemia (including Silesia), Lusatia, Moravia, Alsace, Hungary, Croatia, Switzerland and much of Northern Italy. There were no natural frontiers to this construct. From the Habsburgs in Madrid, control ran to Spain, Portugal (incorporated in 1568), the kingdom of Naples, Flanders and the Dutch provinces, Luxembourg, Franche-Comte and Roussillon (later Franche-Comte adjacent to Switzerland and Spain respectively), and Sicily. Additionally, there was the entirety of South America, the Caribbean and Mexico, as well as the Philippines and Formosa (Taiwan); the Portuguese element, which was mainly a fortress-based trading empire, ran from a myriad of coastal forts from Brazil to West and Southwest Africa, to East Africa up to the Red Sea. In the Indian Ocean and the Malay Archipelago fifty fortresses

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Habsburg Imperium and the Challenges  11 and unofficial colonies of the Estado da Indias spanned the Persian Gulf, India, the Bay of Bengal, Ceylon, Malacca, Java, Flores, the Moluccan ‘spice islands’, China (Macau) and Japan. The Habsburg Imperium was a colossus. Emperor Charles V needed to travel for almost half of his reign to oversee just his European domains. The vast acquisition of ‘New World’ territory in the Americas and in Asia emerged in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries through remarkable swashbuckling adventurers such as Columbus, Cortez and Pissarro in the west and the Portuguese Alfonso de Albuquerque’s crusader conquests in the east against the Asian sultanates, respectively drawn by the allure of bullion and spices. South American silver, especially from the huge mine, the Cerro Rico Mountain at Potosi, located in a 3,000-metres-high-altitude desert, underpinned the entire Habsburg Imperium. Output was collateralised and leveraged to the hilt, which became a problem early on as yields reduced and production became more costly after the first halcyon years of 1545–1565 when the ore was scooped off the cone as if it were ice cream. Rivers of money flowed in this newly created high Andean city, the third biggest city in the world and by far the richest. It was a licentious, hedonistic Mecca of ‘36 casinos, a theatre, fourteen dance halls and eighty churches … . Fountains spouting wine …’.12 Laundry was sent back to Spain. Hard to reach even today, Potosi is located in a desolate mountain region of Bolivia. Speculation that millions of Incas were consumed inside this hell may well be exaggerated; modern scholarship explains that only a minority of workers were coerced ecomenderos under the mita system. However, even today the many artisanal mines on the mountain exploit child labour whose life expectancy is very low due to the appalling working conditions. In the early years, the cone and upper parts of the mountain yielded silver purity of 90–100 per cent,13 but in the latter part of the century expensive mercury was needed to refine the ore. The nearest source was 500 kilometres distant. Of the mountain Philip II would boast, ‘For the powerful Emperor, for the wise King, this lofty mountain could conquer the whole world.’14 He seems to have believed his own propaganda. The sheer size of the Imperium furthered Habsburg claims to universal monarchy and monopoly of power in the entire known world, not merely the European one. These global pretentions fused into one when the Spanish king inherited the Portuguese realm and empire in 1570. The concept had already been legitimised by Pope Alexander VI’s ruling on the division of the world between Spain and Portugal by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1493, and then confirmed by the Treaty of Zaragoza of 1529. The mineral riches of the New World and the trading riches of the East underpinned the extraordinary agglomeration. Armed with this ‘legal right’ the Habsburgs would be intent on maintaining and expanding their interests. In Germany, the myths and legal legacies of the Golden Bull of 1356 underpinned the legitimacy of the Imperial constitution, which was substantially

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12  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 reformed in 1500 into the structures that remained more or less constant until the Empire’s demise in 1806. By 1600 the matter of elections for Emperor was becoming increasingly irrelevant. The Habsburgs, by degrees and the passage of time, were seeming to occupy some of the constituent kingships, such as Bohemia and Hungary, and the elective Imperial title itself, by right of longevity and continuous occupation, although the right to Bohemia was possibly ceded in 1529. A radical challenge was made to the Habsburg succession in 1519 when Francis I of France put himself up as candidate for the Imperial Crown with the backing of the pro-French Pope and, at the outset, four out of seven Electors. That Charles should defend his candidacy with all his financial might was deemed essential by his advisers, notably Chancellor Gattinara, for the coherence of the Habsburg territory and dynastic prestige, ‘to maintain his hereditary lands’. 500,000 ducats had to be paid over to rival Francis I’s bribes. As the election approached the result was secured; brimming with confidence as to the outcome, and having offered very substantial bribes, Charles proclaimed ‘We will be able to accomplish many good deeds and great things, not only conserve and guard the possessions which God has given us, but increase them greatly…, upholding and strengthening our holy Catholic faith which is our principal foundation.’15 The words echoed those of Charlemagne’s theologian Alcuin in 796. It was a manifesto which described exactly the role and ideology of the Habsburgs in the Imperial structure. Charles chose the title ‘Imperator Romanorum’. The emphasis again on the role as protector of all Christians and the keeper of religious purity is highly significant, especially in the light of emerging Lutheran heresy. Charles V’s failure to deal with that ‘heresy’ problem, culminating in the recognition of Lutheranism at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, would cast a long shadow over the Habsburg Imperium well into the first half of the seventeenth century. Charles abdicated in 1554–6 and retired to a monastery to reflect on the spiritual life, having divided the Empire between his son Philip II16 and his brother Emperor Ferdinand I. Philip became King of Spain and inherited the Spanish Empire based in Madrid, while Ferdinand became the Holy Roman Emperor with his seat in Vienna. Charles died in 1558. Another binding duty, a mantle which Charles V felt as Advocatus Ecclesiae [Defender of the Faith], was resistance to the Ottomans: ‘The enemy [the Turks] has expanded so much that neither the repose of Christendom, nor the dignity of Spain, nor finally the welfare of my Kingdom are able to withstand such a threat. … unless I link Spain with Germany and add the title of Emperor to the king of Spain.’17 The Habsburg Imperium was not exclusively a temporal and material construct; its strength was reinforced and tempered by ideas of religion and social order which were thoroughly imbued in the medieval mind and ‘weltanshauung’. The feudal system did not separate politics from religion; the two were completely

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Habsburg Imperium and the Challenges  13 fused. Any attack on the Habsburg system would therefore be an attack on the entire intellectual and belief system of Christian Europe. The idea of a United Christendom had a lasting appeal well into the Thirty Years War and beyond. The religious-political construct as an aspect of the war influenced Ruben’s painting; writing of his female figure in Allegory of Peace and War he wrote on 12 March 1638, ‘It’s about the tragedy of Europe after so many years of rape, outrages, unspeakable miseries. She holds up a globe supported by an angel surmounted by a cross, … .’18 (emphasis added) As for most Catholics in the Counter Reformation, Rubens was holding on to the mantra of Unified Christendom. When Charles V ascended the Imperial throne in 1519, becoming ruler of most of Europe and vast swathes of the known world, he inherited an ideology that was steeped in religious symbolism and iconography; the Emperor as God’s vicar (Vicarius Dei) ‘who received his authority direct from “God” [and thus] endowed Kingship with celestial greatness’.19 Prime duties included protection of the faith and the administration of justice, which, apart from the aura of the title, was the Emperor’s prime source of power under the constitution. The authority of the Imperial courts, Reichskammergericht, and the Aulic council, Rechofracht, became a major issue in the run-up to the Thirty Years War. However, in the mid-sixteenth century, there was some shift in realpolitik power from the Habsburgs of Prague and Vienna to the Habsburgs of Spain after the split in the Empire following Charles V’s death, even though prime titular prestige remained in Vienna or Prague. With unified Spain emerging as a superpower underpinned by New World conquests and bullion, the Spanish King, Philip II, tended to appropriate some of the ‘universal’ and ‘imperial’ mantle. Jealous of the title of Emperor belonging to his uncle, he had medals minted in Spain which ‘commemorated Philip’s Universal monarchy’. Some went so far as to state that ‘the world is not enough’ for the Spanish monarchy: ‘non suffit orbid’. 20 Courtiers suggested that Philip should take the title ‘Emperor of the Indies’; ‘the Roman Empire became a model and reference point for sixteenth century Castilians who looked upon themselves as heirs and successors of the Romans conquering an even more extended empire.’21 Spain would be the dominant partner in the Habsburg Imperium; for Spanish Kings the Austrian court was not merely a dynastic ‘junior’ brother-in-arms, but a key strategic interest needing protection and care, because the Emperor stood guard to Spanish Burgundian possessions and to Spain’s vital land communication links to them. The ‘Spanish Road’ which passed through Genoa and Milan was the most common route and strategically the most secure, because it crossed through regions controlled under the aegis of the Vienna Habsburgs; it traversed the Valtellina, climbed over the Simplon pass, crossed the Inn, ran east-west past Lake Konstanz, before running the length of the upper and lower Rhine. To solidify the Imperium, the Onate Treaty was signed in 1617 between its two halves; Spain took possessions along the Spanish Road, from Liguria to Milan,

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14  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 to Breisach and Philippsburg and Franche-Comte; Spain also offered Alsace but this clause was never enacted. In return Spanish claims to the succession in Hungary and Bohemia were renounced. The Road was a crucial strategic connection as Spain battled against Dutch rebellion after 1568. It is worth reflecting momentarily on the extraordinary strength of the dynastic, ideological, religious and familial bond which underpinned the Habsburg Imperium and the idea of United Christendom. When Ferdinand III, with his back to the wall after a string of military disasters, compounded by economic exhaustion, finally decided that he must take the peace talks in earnest, he issued his last and deeply significant fifteenth point of instruction concerning ‘the Spaniards’ to his Westphalian plenipotentiary. His closest adviser and confidant, von Trauttmansdorff, was informed: ‘It is known that all our enemies’ plans and intentions, effort and work is directed to separate the Germans from the Spanish et secundum illud, divide et vinces [and thus divide and rule] … therefore Count von Trauttmansdorff will above all ensure that it will not come to such a separation, and will rather let all go to rack and ruin than this to happen’. [Emphasis added].

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Chapter 1

The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium

S

pain was proud of its global empire which it claimed as a monopoly by law, such that any state seeking to trade in it would be subject to attack and arrest; its subjects could be imprisoned and executed, which they were. However, England, and later the Dutch had no intention of subjecting themselves to any such restrictions. War, opportunities for piracy under letters of marque, and the chance for lucrative trade merged seamlessly into an onslaught on Spain’s global pretentions. The fight would encompass not just a global war, the first in history, but an existential struggle for naval supremacy in the Atlantic, Caribbean, Indian Ocean, South China Sea, the Baltic, English Channel, the North Sea and the Mediterranean. France would also challenge Spain’s naval dominance along the Bay of Biscay and in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. It was a French corsair attack on Havana in 1555 which led to the vast outlay on the fortresses of Fuerza, finished in 1577, and El Morro, started in 1589 and completed in 1630. Francis Drake’s epic voyage in the Golden Hind did more than circumnavigate the world. The Elizabethan government sanctioned attacks on Spanish assets and treasure shipments, and their ‘illegal’ trading in Spanish-controlled ports and colonies showed the way for the Dutch. In capturing Spanish treasure shipments in Panama at Nombre de Dios, and by seizing treasure ships navigating along the Pacific coast of South America, Drake set an example that would be emulated tenfold by the Dutch. The English mounted 235 privateering expeditions against Spanish possessions in 1589–91. When Drake sailed around the world and put into the Moluccan spice island of Ternate, he revealed boundless possibilities for the spice trade which became the main focus of future Dutch trading expeditions. From the 1690s, multiple Dutch expeditions were setting sail for Asia. English aid on land and sea was essential to the sustenance of the Dutch rebellion. It took a heavy toll on Habsburg resources, not least in the destruction of the Spanish Armada and the assault on Cadiz; raiding by ‘el Draque’, (Drake) and others along the Spanish Pacific coast and the Caribbean had an immense strategic impact in raising the costs of Habsburg colonial defence. The Dutch would adopt this strategy to even greater effect. The significance of the attacks by the northern Protestant states lay in the fact that their growing naval power

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16  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 was defying the Habsburg ability to trade and communicate with its empire. The emphatic shift in naval dominance was highlighted by two events; in 1588, the huge Spanish Armada was defeated by the English and in 1607 a large Spanish fleet of twenty-one galleons and other vessels was destroyed in the Bay of Gibraltar by Admiral Jacob van Heemskerk. Naval power had shifted and, in tandem with it, so had economic muscle which was moving to the coastal maritime nations and away from those countries whose capitals rested on the great landmasses. In 1600 a Royal Charter was established to form the East India Company (EIC) in London; investors included both the aristocracy and merchants. EIC Article 22 provided for ‘Six good Ships and Six good Pinnaces, well furnished with Ordnance, and other Munition for their Defence, and Five Hundred Mariners, English Men, to guide and sail in the same’. Military equipment outfitting was essential for the EIC fleet because the government and crown knew that they would be putting themselves in harm’s way by conducting trading in territories claimed exclusively by the Spanish king (wearing his Spanish and Portuguese crowns). Attacks on enemy shipping and colonies were fully anticipated, but not in writing. Contrary to the Dutch, the bellicose intentions of the English were never overt, even though England was still engaged in a war with Spain which would flare up again in 1602, following the seaborn invasion and the capture of Kinsale by 6,000 Spanish troops in support of O’Neill’s Irish rebellion. The global challenge to the great Imperium was unlooked for, but Spanish determination to continue the war against the Dutch Republic made it inevitable; the Dutch response was a logical one and it offered financial reward. Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Grand Pensioner of Holland, mooted the idea of amalgamation of the six Dutch companies which had started to operate in Asia as early as 1598; by 1602 it was a reality. In the words of the Stadtholder, Maurice of Orange, the purpose was for ‘damaging the enemy Spain and Portugal and for the security of the fatherland’.1 Initially the mantra put forward by the authorities was one of commerce, not war. After all, why antagonize further the might of Spain, especially as there were hopes of negotiating a peace. The moderate approach was represented in Article 37 of the Verenigde Oost Insiche Compagnie (VOC) charter which authorized defensive military action only ‘if the ships of the Spaniards or other countries should attack the company’s ships’. The aggressive intentions and strategic priorities of the Dutch Estates General were made clear from the inception of the VOC in 1602 as a national trading/military project by the award of its charter and Asian ‘monopoly’. The charter embraced all the maritime chambers of commerce in the corporation and identified Spain and Portugal as enemies; reporting procedures were defined in contract, ‘So as ships return from the journey, the generals and commanders of the fleet, ship or ships shall be obliged to deliver a report to us about the success of the voyage … in the required format’. (VOC Charter, The Hague, 20 March

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   17 1602). For the Dutch, trade and war ran in tandem for the fulfilment of national destiny, identity, wealth and independence. However, Article 37 paints only a thin veneer over the real intention. If there were any doubts as to the actual objectives of the company’s charter, the November 1603 resolution of the Estates General was categorical that ‘to damage the enemy and inflict harm on his persons, ships, and goods by all means possible … was the principal reason why the States General have undertaken the Union of the companies …’.2 The intention was an aggressive military strategy aimed at crippling Portugal’s trade and then stealing it. Though mainly aimed at Portuguese interests, it was also a blow aimed at the Spanish king; Spanish Manila, a major trading hub, would also be within its remit. As the truce’s end approached, preparations were afoot for a similarly formed company to exploit the advantages of trade and conquest in the western hemisphere. The Dutch West Indies Company (WIC) was being conceived even as the Dutch and Spanish negotiated to try to find a peaceful solution to their differences. In what was truly a national commercial enterprise, but with delegated plenipotentiary diplomatic, civil and military powers, the aforesaid Company may, in our name and authority, within the limits herein before prescribed, make contracts, engagements and alliances with the limits herein before prescribed, make contracts, engagements and alliances with the princes and natives of the countries comprehended therein, and also build any forts and fortifications there, to appoint and discharge Governors, people for war, and officers of justice, … for the promoting of trade’ (WIC Charter clause II 1621) Board representation was shared amongst the maritime provinces pro rata to their commercial muscle. A monopoly of twenty-one years was granted to their operations. In return the VOC and WIC as sovereign entities were expected to contribute to the maritime defence of the nation when called upon: and vice versa. The Republic was financially stretched in 1609 as a result of the Spanish economic embargo which cut off the lucrative Mediterranean trade. Global expansion was needed to replace this lost business as well as provide investment opportunities from the cash flowing into what was now a maturing Dutch economy, so pressure mounted for the formation of the West Indies Company, which would target Portugal’s Western Empire in Brazil and Spain’s American and Caribbean possessions in the same way as the VOC had done in the East. Under clause XL of the WIC charter granted by the Estates General in 1621: And if by a violent and continued interruption of the aforesaid navigation and traffic, the business… shall be brought to an open war, we will … give them [the Dutch Estates] for their assistance sixteen ships of war; which shall be properly mounted and provided in all respects, both with brass

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The Thirty Years War.indd 18

7

6

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3

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Venice Adriat Sea

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TRANSYLVANIA

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Border of Habsburg Empire

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Buda

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Cesol to Transylvania under the Treaty of Nitiolsburg 1621.

Fortress

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Kraków

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VIA MORA

SIA

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Oloumouc

untain

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Prague

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Habsburg military frontier defence against the Ottomans

Milan

Valtelline Spanish Road

OL T YR

Gabor and Mansfeld. Sept 1626.

At Levice Wallenstein faces down the combined army of

Wallenstein saves the Imperial army at Goding. Oct 1623

June 1619.

Wallenstein’s cavalry win the battle of Zablati on 10th

involving Dutch and English troops on Venice's side. 1616

Wallenstein relieves siege of Gradisca: Austro-Venetian war

Imperial army. 1604-6

from there to Ulenna in midwinter to seek food for the

At the siege of Kassa Wallenstein was wounded. He trekked

Zlin where there was Guerilla war 1621-26.

Zerotin’s estates which he bought. Also the region around

Wallenstein’s estates through his first wife and count

Friedland 1622.

Wallenstein’s birthplace - later to become Duchy of

Pri n M cipa o ldo lity va

1

Tisz

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   19 and other cannon, and a proper quantity of ammunition … and that the Company shall be obliged to add thereto sixteen like ships of war, and four yachts, mounted and provided as above, to be used in like manner for the defence of trade and all exploits of war: Provided that all the ships … shall be under an admiral appointed by us [the Estates]. By this mutual pact, the nexus of the state’s strategic, military and commercial interest became virtually seamless especially as the delegates in the estates, shareholders and members of the board of directors were the same or interrelated. Such mutual obligations were not included in the VOC charter, although in practice VOC ships were chartered in to help the war effort and political pressure was exerted from early on for the ‘war mission’ of the VOC to take precedence over commercial objectives, sometimes against the opinions of directors. What had changed to make the foundation of the WIC a more overtly military act was the magnitude of the existential threat posed by upcoming renewal of the war with Spain in 1621. That Zùñiga’s efforts to secure a continuation of the truce with the Dutch failed, and that the war in Germany therefore had to continue, was due in large part to Dutch invasion of the East Indies; it was the ‘principal reason given in the consultas of 1619 and 1621 for not continuing the truce’ because, noted Fray Inigo de Brizuela at a Council of State meeting on 22 October 1625, ‘while it [the truce] was in force, the Dutch had entered the Indies’.3 Empire was a fulcrum of war and peace and directly connected to the European war. State Councillor Don Carlos de Coloma noted in a memorandum of 20 June 1620 that peace required withdrawal from the East Indies and an opening of the Scheldt for the recovery of the Port of Antwerp.4

The Ottoman challenges

The Ottoman Empire also entertained dreams of global imperium; as an Islamic state without borders and inheritors of the Rum, the ‘Sublime Porte’ coveted ascendancy over Vienna. This was to some extent achieved by the battle of Mohacs of 1526; Vienna paid tributes to the Ottomans at Constantinople right up to the Long War which began in 1593. In the first decade of the seventeenth century, both the Spanish government under chief minister the Duke of Lerma, and the Emperor in Vienna, were as much or more concerned with the threat from the Ottomans than from any other challenger. In the 1620s, even in the midst of the Thirty Years War, the great Imperial Generalissimo Wallenstein considered the major long-term strategic threat to the Habsburg regime to be the Ottomans. The Empire had a permanent and major commitment to maintain 120 castles and fortresses across the Balkans and up through Hungary to the Carpathian Mountains along 1,000 kilometres of border. They were manned by 22,000 troops, half of them cavalry; some were locally raised Hungarians while others were Germans brought down from the Empire. Only 50 per cent of the cost was paid from

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20  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Hungarian and Croatian taxes, while the rest derived from subsidies provided by Habsburg patrimonies in upper Austria and, to a lesser extent, Moravia. The frontiers of the Ottoman Empire were a festering sore of warfare, formal and informal, on both sides of the border before, during and after the ‘Long War’, 1593–1606, which was Balkan wide. Fears of a two-front war against the Habsburgs would in fact come true during the Thirty Years War. On four separate occasions (three times between 1618– 26 and 1644–46) there were major attacks by an Ottoman satrapy. Transylvania invaded with 15,000–20,000 men, light cavalry armies that occasionally included Tartar and Romanian cavalry units as well as some Janissary infantry units. Had the main Ottoman army been fully engaged, the Habsburgs would have had to contend with well-equipped armies of over 100,000 men including 40,000 Janissaries.5 Spain was contending with the Ottoman fleet and its constant coastal attacks, as well as the danger of Barbary pirates. Both required a significant galley fleet on station in the western Mediterranean to protect merchant ships and defend the coasts of Spain, Italy and Sicily, and Spanish fortresses on the north African coast. Along with naval shipbuilding, Lerma countered this Ottoman threat by sending a major diplomatic mission to the Safavid Ruler of Persia to try to draw off the Ottoman threat. The mission failed but, luckily for the Habsburgs, the Porte was by turns in the throes of domestic political chaos or fending off Safavid expansion towards Ottoman held Bagdad. When not facing down revolts, the first half of the seventeenth century would see the Sultans principally engaged with the capture or recapture of Bagdad.

Challenges within and without the Empire before 1600

Papal recognition of the Imperial structure was a necessary adjunct to papal power because the Habsburgs represented the temporal element of the duality as the Pope’s spiritual enforcer on earth. Fusing realpolitik with feudal concepts of a unified order of Christendom, the hold of the Habsburg Imperium on claims to tradition and customs was established over several centuries. Both entities were bound tightly in a nexus of ideological and theological self-interest because the axiomatic assumption behind the Habsburg Imperium was the codominion of the Catholic Church with all the privileges of power, money and property that that entailed. However, the relationship was not always smooth, not least because the aspiring pope could turn out to be a pro-French candidate. However, barring exceptional circumstances, the relationship worked; the sack of Rome by Charles V’s mercenary landsknechts in 1527 was a case of an army out of control: an aberration. The main challenge to the Habsburg Imperium came from France. Recently united and freed from the depredations of the England-based Normans, France looked to oppose the Habsburg supremacy in Europe by challenging for election as Emperor and by attacking Imperial interests for control of the

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   21 Italian peninsula. This threat was smashed at the battle of Pavia 1625; it would soon be followed by the Reformation and sixty years of religious wars in France, which only ended in 1610 with the apostacy of Henri IV. Although his decisive victory over the Catholic League, the Guise family and the Spanish at Ivry in eastern Normandy in 1590 had set him on the path to victory the complications of religious strife long delayed his coronation. The Habsburg religious-political Imperium had certainly not gone unchallenged throughout the centuries and it was indeed a complex construct; nor had Catholicism and Roman supremacy gone unopposed. Roman power and orthodoxy had been challenged before the traumas of the sixteenth century by, for example, the Cathars and the Lombards. In Bohemia, the Hussites had demonstrated formidable defiance which, though defeated, had left a residue of Czech nationalism and the Utraquist Church. Nonetheless, the Habsburg system survived these crises. When the Iberian crusades against Iberian Moslem rulers had delivered up Spain to Catholicism, and thence to a fusion with the Habsburg family, Emperor Charles I found himself at the head of an Imperium of unimaginable size and power. However, cracks appeared in this edifice throughout the sixteenth century. Those cracks were both religious and political, as various German states sought to wriggle free of some of the Empire’s political constraints; they exploited the growing calls for church reform as co-determining impetus for change. Most importantly the growing sense of German cultural, racial and linguistic particularism led to a questioning of the religious and temporal duality of the Holy Roman Empire and a papacy increasingly identified with foreigners and Italians. In an age of increasing education and ‘rationality’, extraordinary levels of abuse, corruption and hypocrisy created a pressure cooker for reform which eventually blew up the status quo. Luther’s emergence smashed the old consensus; his reform ideas expanding from below with their ‘German’ accent coalesced with the small power ambitions of the German princes, especially in the north, as well as the Imperial cities of the south and various areas in the Habsburg domains including Bohemia, Upper Austria and Styria. Luther’s caustic commentaries on Catholicism found a sympathetic German and international audience. This flowering of religious and political ideas coincided with the spread of knowledge through the printing industry and translations of the bible into the vernacular. Learning was no longer locked up in monasteries on gold-scripted and finely decorated parchment volumes in Latin; the classics in particular became widely available. They would be re-analyzed and their ideas extracted to form a new intellectual and political world built on rationality, a humanist movement across Europe which, as Caspar Hirschi explains, soon turned to nationalism. Religious thinker Melanchthon developed his ideas on Plato and Cicero with his Abridgement of Moral Philosophy published in 1538. In a commentary on Cicero’s On Duties (1526), Melanchthon had emphasized ‘the common principles of reason, planted by God in men’.6

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22  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 This tendency to ‘rationalism’ spread like a virus and mutated in a welter of free thought, especially amongst wealthy urban communities where literacy and education had advanced; other more extreme forms of religious rebellion emerged, most particularly with Calvin in Geneva. Calvinism would become the main contender to the reform mantle in fierce competition with the Lutherans as much as with the Catholic Church. The fact that Calvinist concepts rested on the works and doctrine of St Augustine demonstrates that the fundamental split with Rome was as much about organizational power and money as about the exegetical differences per se. The most dramatic consequence of this was the religious and political rebellion in the northern Dutch provinces of the Spanish Netherlands which would lead to an Eighty Years War for freedom and independence; the rebellion in 1568 would be led by the House of Orange, notably William of Orange. After his assassination, the revolt would increasingly be masterminded at the operational political level by the genius of the Grand Pensioner of the Holland Estates, John van Oldenbarnavelt. The rebellious provinces may have been small and waterlogged but by the end of the sixteenth century the provinces were not just free but emerging as the global economic powerhouse. Economic power would not only keep the Dutch Republic free but would post a lethal challenge to Habsburg Imperium. Coincidental to these developments and driven by political and religious machinations over a request for divorce from a lovelorn English king desperate for the continuity of his Tudor line, still fresh and struggling with legitimacy, the Empire contrived to detach another piece of Europe, this one water-bound. Henry VIII, despite his ardent Catholicism, was refused a divorce by a pope acting in tandem with the Emperor whose dynastic honour could not allow a divorce from his aunt Catherine of Aragon. The result was the original ‘Brexit’ and eventual excommunication from the idea of Europe. In the resulting religious void in the British Isles, the Reformation in its various Lutheran and Calvinist guises developed enough force to detach England from the Church of Rome; it also rushed into the remote fastness of the adjacent Scottish kingdom in the form of John Knox and Calvinist Presbyterianism.

New intellectual and religious challenge to Universal Christendom’s political order

As we have noted the intellectual and religious assault on the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Imperium would be as important and dangerous as any physical attacks, given the symbiosis between political power and religion. The Holy Roman Empire was as much an idea as a concrete territorial entity. A deadly blow to the established order had already been struck by the German reformation led by Martin Luther, which led to the constitutional and religious settlement of the Peace of Augsburg of 1555. In 1520 Charles V had seen the threat in personal and dynastic terms; allowing this heresy to infect his subjects would ‘bring permanent dishonour on us and our successors’. The Augsburg

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   23 compromise settlement set in hand the autonomous political development of the German princedoms, but it also unleashed wider social and political disruption. The Reformation displaced the intellectual order in the Imperium, as when an earthquake displaces the sea and a tsunami engulfs the established structures of life. Following Luther, then Calvin, Melanchthon, and Zwingli, and a host of ‘power realist’ secular writers such as Machiavelli, Erasmus and Lipsius, a flood of new ideas came rushing in to fill the void left by the breaking up of the traditional feudal model of the world. Already in 1519 at the Diet of Worms one of Charles V’s advisers, Alfonso de Valdes noted that ‘they do not attach much weight to the emperor’s edicts because as soon as Luther’s books see the light of day, they are sold constantly and with impunity in every street and square’. (600,000 of Luther’s books were already in circulation.) By 1600 intellectual flowering and diversification were still greater. Fed by the literacy and printing revolution, a wave of new thought and new ‘national’ concepts filled the displaced universalist void and swept over the old structures of civil and religious life. Lutheranism itself had been as much about national awakening, cultural and racial identity, as about religion. The old world was not carried away in an instant; its structures were rooted in deep tradition, but nonetheless, damage was done. The foundations were cracked. Ordered hierarchical society was also under attack from the break up of feudal agricultural society, the rise of merchants, manufacture and international trade. While there is some explanatory merit with Polisensky’s idea of rival power blocs in the wars, representing ‘a collision between the bourgeoisie on the one hand … and the feudal aristocracy on the other’,7 simplistic Marxist analysis does not capture the power ambitions of individuals, religious passions, balance of power issues or the dynamics of modern state development. However, awakening of supressed social and political tensions helped propel the move to war and were iteratively activated by it. Additionally, new American and Asian worlds were in the making, marshalling the warring parties in the global fight for colonies, trade and markets. Discoveries of a much greater world following the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama put paid to the idea of Europeancentric universality, which was just as bogus as the Chinese emperor’s claim to stand at the centre of the world. New intellectual forces, amongst whom Erasmus stood out, were prepared to connect real historical analysis to new humanist ideas. Erasmus’s ruthless intellect contemptuously dismissed the ‘ hocus pocus’ of the Holy Roman Empire. He sarcastically asked whether ‘to govern the world was not too big to be carried by the mind of a single man,’ moving on to deprecate the ‘despicable origin’ of the edifice by noting that its roots lay in the ‘criminal activities of Julius Caesar and then later in the even worse crimes of Octavian, Lepidus and Anthony’. The point was driven home in his analysis of the Empire in which ‘Oppressed was the authority of the Senate, subjugated were the laws and lost was the liberty of the Roman people’.8 Erasmus was not alone in his ridicule of the venerated

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24  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 institution of Empire. While he and others ridiculed the Holy Roman Empire, yet others ridiculed the Papacy. Luther was the first to lampoon the Catholic Church but Calvin surpassed him in bile: ‘The Roman church is that Egypt where so many monstrous idols and idolatries are found, and where detestable sacrileges, pollutions and filthiness swarm.’ 9 Calvin’s Treatise on Relics is typical of his unrelenting style. By scholastic research, using example after example, he aimed not just to win the argument but to crush and obliterate the enemy with maniacal intellectual savagery and rasping sarcasm, ‘the last relics pertaining to Jesus Christ … as for instance a piece of broiled fish presented to him on the sea shore. The fish must have been strongly spiced, and prepared in some extraordinary manner, to be preserved for so long … ’10 and again, ‘Lazarus to my knowledge has three bodies, at Marseilles, Autun and Avalon … .’11 If relics were ridiculous so, too, perhaps was the Holy Roman Empire. This intellectual scepticism towards the old order of power and religion was dramatically enhanced by increased literacy in tandem with the development of the printing press. Luther’s works had circulated to 3.1 million people before 1546. As for literacy, the figures are impressive, with the rates growing in England and Germany from 11 per cent in 1500 to 60 per cent in 1750. Figures for the gentry show a literacy rate in England improving from 70 per cent in 1530 to 100 per cent by the end of the century. Universities grew in number and prestige as the aristocracy of Europe valued learning as well as martial skills.

Nationalism and identity politics

But what would replace the idea of feudal hierarchy under Pope and Emperor? For Protestant countries, the development of the idea of national identity arose naturally from this rift with Rome, especially as the threats posed by the forces of Spain and the Counter-Reformation encouraged a sort of bonding and bunker mentality. ‘Confessional differences in the Empire conspired with Charles V’s Imperial policies to suggest that such national awareness was virtually a Protestant monopoly.’12 Growing national consciousness and sense of ‘German’ identity gave a strong impetus to the Reformation. Luther noted at the Diet of Worms that ‘the whole German Nation was vexed and oppressed in Rome’.13 The political problem for the Empire was that the ‘Holy Roman Emperor’ was bound by name, religion, tradition and political ideology to the Papacy, so was easily cast in the role of being anti-German and a block to progress; German identity could be expressed only through Protestantism; likewise for those promoting Bohemian/Czech, Dutch and Hungarian identity. German nationalism became a major issue in the election of Charles V. Humanist scholars lined up to extoll the legal and moral necessity for the Imperial candidate to be German. When later the ‘Spanish based’ Emperor Charles V came into conflict with ‘German Lutheranism’ and the Protestant princes, German nationalism would be turned against him, identified with foreignness and Rome in contrast to the Germanness that was a core ingredient

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   25 of Lutheranism’s appeal. Not only in Germany, but in France and Italy as well, humanist scholars turned to the idea of purity, language and difference. Nationalist competition and comparison became rife. ‘There is no nation more despised than the Germans,’ complained Luther, ‘the Italians call us beasts, the French and English deride us … .’14 English national consciousness developed from this sense of paranoia as to the threat of Spain, Catholicism and the Jesuits; it was rallied and epitomized by Elizabeth’s speech to her troops at Tilbury as the Armada hove into sight off Cornwall and the news was carried to London by chains of beacon fires. ‘I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma [the Spanish General] or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.’ It was building on the sense of us and them, the ‘idea of difference’ allied to the idea of threat; the threat of ‘tyrants’. This sense of Englishness can be seen in the writings of Shakespeare with his play Henry V standing out: ‘Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”’ (1599). This spirited sense of identity was allied to anti-Spanish xenophobia, making the lives of Spanish ambassadors in London less than comfortable, even when the Stuart regime started to reach accommodation with Spain. ‘Difference’ plus ‘threat’ was a powerful combination in stirring nationalistic emotions. New national identities became a compound of language, race, history, culture and religion. Other Protestant nations fostered similar propaganda as to national identity. Sweden was prominent in this, and the Dutch, too, under extreme existential pressure. Before his invasion of Germany in 1630 Gustavus Adolphus issued a rallying cry to the nation. The message was similar to the one Gustavus had already given to the Riksgard; Churchillian in tone but earthy in language which the peasant representatives would understand: The Habsburgs are threatening Sweden … it is a question of defending the land of our sires. The times are bad, the danger great. Let us look not to unusual sacrifices and the load we must all unite to bear. It is a fight for parents, for wife, child, for house and hearth, for country and religion.15 (1630) Again, the idea of threat and danger linked to the familiarity of home and country; the need for unity and to rally around ‘Sweden’. A sense of ‘patrie’ and identity was already forming in France by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; it is well described in this passage:  The kingdom of France, over which these parties fought, was a large territory, headed by a king with overall jurisdiction, a powerful network of officers and a striking capacity to raise huge sums in taxation.  … huge flows of taxation into and out of the royal network provided an important unifying feature, tying this massive and diverse kingdom together. That

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26  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 basic structural reality was affirmed by other more cultural features of French political life, such as a sense of common history centring on the stirps Karoli (the line of Christian kings supposedly descended from Charlemagne), a burgeoning national political literature and a growing primacy for the northern French vernacular, a steady growth in royal legislative and judicial primacy, and a broad acceptance of the monarchy as a divinely-appointed institution. In common with every other polity in later medieval Europe, the kingdom of France featured a delicate mixture of centripetal and centrifugal forces: a meaningful thread of unity, but also copious sources of conflict.16 (Note the emphasis added which underlines the reminder that nation-building is also about myth-building and the distortion or fabrication of historical facts, a stratagem that is timeless as the current received historiography of the European Union demonstrates.) During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that interplay between the multi-layered polity that was medieval France became mixed with bitter theological conflict just as the French crown sought to harmonize its identity and centralize its control over the diverse political structures. An interesting feature of this analysis is the emphasis placed on the unifying effect of tax structure and economy where these elements became increasingly important through the seventeenth century as states, under existential pressure within and without, equipped themselves for war. Moving on to the seventeenth century, a similar sense of French identity was aggressively fostered by Richelieu’s regime using printed propaganda as he struggled to develop a raison d’etre for his attack on the Habsburgs. To this end the historiographical references to Gaul and Gallic traditions were linked to issues of language and the idea of ‘natural frontiers’ and the distinct idea of ‘borders’, as well as the paranoia of enclosure by Habsburg territories. This was not a new trend: in 1539 the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts stipulated that all legal documents had to be written in French. Built on historical research, the idea of Gallicism was current by the end of the sixteenth century. Joan of Arc was already a symbol of Gallic pride and identity; this was associated with a rising tide of frustration at France’s weakness as a result of the never-ending religious wars. Foreign powers and Spain in particular were seen to be ‘extinguishing the torches of their ambition in France’s blood, emptying their humours on its bosom, and importing their quarrels to its very altars’, according to François de Clay in 1592, writing in Philippiques, ‘contre les bulles et autre Practique de la Fachon Espange’. ‘Gallicist’ thinking was promulgated extensively in Huguenot literature17 which naturally informed Henri IV’s world outlook despite his apostasy. After the religious wars, re-awakening would be accompanied by re-assertion. Richelieu mustered all the power and patronage of the state, including the intellectual talents of the newly created Académie française to promote and develop concepts of la patrie and the absolutist state; media propaganda in terms

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   27 of gazettes, pamphlets and the new Mercure française drove a ‘Gallicist’ agenda; the dévot faction of conservative counter-reformation activists promoted a more nuanced party line that emphasized Counter-Reformation, social renewal and harmony with other Catholic powers, especially Habsburg Spain. When France was invaded in 1636, the clarion call to arms achieved some resonance. The itinerant Imperial mercenary, Hagendorf, was impressed by xenophobic resistance from French peasants; by the end of the war La patrie had become a standard expression. An important part of this resentment is the simple antipathy that is always felt by polities towards superpowers and the overmighty who use their power for their own advantage; we see this clearly in the building resentment in today’s European Union which is seen by some states to represent the interests of France and Germany. In 1600 such resentments were common to many of the smaller states of Europe and not just the Protestant ones. Typical of such Catholic states were Savoy and Venice, both hemmed in by Habsburgs and tending to look to France for counterbalance, protection and sometimes opportunistic advantage. In Transylvanian Hungary in 1604, Prince Bocskai, faced with defeat and a paramount military threat from the Habsburgs, declared that ‘It is required of every man who loves his nation and fatherland that he according to his capacities urgently join us in our camp.’ [Emphasis added.] A Calvinist state, the appeal of nationalism implicit in Calvin’s aggressive polemical writings was powerful. It sought to undermine the idea of ‘universal Christendom’ allied to the Holy Roman and papal nexus of power, tradition. The Reformed Church’s social organization was exploited by the princes of Transylvania, such as Bethlen Gabor, who, as they sought to consolidate and to wear the mantle of Hungarian nationalism in competition with Habsburg and Ottoman Hungary, emphasized the threat of Jesuits and Counter-Reformation. It would form the main element of Prince Rákóczy’s manifesto in his call for war against the Habsburgs in 1645 Referring to the ‘oppression of our nation’. He went on to give special mention to the Protestant bogeymen of the Thirty Years War: ‘with what swiftness or tricks the Jesuits are crept into the Kingdome to the utmost ruine of the libertie thereof & of the Protestant religion …  .’ Fear and paranoia were effective weapons in nationalism, especially where there was a threat to the Protestant propertied classes who were often the first to snatch at the appeal of national concepts just as they were the first to snap up Catholic Church assets. The idea of state and loyalty to state as a primary duty was a multi-layered intellectual process developed through the myriad of writings which often sought inspiration from antiquity, an ironic twist given the focus of new publications being printed in the vernacular as learning, reading and erudition ceased to be the narrow privilege of the aristocracy and the Church. Key writers in this process included Machiavelli on statecraft, Botero on economy, Sarpi on law, Bodin on political philosophy, Grotius on international law, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin and many others. Key classical influences included Tacitus, Thucydides

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28  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 and Livy for their rational18 and realistic description of rulers’ behaviour in a historical context; Cicero and Plato were also important for the development of legal and political concepts of ‘state’. For Sarpi who developed Gallican ideas while working as a propagandist for Venetian independence from papal tutelage in the later sixteenth century, the state’s role was ‘to conserve Freedom and Sovereignty given by god against the unjust orders of an illegitimate external power’.19 (Emphasis added.) Sarpi wanted to ‘save Venice from the supremacy which Spain and the Pope exercised in Italy’.20 Jesuit Giovanni Botero’s book On reason of State of 1589 developed ideas on rational, interest-driven politics which along with other influences would lead Richelieu to utter his famous dictum Raison d’etat. Botero would also introduce economic concepts in to his analysis of power: ‘Among the kingdoms of Christendom (to speak of those that are united in a single body) the largest and most populated, and the richest is France: for there are twenty-seven thousand places with parish churches, supporting more than fifteen million souls.’21 Nevertheless, in 1618, despite the limited constitutional powers of the Emperor, the dynastic pomp and spiritual legitimacy of the Holy Roman Empire was still a vivid reality, a store of tradition and legitimacy, drawing the loyalty of many Protestants, especially Lutherans but also many Calvinists such as William V of Hesse and Elector George William of Brandenburg, despite their religion’s illegal status. The Catholic Church was deeply entrenched still in European society, even in the Reformed Church-controlled Dutch Republic; and the Council of Trent had set it on a road to recovery in which the Jesuit movement would play a distinguished role, both on the front line and behind the lines; by 1600 the Catholic Church was stabilizing the front but to fight back or roll back the Protestant tide they needed the help and brutality that only a temporal power could bring. Could the Empire survive or even fight back against the burgeoning stresses and strains of the époque? Or was it just a politically useful but antiquated historical myth, ripe for toppling? Despite the ruminations of the intellectual class of the northern Renaissance, the myths and symbolism that they attacked had a powerful hold on the psyche and political culture of the Empire’s subjects at every level. Political legitimacy built up over three centuries with the concomitant legend of history, laws, and culture cannot easily be undone; the idea of an ordered hierarchical world still held sway in what was still an overwhelmingly agricultural society with many of the mores of feudalism. The ‘reformation’ which had only partly kicked away one prop to the edifice, had not been able to topple it nor irrevocably diminish the prestige of the Emperor, even if ineffectual Emperors Rudolf II and Matthias had unwittingly made great efforts in that direction. Tarnished by the religious war and the need to compromise at the Peace of Augsburg, the Emperors had lost some power and prestige but certainly not all. However, the political chaos, machinations and power plays by Matthias against his brother, Emperor

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   29 Rudolf, led to the so called ‘Brothers Wars’ which weakened and destabilized the regime still further. Matthias took over but he was forced, between 1606 and 1609, to surrender major concessions to the recalcitrant Protestant-dominated Estates of Bohemia and Hungary which sought to expand their powers in a time of weakness; the resulting ‘Letter of Majesty’ of 1609 in favour of Bohemia with concessions both political and religious, became a totem to both sides. So potent was the symbol that, upon his accession, counter-reformationary hawk Ferdinand II furiously cut it to pieces with scissors; the lacerated document is still on display in Vienna. However, the fundamental structure had, since the settlement of the Lutheran revolts by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, survived, functioned and supervised an era of peace. But there were loose ends and unfinished business. In the early part of the seventeenth century the loose ends seemed to be unravelling the whole. Could the structure survive another internecine war? The initial epicentre for the global conflagration, called the Thirty Years War, was Germany. Germany was where a toxic and volatile mix of religious, political, and constitutional stresses had been building up since the Peace of Augsburg. It was there that the spark of war would mostly likely set off a wider conflict even if it did not immediately activate France. The Augsburg settlement established the principal of choice of religion by a prince within his temporal territory, cuius religio eius religio. Associated with this compromise was the tacit acceptance that the Electors and Princes of the Empire had forged greater territorial independence from Imperial control. However, key issues remained vague, open to interpretation or contrary to reality. Such questions included the status and control of religious property within Lutheran territory, freedom of worship for minorities, and the legal status of Calvinism and Calvinist principalities; ‘all such who do not belong to the two above named religions [Catholicism and Lutheranism] shall not be included in the present peace, but be totally excluded from it.’ (Article 17 Peace of Augsburg) In practice the Princes of the Empire conducted their own foreign policy and, most importantly, raised their own troops. This peace treaty had papered over the strains and stresses. Calvinism had not been well established by the time of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. Moreover, the religious and political map of Germany had moved on; the growth of Calvinism across the Empire destabilized the political system. Henry VIII was not the only monarch or prince to recognise the potential property windfall resulting from the dissolution of the monasteries. Protestant access to and control over church property acquired or confiscated before 1552 would strengthen the tendency to independence still further (Articles 18 and 19, Peace of Augsburg, 1555). Following the ‘Peace’ the Protestant states had every incentive to consolidate and increase their takeover of ecclesiastical properties within their territories, which they did. Although not allowed for by the Peace, the Princes of the Empire, by using their political power, had

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30  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 insinuated themselves into ownership of Catholic properties. Any revanchist attempt by the messianic counter-reformation impulses of Ferdinand II would run into a wall of vested interest. Ever conflicted, the Electors enjoyed the status of being part of the Empire while simultaneously trying to wriggle free of its constitutional binds. When the Catholic Church had recovered its confidence, new interpretations emerged which began to establish the theological and practical basis of the Counter-Reformation. ‘A tactical concession’ was how Pope Pius V characterised the Augsburg settlement, while militant Jesuits argued that Charles V’s original 1521 ban on the Lutherans was only ‘suspended’. The legitimacy of the Peace of Augsburg was also undermined by the militant Tridentine Decrees of 1564. Essentially, Catholics were being given the theological arguments for revoking the settlement and for using any means to re-establish the faith in a religious crusade against ‘heretics’. While important groups within the Catholic Church had a more pragmatic and tolerant view of Protestantism, keeping faith with the idea that reconciliation was possible, they would increasingly be sidelined by Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation radicalism. By 1618 all the major Catholic courts of Europe had been thoroughly infiltrated and indoctrinated by Jesuit confessors in the militant dogma of the Counter-Reformation, none more so than the future Emperor, Ferdinand II, Duke Maximillian II of Bavaria and Sigismund Vasa of Poland. After the assassination of King Henri IV, by a Jesuit renegade, the French court of regent Marie de Medici was also infiltrated by Jesuits who were determined to eliminate the Huguenot ‘Calvinist state within a state’. This was the basis for the powerful dévot faction at the French court which played a very significant role in the Thirty Years War, not least by long delaying France’s entry into the war. Henry IV had been on the point of leading his armies into Germany to tip the balance in the Julich-Cleves succession dispute in favour of the Protestants and against Catholic interests. Had Henry IV lived, France would probably have kicked off its struggle against the Habsburgs some twenty-three years earlier. Militant Catholicism led by the Jesuits intended to counter-attack and eradicate Protestantism; their first target was the more radical, rapidly expanding and well-organised Calvinist element of Protestantism. With its mantra resting on Augustinian doctrines, the threat was doubly insidious to Catholicism. Whereas Lutheranism threatened mainly the power structure of the Catholic Church, Calvinism threatened its ideas in hierarchical organisational structures while exploiting classic Catholic texts to develop an exegetical interpretation that undermined the central Catholic tenets of grace and choice. To some Protestants in the Lutheran camp, it was Calvinism rather than Catholicism which was often considered the bigger enemy. The Saxon royal chaplain to Elector John George noted that the Calvinists had ‘forty times four more errors in their creed than Catholics’.22 And, as one of his councillors remarked, ‘politically we are Catholics.’23

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   31 By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century religious problems were beginning to emerge again, given a new impetus by the spread of Calvinism. Tensions were also caused by the spread of Protestantism into formerly Catholic territories on the north-south divide, and at the same time the aggressive ideology of the Jesuit-inspired Counter-Reformation was starting to bring the clash to a head. The political and religious status of Bohemia, a religiously mixed state on the theological border, would be especially contentious. Not only was the Bohemian confederation under the elective kingship of the Emperor who considered it a core part of his patrimony, but it was also contiguous with Austria and Hungary. As with the period prior to civil war in America, the fight for political and ideological control of those undecided borderlands created a febrile atmosphere of hatred, suspicion and paranoia. As in America before the Civil War, passions would be inflamed between the German polities by legal inheritance disputes, court rulings and constitutional controversy. Court rulings from the Reichskammergericht with its inbuilt Catholic majority inflamed German opinion with its decisions as much as the Dredd Scott case and others outraged southern opinion in pre-civil war America. In the Empire the Aulic Council ruling in 1607 over Donauworth led to its takeover and counter-reformationary enforcement by Bavaria against a staunch Protestant population. All the ingredients for civil war within the Empire were present. Conflict would break out in Bohemia where the religious mix and political issues were the sharpest; as elective monarchies, the constitutional position of the Habsburgs in Bohemia and Hungary was open to challenge. If one domino in this nexus were to fall, the Habsburgs were bound to fear a chain reaction which might threaten their hold on the Holy Roman Emperor title. With major material stakes of money, land, and power at issue, not to mention ‘honour’, an explosion, if not inevitable, was becoming more probable, more especially because the balance of power in Bohemia and Germany was intimately connected to the balance of power in Europe. For the Spanish, foreign policy was merely a defensive posture aimed at maintaining ‘reputation’ and the status quo. Their prime concern was to reestablish Spanish patrimony over the Flemish and Dutch Estates. However, given the weakened ‘realpolitik’ power and status of Habsburg Vienna (Prague before that), this ‘defensive’ policy would inevitably require active intervention to restore and support Habsburg power in the Empire. With Imperial power restored, Spain’s Rhineland communication on the ‘Spanish Road’ to Flanders would be better protected; moreover, there would also then be a chance for a combined Habsburg army to crash into the Dutch Republic through its weak Eastern flank, where there was neither a continuous fortress line nor strong river lines. After Olivares-Zúñiga’s accession to power in 1617, free rein was given to the politics of internal and external renewal after a perceived decline in reputacion; there seemed to be threats to the Imperium all around.

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32  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 There were interlocking power struggles all over Europe, which would likely merge into any German conflict, including the struggle for power in the Baltic Sea, tensions on the Ottoman frontier and the revanchist and counterreformation ambitions of Poland, whose king sought to recover his Swedish crown which had been usurped. The Hungarian-Croatian borderlands were a febrile mix of races, polities, religions and a contest for Hungarian legitimacy. The Calvinist Transylvanian princedom, an Ottoman satrapy with a majority Hungarian population, stood ready to act both as Turkish catspaw and as an interested actor in its own right. Prince Gabor sought to consolidate the laurels of being recognised leader of ‘the Hungarians’ whose lands were split three ways between Transylvania, the Habsburgs and the Ottomans at Buda. Most importantly, would the sleeping giant of France wake up following the religious civil war and regency governments of the previous sixty years? Would France be captured by the forces of the Counter-reformation, would it descend again to long-running religious civil war? Or would it revert to type, to the policies of Francis I and Henri IV, by competing with Habsburg power in Italy and in Germany? All these problems posed threats to the Imperium.

The ‘perceived’ Habsburg threat

If the Habsburgs suffered ‘security dilemma’ paranoia, the anti-Habsburg polities were equally fearful of both the Habsburg military prowess and the ‘Jesuit’ threat, the latter the great bogeyman of Protestant Europe. Around the world Spain’s claim to universal rights to the ‘New World’, both in the west and the east as well through its hold on Portugal, were well known to the English and Dutch sailors who were set upon by Spanish galleons at sea or by their soldiers on land. Spain and Portugal had occupied most of the new world and had many colonies in the east where they also dominated trade routes. Commenting on the political implications of the upcoming marriage of Prince Charles to Henrietta Maria of France, the London news-sheet Mercurius Britannicus noted that ‘there is such a unity [between England and France], that many Lords wonder thereat and they are resolved and meane to unsit the house of Austria, Burgundy and the King of Spain’. The mood of the times was expressed by Thomas Middleton in his publication Game of Chesse (1624) which accused Spain of trying to establish ‘universal Monarchy’.24 Such thoughts were common in Protestant Europe from London to Amsterdam, to Copenhagen, Stockholm, Sedan, Brandenburg, the Swiss confederation and Transylvania. Emperor Ferdinand II’s reputation was well known as a 1620 Dutch propaganda leaflet protested: the grievances of religion, of those of Styria, Carinthia, and Crayne, under Ferdinand then duke of Graz, now emperor … is shown the most terrible, inhumane, and barbarian tyrannies, committed by the emperor’s soldiers, specially the cassock [Cossacks] and Walloons.25

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   33 Given that the concept of universal monarchy was the age-old mantra of the Pope and the Habsburg Emperors, such fears as to Spanish and Imperial ambitions were quite natural; indeed, the overwhelming victory at the White Mountain in 1620 and the actions that followed only confirmed their worst fears. Jesuit confessors in every court in Catholic Europe, backed by the Pope, leapt for joy at the successes of the Counter-Reformation. The Jesuits were the ‘shock troops’ for the Pope. Lamormaini, confessor to the Emperor in 1624–37, gloated, ‘great things can be expected from this Emperor [Ferdinand II], and perhaps even all Germany [may] be led back to the old faith, provided … [the Pope and Emperor together] take up the matter vigorously and see it through with persistence.’26 The position of France would change and become somewhat equivocal and eventually hostile towards the revived and strengthened Habsburg dominion. Richelieu understood well that the Habsburg’s religious revanchism could hardly be separated from territorial and political revanchism. When the Emperor announced the Edict of Restitution in 1629, an action intended to claw back Catholic land alienated in Protestant states since 1555, it seemed to herald the territorial and political takeover of Germany. Of the Edict Lamormaini boasted, ‘No Roman Pontiff has received such a harvest of joys since the time of Charlemagne.’27 Following the battle of Lutter in 1625 and the defeat of Denmark, as the armies of Wallenstein and Tilly marauded around northern Germany and the Baltic coast, it seemed that the Habsburg dominion was developing into an absolutist political construct. With 20 million people and the resources of Germany at its beck and call, the entire balance of power in Europe would change. Whether this was really the intention of the Emperor is a matter of conjecture and debate amongst historians, but what we do know about the exercise of power in general and by Ferdinand I in particular is that military success tended to generate a desire for more. Under a series of weak kings, baronial insurrection mixed with Protestant rebellion led to the French Wars of Religion. These were exploited by the great noble families for power and aggrandisement. France’s emergence was delayed. With its population of 20 million, by far the largest in Europe, France was the only state in a position to challenge Habsburg power in the centre of Europe. Until Louis XIII came of age the fundamental direction of French policy would not be known. However, from a French perspective, la patrie was hemmed in by Habsburg territories to the south, north and east. Some of their territorial possessions in Flanders, Alsace and Franche-Comté were within easy striking distance of Paris with few natural barriers to stop them. The attachment of Lorraine to Spanish interests would point another dagger at the heart of France. French great power ambitions would be driven by insecurity. The other main threat to the Habsburgs from within ‘Europe’ would come from remoter places in Europe. Lutheran Denmark, [meaning Copenhagen] where ambitious and wealthy Christian IV, a prince of the Empire, was set on

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34  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 expanding Danish interests along the North Sea and Baltic coasts. He feared Habsburg revanchist threats to his ambitions. Protestant Sweden, tiny and newly detached from their Danish masters and riven by dynastic and religious splits, was yet another young regime in a quest for conquest, identity and legitimacy. Known to a few Dutch traders frequenting the northern Baltic for its mineral riches in copper and iron ore, the place would barely register in European consciousness until the capture of Riga from the Poles in 1621. Sweden feared an Imperial-supported Polish invasion. However, both Sweden and Denmark [meaning Copenhagen] were hard places to attack because, like England and the Dutch Republic, they were protected by water. All of these threats, internal and external, would coalesce to present the most potent threat to the European hegemony of the Habsburg Imperium which despite being wounded by the blows inflicted in the sixteenth century, still maintained its supremacy. However, by the early seventeenth century, the lustre had gone from the Habsburg dominion; locked into a military stalemate with the Dutch Republic, the Spanish economy burdened by crippling military expenses in the Netherlands was faltering badly; bankruptcy was declared for the first time in 1557, then again in 1560, 1575, and 1596. Although debt levels were more sustainable than commonly thought, 28 the imposition of high taxes, arbitrary government, exchange controls, and mass oppression of key social and religious groups [the Jews and the Moors] were ruining the economy. Exhausted after forty years of war, the Spanish monarchy needed to sign the Thirteen-year Truce with the Dutch Republic in 1609. Their cousins in Prague and later Vienna had produced a succession of weak emperors ruling over a fractious Empire, riven by religious rivalries and disputed claims to titles and land. It was a confused structure, part constitution role and part direct patrimony which itself was a patchwork of polities. There were few binding agents except for the Imperial courts, although the Emperor had the right to call for troops and taxes to defend against Ottoman attack. The Empire was run by a single Chancery administration. Even within the patrimonial element there were few common agents, constitutional or tax commonalities amongst the myriad of estates and medieval representative bodies. In Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia intrigues and minor acts of rebellion abounded. Habsburg influence in the Empire declined while rivalry and territorial and inheritance squabbles increased. Sectional divisions were accentuated by the creation of the Protestant Union led by the Palatine in 1608 and the Bavarian-led Catholic League in 1609. In essence, they were both collective security defensive alliances, but the battle lines were drawn. It only needed a disagreement as to what ‘defensive alliance’ meant in a given situation for war to break out. In a heightened atmosphere of tension various German states started to arm, build fortresses, train militias in modern drill and weaponry and search for foreign allies. Gustavus Adolphus married the daughter of the Elector of Brandenburg and Frederick V Palatine’s sumptuous

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   35 dynastic marriage to Elizabeth Stuart of England in 1612 was a significant marker in this development. James I saw himself as the protector of German Protestantism. As a Calvinist, Frederick was a hero to the increasingly vocal and militant Puritan and Presbyterian classes in England who saw in him and his new bride the embodiment of Protestant hopes in a Europe located on the front line of the battle with the sinister Jesuitical Hapsburgs. His motto was suitably pious, “rule me Lord according to your word ”. Frederick as Calvinist head of the Protestant Union was set on disenfranchising the Habsburgs from their tenancy of the elective Imperial title. A further complication in this unstable structure was the split within the Protestant movement between Lutherans and Calvinists; Elector John George of Lutheran Saxony, a traditional German Protestant champion, brooded on the sidelines of the Protestant Union which he refused to join. Calvinists subscribed to ‘resistance theology’, while Lutherans were ideologically conditioned through the works of Luther and Melanchthon, which stressed loyalty to the ruler and a moderate differentiation to Catholicism. There was complexity in the Habsburg patrimony. As Emperor Various of the Habsburg ‘holdings’ were actually arguably elective, not hereditary, such as the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns and not all Habsburg holdings were part of the Empire, for example Hungary, Croatia and Italian holdings lay without. The Habsburgs operated their power inside the Empire within the constraints of the Imperial constitution, except their direct patrimony in Austria, Bohemia and various other territories for example in Alsace. Even these were contrained by diets and complex customary laws. The Imperial title was itself elective though it had not changed from the Habsburg dynasty since the 1438 election; this was not likely to change; there were seven electors. Four electors were aligned with the Catholic block, including the Ecclesiastic states of Cologne, Mainz, Trier, while the Bohemia electorship was voted the Emperor. There were three protestant electors, Saxony, Palatine and Brandenburg, but Saxony was an Imperial loyalist and Brandenburg followed where Saxony led. Increasingly it seemed that the Habsburgs’ longevity was in danger of creating a hereditary ‘right of tenure’. This was the strong and well-argued view of the Calvinist Elector, Frederick Palatine and his minister, Count Anhalt. Some of the Estates began to cavil against Habsburg rule, especially when facing an increasing peril from Counter-Reformation policies and the imminent coming to power of Spanish-backed Ferdinand of Styria. In attempting to lock down legal rights and privileges in the face of these threats, the estates and important aristocratic elements necessarily raised political stress within the Empire; it was an iterative spiral of increasing social and political tension, the precursor to civil war and revolution. Despite the split in the Habsburg temporal Imperium between the two polities in Madrid and Prague (or Vienna), the two parts maintained a steadfast political alliance, an alliance enhanced by the existential threats of the reformation and the global challenges from Dutch rebels and Protestant England.

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36  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 The Habsburg-France relationship built into a spiral of mutual paranoia, as J.H.Elliott observes, ‘obsession with the French threat to the network of international communications on which Spanish power depended. … What to France was a noose, was to Spain a life-line.’ Both sides in the epic conflict were driven by insecurity; France, conscious of its decline over many decades of religious civil war, was surrounded and hemmed in. It was an objective fact, geographically. Spain felt that its ‘reputation’ was in decline, its interests threatened by rebellion; the Vienna Habsburgs, too, were threatened by loss of prestige and control even in their core hereditary and elective polities. What would for the Habsburg Imperium be a recovery to a normalised status was, for France and other states, an aggressive, malign and threatening assertion of European and global hegemony. As for the rest of ‘tinderbox Europe’ in 1618, the Swedes under the young Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus, were struggling for identity and living in the shadow of determined revanchism, both dynastic and religious, from Poland under counter-reformation hawk, Sigismund Vasa, who was aligned with the Habsburgs by marriage and religious outlook. The king had been deposed from his Swedish patrimony by Gustavus’s father. Denmark’s king was set on a glorious ‘Viking’ revival and determination to maintain dominance of the Baltic and the cash machine on ‘The Sound’, whose tolls had helped Christian IV amass a war chest of 10m Reichsthaler. Witch-hunter Maximilian of Bavaria sought status as an ‘Elector’ in counter-reformation revanchism. To the east, Transylvania’s Calvinist ruler, Prince Bethlen Gabor, sought freedom from the Empires that surrounded him, wanting to loosen the reins of his Ottoman satrapy, while unifying and rallying Hungarian identity which was part split with Habsburg Royal Hungary and the Bey of Buda. England was the only power not lusting after territorial titbits; James saw himself as a peacemaker in Europe while at the same time maintaining pretentions to Protestant leadership in Europe by his association with the Protestant Union of German princes and the dynastic marriage of his daughter to the Frederick Palatine, leader of the Protestant Union. Elector John George of Saxony, the traditional leader of German Protestantism, when he was not befuddled by drink, raged at the pretentions of the Palatine and sought to re-establish his own pre-eminence as Protestant leader, but he detested foreigners in general including the Spanish. William of Hesse, Calvinist prince, sought recovery of Marburg, alienated by the Reichskammergricht’s legal decision in favour of dynastic Lutheran cousins, Hesse-Darmstadt. Brandenburg followed Saxony’s lead; the Elector had accepted an uneasy compromise over the Cleves-Julich disputed inheritance. The Saxe-Weimar of Thuringia were raging still about losing a court case over disputed patrimony and the Brunswicks were chaffing at their reduced glory from former times. Protestant Imperial cities bridled under the threat of Counter-Reformation; their well-read protestant populations were radical and restive, especially liable to political volatility such as seen at Magdeburg

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   37 and Stralsund where the town’s constitution was quite democratic. The case of Donauworth became a rallying cry to radicalism for the Protestant polities because Donauworth only had a population of sixteen Catholic households out of 4,000 citizens, but was nevertheless occupied by Bavarian troops who would enforce Catholic orthodoxy, following a politically and religiously ‘biased’ court ruling in 1606.

Civil war and the dynamics of intervention; fear, the security dilemma, and balance of power

There was a long gestation for the conflict that became the Thirty Years War. Anja V. Hartmann properly points out that ‘The Thirty Years War (1618–48) which devastated many parts of Europe was in many ways the cumulative apex of the previous centuries’ dynastic and religious confrontations ….’29 The sixteenth-century struggle for power within the Empire’s constitution framework; the Habsburg-Valois dynasties vying for power dominance, a game that played out mainly in Italy; deep religious tensions released by the Reformation, including the revolt of the Netherlands against Habsburg rule, bequeathed a toxic and unresolved legacy of international tension. The Thirty Years War which broke out in 1618 became the defining existential struggle for the Habsburg Imperium. A wide interpretation suggests a struggle for control of Europe’s political construct, identity and culture, the core issue in Europe’s development since the Romans built a unified civilization with common legal and political structures from the chaos of ‘Europe’s’ competing tribes. Roman rule lasted nearly 500 years; a cultural unity of sorts became ingrained and was reinforced by religious unity based on the Roman church. Tensions over the control and destiny of Europe as a unified political idea, in the context of Europe’s centrifugal tendencies, has been a constant in European history, and is still germane to European politics in the twenty-first century. The Thirty Years War started off as a civil war within the Empire and then, due to intervention, morphed into a European-wide conflict that drew in and merged with other conflicts, which were originally partially linked or quite separate. Fear is the usual driver for civil conflict because it creates a destructive spiral of hatred. Barbara Walters explains the dynamic: security-driven and predatory-driven behaviour appear similar … they are hesitant to trust any information that portrays a rival favourably … domestic groups, therefore, are often unable to confidently assess whether or not their opponent truly wants peace. Knowing that misplaced trust could be fatal, groups may in the circumstances … find it prudent to act as if neighbouring groups are ruthless predators … .30 Classic factors which create these circumstances can include government breakdown or weakness, isolation of minority groups, a shift in the balance

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38  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 of power, and real or perceived threatening policy changes. A spiral of actionparanoia-action and pre-emption are norms in the development of civil war. Academics in international relations refer to the security dilemma to describe the cumulative breakdown in political relations, when the rational actions of one or more parties, in relation to perceived or real fears, lead to actions which accentuate the problem by causing corresponding responses by other actors. A classic trigger for such developments is the breakdown in central authority, which was exactly the situation in the Habsburg Empire in the decades leading up to 1618, but more complex in that the actors in the Empire were both quasisovereign entities as well as parties to a larger polity. [Like the EU the Holy Roman Empire was a multi-layered polity.] The scenario faced by the Empire in 1618 was no different in essence than that of civil wars with which we may be more familiar, from the US Civil War, to Bosnia, Nigeria-Biafra, Rwanda, Lebanon, Somalia, Libya, and Syria etc. The Empire in the four decades before the war had suffered a progressive institutional breakdown as well as increased sectarianism and parochialism amongst the states of the Empire: nationalism’s effects are governed partly by the character of the extended anarchy that it creates. Some anarchies are relatively peaceful, others more violent. The acuteness of the security dilemma is a key factor governing the answer. Anarchy is a precondition for international war, hence extending anarchy may expand the risk of war.31 In addition to proto-nationalism in the case of the Thirty Years War there was religious factionalism, sectional interest, and predatory state behaviour. The next norm for polities suffering extreme stress, anarchy and breakdown is the pressure for a neighbouring state to intervene, which often rapidly leads to multi-party intervention, because fear starts to cannon randomly and destructively around the political system like a misguided cue ball in a snooker game. Military interventions in civil wars and revolutions tend to have unintended consequences. The intervention dynamic is also a balance between fears and predatory desires, including fears that another intervener/competitor might steal a march. Rivals are therefore tempted to pre-empt. This process may also awaken ideas of exploitative advantage, which may or may not have been well formulated already. Anarchy or instability in international relations is close beneath the surface of whatever international system exists: the case of the Syrian civil war is a classic example of internal instability setting off a chain reaction of competing interventions. Barbara Walter suggests that ‘arguably, international anarchy might be taken for granted as a starting point for analysis on the grounds that at least since the Treaty of Westphalia states have not been subject to any overarching sovereign power.’32 Whoever intervenes more strongly probably wins; Hitler and Mussolini’s interventions in Spain 1936 overpowered the tepid response of the democratic powers; similarly brutal Russian intervention in Syria saved the Assad regime after Obama decided that his red lines were not red at all.

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   39 In the early years of the Thirty Years War Spain and Poland intervened more strongly than Transylvania, England, and the Dutch. By the time Denmark intervened with English, Dutch and French backing under the 1625 Treaty of the Hague, the Emperor was deploying the veteran and victorious Bavarian army under Tilly and the newly-raised Imperial army under General Wallenstein, and Spain had occupied the Rhineland. France was supporting interveners from the background but with internal political division between Gallicans and the devot faction, as well as renewed Huguenot rebellion financed by Spain, they were not in a position to intervene directly. The complex and diverse constitution structure of the Habsburg Empire offered a potentially unstable political tableau in which civil conflict could fester. The early modern Empire consisted of some 2,500 political entities (including over 2,000 Imperial knights) or ‘estates’33 of semi-independent political entities including some with considerable power and autonomy, notably Saxony, Bavaria, the Palatine, Brandenburg, Hesse, Brunswick, and Baden Württemberg. There were also hundreds of ecclesiastical estates, abbeys, bishoprics and archbishoprics. Then, there were the free Imperial cities, mainly Protestant, as were the members of the Hanseatic League and the Swiss Confederation. There were also ten circles, or regional groupings, within the Empire in which judicial and military matters were organised. At the top of the structure was the Electoral College, which had the right to elect the Emperor; below them in the Imperial Diet were the college of princes and the college of Imperial cities. There were seven Electors named under the medieval Golden Bull, which was the basic constitution of the Empire, but electorship did not correspond to power; powerful Bavaria and Hesse were excluded. The political entities were represented in Germany at the Imperial Diet, which was only intermittently called so there was only a limited opportunity for dialogue and for the venting of grievances. When it was called, bitterness so engendered was accentuated by the refusal of the blocking Catholic majority in the Imperial diets of 1608 and 1613 to reform and repair the Catholic bias in the judicial system; Protestant factions walked out. Lack of regularity in dialogue through Parliament was also a feature of Charles I’s reign in the run up to civil war. There was an in-built Catholic majority in the Electoral College, despite the fact that Protestants outnumbered Catholics by five to one within the Empire; and this imbalance was also present in Riechskammergericht (the Imperial court) whose role in the Empire became increasingly controversial because of religious disputes over the ownership of secularised church property. The court did not always vote on confessional lines but the inbuilt Catholic majority was increasingly assumed to be biased in its decision-making in cases lost by the Protestants. The Aulic Council, the Rechshofrat, was another powerful judicial body, which resided at the court in Vienna and supported the Emperor’s powers; supposed only to take cases involving matters under Imperial remit, the Rechshofrat interpreted their

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40  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 jurisdiction widely. Fear of the Imperial judicial system was a key ingredient for fostering rebellion. As radical Catholicism sought to roll back the advance of Protestantism and exploit its constitutional advantages and legal predominance, a further dangerous element was added to the volatile mix in German politics, which was the fear that Catholic properties taken over by Protestant princes since Augsburg would be recovered and confiscated by the papacy acting through the Imperial courts. There is nothing like the fear of losing money or wealth to raise tension. The net effect of the weak structures of the Diet, the legal structures, and the Electoral system for the choice of Emperor, was to increase the possibilities for internal conflict within the Empire. Any change in the balance of power between the Imperial princes was bound to set off a chain reaction, not just in the Empire but internationally. Increasingly in search of a political purpose and with ambitions for aggrandisement, the subcategory of minor princes, who lacked effective political representation, are deftly referred to by Professor Wilson as ‘Paladins’. ‘As for the larger princedoms: to peaceful, the obligation of the princes to pursue any dynastic claim to territory they felt militarily able to sustain, from the time of Charlemagne if not earlier, created a structural driver for war.’34 This dynamic operated not solely within the Empire where there were indeed many potential dynastic disputes, but in Europe as a whole. While the political construct was potentially unstable, because of centrifugal forces driving tensions within, the war, as Professor Wilson notes, was not inevitable. This is because there was still a profound loyalty to the Habsburg Empire across the confessional and political spectrum as well as a respect for legality and tradition. And where there was not loyalty, there was inertia and caution. The Empire enjoyed that most elusive and intangible quality, political legitimacy. Nonetheless the fault lines were there, embedded within the constitution and the confessional divide, and as with all human activity and political structures, the possibility for extreme events to destabilise and create a new construct are always latent. Human character, errors, foibles and flaws were to converge with extreme political and confessional tensions to throw the whole scheme of Empire into crisis. The majority of the actors in the Empire wanted peace and broadly accepted the legitimacy of the Empire, but even those who wanted peace were seduced by pre-emptive temptations for aggrandisement, money, power and status. Fundamental flaws of the structure would be accentuated by the politicalreligious tussles, which, beginning at the political fringes of the Empire, became a contagion. Others, even the most loyal Protestants, would be eventually driven to rebel by existential fear of Ferdinand’s policies, actual and perceived. While the balance between the forces of legitimacy and the forces of instability swung to and fro before and during the Thirty Years War, it would ultimately be the general instability in the wider European polity which would overwhelm the Empire’s traditional structures.

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   41 There was also fear of the absolutist tendencies in the Habsburg monarchy. The actions of Ferdinand II seemed to support the fears of those who noted the absolutist alliance with the ideology of the Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation. Bodin, the sixteenth-century philosopher (1530–96) had given life to the concept of absolute monarchy. Ideas around this core belief were exploited by the Jesuits with willing monarchies eager to increase and centralise power against the objection of traditional medieval rights vested in the nobility and the Estates, a form of shared oligarchic governance that was common to the whole of Europe, including England. Bodin wrote in his 1576 work Six books of the Republic, ‘Seeing nothing on earth is greater or higher, next to god, than the majesty of kings and sovereign princes, the principal point of sovereign majesty and absolute power was to consist principally in giving laws unto the subjects in general, without consent.’ This was not the same thing as despotism because there were countervailing duties attached to the principle of ‘absolutism’, although Protestant propaganda would quite naturally emphasise despotism. Absolutism came with duties, and government still required consent. ‘In prerogative matters the Crown was absolute; in matters touching subjects’ rights it was limited by law – and the need for consent if it was altered.’35 Nevertheless, in practice most ‘Kingly states’ in Europe emphasised the absolutist aspects to support their centralised government/fiscal state reforms, so that many rulers did become despotic autocrats. For example, Maximilian abolished estates and so did Ferdinand II; others such as George of Saxony or Charles I sidelined their estates or parliaments. Absolutist concepts were increasingly in favour with the new breed of European statesman, such as Olivares and Richelieu, and monarchs Louis XIII and Ferdinand II. Though not the same, the concept of divine right was a collateral idea that reinforced absolutist thinking by associating the right to rule or exercise power as being derived from God; in the words of Bishop Bousset, ‘all power comes from God thus princes act as ministers of God, and his lieutenants on earth.’36 Ferdinand’s ‘absolutism’ was driven by his religious fervour tied to his Weltanschauung. While absolutism was seen by the leading statesmen as a necessary doctrine to enable them to enforce political discipline to solve internal problems, to prepare a nation for war or to strengthen their military states and finances, the consequences of actions without consensus, dialogue, or consent were not always positive. Fear of absolutism, bound up in strong polemic and economic self-interest, was a powerful idea in fostering military opposition to the Habsburgs. Resistance against injustice where parties felt they had nothing to lose and resistance to despotism was sanctioned under some Protestant interpretations of resistance theology in law and theology developed after the Augsburg confession of 1630 and further developed by Calvinist and Huguenot jurists and theologians. Frederick V of Palatine and others genuinely feared that, if unchallenged, the Habsburgs would become absolutist hereditary monarchs, regarding the

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42  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Imperial throne as theirs by right rather than by election; hence Frederick’s attempt in 1618 to break the Habsburg monopoly and introduce a new candidate. Frederick, like his radical Catholic counterparts, was driven by a messianic Calvinist belief in his predestined God-given duty to save German Protestantism. Ironically, given the future course of events, he tried to persuade Maximilian of Bavaria to stand against the incumbent. Frederick took the leadership of an invigorated Protestant Union; he also built a clutch of powerful modern fortresses in his lands at Manheim, Frankenthal and Heidelberg as well as developing a 10,000-man army. Fear of the Habsburgs was also aggravated by the military power of Spain, which was intervening on the side of the Emperor, especially when Spanish units mobilised across Europe and reinforcements tramped along the ‘Spanish Road’ between Genoa and Brussels in the run-up to the ending of the 1609 Truce in the Netherlands in 1621; the political atmosphere in Europe following the Bohemian revolt became still more toxic. Already highly involved in the accession of Ferdinand as well as the coup against Emperor Matthias before his death, Spain was further drawn into intervention in support of its Habsburg ally in 1618 to shore up and strengthen its strategic position prior to the end of the Dutch Truce in 1621. ‘One would lose Flanders and Italy upon which the whole of the monarchy rests if one loses Germany’, 37 advised Spanish ambassador Oñate whose name graces the treaty of 20 March 1617, which sealed political and territorial trade offs cementing the dynastic alliance. Spanish intervention drew counter-moves from the Dutch and Savoy and accelerated the widening of the war. By binding the military-political problems of Spain and the Empire, Olivarez and Zúñiga were putting the continuation of the Habsburg Imperium at issue in a wager on war. The war in Bohemia threatened changes in the European balance of power. Therefore, far from being the internal German affair posited by some historians, the Thirty Years War was international from the start with a galaxy of nations involved, including the Dutch Republic, Transylvania, Poland, Spain, England, Sweden and the Vatican. Other countries such as Savoy and Venice hovered on the fringes; Savoy’s important intervention was the sending to rebel Bohemia of several thousand mercenaries under the infamous Count Mansfeld. The most important catalyst to the further internationalisation of the war was the very military success enjoyed by the Imperial alliance including Spain, with Papal backing. Their success first in Bohemia, then in Germany, stimulated and energised counter-intervention. Ignoring France, historian Professor Simms describes a grand and predominant historical role for Germany in European conflicts, ‘again and again, from the treaty of Westphalia … the link between the internal order in Germany and the Peace of Europe has been made explicit …  .’38 Overstated perhaps, but the neighbouring Protestant powers and France could not allow the Habsburgs to take over and consolidate the German resources of the Empire,

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   43 and with the princes and polities of Germany threatened and defenceless against Spanish military might, foreign powers were bound to be drawn in to the chaos of German politics. It is a universal truth that weak political and geographic environments suck in powerful states which is the story of Ukraine in the last thirty years. Jealous and ambitious states on the periphery of a political vacuum will seek to insert themselves, both to gain advantage themselves and to stop their rivals from stealing a march on them. Moreover, there are bound to be internal participants who invite in outsiders either to redress perceived dangers and imbalances, to protect vital interests, or in desperation for fear of survival. The fractious kaleidoscope of German politics became a battleground by proxy for rival nations and dynasties, just as politically fractured Italy had been the ‘cockpit of Europe’ in the previous century when France and the Habsburg vied for political influence or direct control. Not only Germany, but Italy, France, Spain, Savoy, Denmark, Hungary and Switzerland too became battle zones as the cancer of war spread. In addition to the international aspects, there was never a time in European history when domestic political transformation and internal stresses in European polities had such a direct impact on foreign policy formation. This resulted in extreme tensions and volatility both within and between states during this time of dramatic change and state modernisation. It also led to intervention by states across borders to encourage or ferment revolt in the domestic polity of their enemies. Spain continually sought to undermine France’s policies and military capability by encouraging, even financing, revolt by disaffected nobles or Huguenot separatism. Spain’s leading agent, cabalist and spy, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, became an incorrigible plotter of coups and assassinations. In due course this was reciprocated by French support for revolts in Spain, notably in Catalonia, and in Spain’s territories such as Naples; also in Portugal where Richelieu groomed the Duke of Braganza long before the eventual revolt in 1640. France interfered constantly in the political battles within the Dutch Republic, and there were occasional attempts to support one or other side in the English Civil War, though the capacity of the party with most interest, i.e. Spain, was played out already. All European states and polities were involved in a continent-wide forging of new national identities along with administrative and constitutional changes as they emerged from the consensus and static structures of medieval, feudal, agrarian societies. Economic power in trade and manufacture was increasingly understood to be fundamental to military power. The common understanding of the Thirty Years War is that it started as a political German conflict and then spread out, but there were from the first important elements of international political, trade and economic conflicts between the Dutch and the Spanish, the Swedes and the Poles, the Swiss and the Spanish, Transylvania and the Habsburgs, Savoy and Venice and the Habsburgs, and not least in the colonial conflicts taking place in Asia and the Spice Islands. As Kamen notes in respect

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44  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 of Olivares, the Spanish nobleman who came to power in 1619, ‘Olivares consequently inherited not simply a local war in the Netherlands but a global conflict in which the emphasis came to be more on naval warfare than on landbased strategy. For Spain the objective of the struggle was not expansion but economic survival.’39 Economic competition and the fight for resources around the globe and in the Baltic was a vital component in furthering the conflict. New religious ideas as well as ideas on government were pushing towards increased centralisation and professionalism in military operations, either directly or via subcontracting, to exploit the potential of modern capitalist economies. The spiral of change was accelerated by the rise of manufacturing and trading economies as well as the internationalisation of the financial markets and banking networks. Those nations, focused on international trade as well as technological innovation, who were challenging Europe’s old feudal order, took the anti-Habsburg side in the war. Economic goals became of paramount importance due to the inadequacy of state funding and tax systems for extended war; so fundamental was this factor that the strategies of armies were driven by logistical needs including opportunities to secure taxable territory on which they could feast as if they were armies of locusts. In the end it was the Bohemian revolt which, touching on vital political and religious interests, was to provide the spark for the explosion of political-religious tensions in Europe. There proved to be no cure for the explosive constitutional and political crisis in the Empire which was detonated by the Defenestration of Prague in May 1618. The interests at stake were too entrenched for compromise. Moreover, Ferdinand and his Spanish backers wanted a crisis. They sought to exploit the crisis for wider political-religious purposes, as did Maximilian of Bavaria, for more limited political and territorial gains. As leader of the Protestant Union, Frederick V of Palatine had seen the Bohemian crisis as a chance to draw a line in the sand against the rising threat of Habsburg power and the Counter-Reformation. He was an internal intervener and would in due course attract the opprobrium of those who understood the dubious legality of his actions in ‘usurping’ the Bohemian Crown on 26 August 1619, which had been offered by the revolutionary Bohemian directorate. If two intractable parties want a fight they will normally succeed. Outraged by his son-in-law’s usurption of the Bohemian Crown, James I had been loath to be drawn in to the crisis in Germany, but after the battle of White Mountain (1621), intervention became inevitable because of domestic pressure for the defence of Protestantism and the need to restore his daughter’s patrimony if not her Bohemian crown. Nor could any of the surrounding states, including France, Spain, the Dutch, the Venetians, Savoy, Denmark, Sweden, England, Poland, Transylvania, Lorraine, afford to allow a region of 20 million people to come under the autocratic sway of their Habsburg potential enemies or religious opponents.

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The Naval and Economic Challenge to the Habsburg Imperium   45 The defence of German liberties and the Imperial constitution, a constant rallying cry of interventionist states, was really a proxy for the defence of the balance of power in Europe. Germany held the European balance, and the balance within Germany in 1618 was very unstable. Though many Calvinists were aghast at Frederick’s acceptance of the Bohemian crown, international Calvinism was also engaged by the Habsburg Counter-Reformation threat which was to a large degree aimed at them, ‘the possibility of extending diplomatic and military assistance to beleaguered colleagues was a constant theme of discussions between Calvinist princes’.40 James I, unhappy as he was at his son-in-law’s legal defence of his actions, felt obliged to send military help to support his dynastic interest and to pacify the sentiments of the Protestant gentry and London mob, for whom Frederick and Elizabeth were Protestantism’s golden couple. Led initially by the Dutch, the English, and the Transylvanians, others would soon follow down the path of counter-intervention. Ironically, the first stage of Spanish intervention was the overthrow of the Habsburg Emperor Matthias. Political and military support to overthrow Emperor Matthias in a putsch signified by the arrest of his chief minister, the moderate Cardinal Klels in 1618, a few months after the crisis induced by the Defenestration of Prague, accelerated the installation of their man Ferdinand as the Austrian caudillo. Subsidies and troops were provided for the ImperialBavarian army, while a Spanish army from Luxembourg prepared to invade the Palatine in support of the Emperor. Spanish intervention seemed at first to be definitive in settling the incipient revolt of the Protestant states. Polish intervention by Catholic and dynastically Habsburg-aligned Sigismund was also timely and useful in drawing off the Transylvanian threat. Political scientist Bruce Jones describes the risks of intervention in regard to the Rwandan civil war: ‘the success of partisan intervention is likely to be in large measure determined by the absence of counter intervention.’41 The Bohemian conflict would be no exception; fearful of their own security, sensing predatory advantage or needing to protect vital interests, a series of interveners began to step forward by turns and so the war went on but not with success due to the power of veteran Habsburg armies. The security dilemma, where one party anticipates the aggressive actions of another in a spiral of conflict, had jumped, like a rogue virus, from the internal politics of the Empire into the wider European arena; it would soon spread around the world. Having stepped onto the fast rotating treadmill of intervention, the problem for the Empire was how to get off it.

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Chapter II

Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague Internal development of Spanish politics, 1600–1621

P

hilip III was relatively weak, lazy and fun-loving. In contrast to his austere and industrious father, Phillip II, he had little appetite for the hard work of government. History largely ignores him because he was a nonentity. Unfortunately, the man he entrusted to run the government was in similar vein, a slothful man, whose main talent was for holding the ear of his king by his diligent sycophancy. However, the Duke of Lerma was wily enough to hold the stewardship of government for fifteen years; the main hallmark of his regime was peace and stability after the frantic anti-Protestant crusades and bankruptcies of Philip II’s regime. Opponents would call it an era of ‘stagnation’ and ‘humiliation’ but his policy was not unwise. As time went on Lerma’s ‘do nothing’ policy became associated with Spanish decline, which was already beginning to be spoken of and written about by contemporaries. There was a marked decline of the fleet and naval power, and loss of prestige. After sixty years of fabulous wealth extraction from the Cerro Rico mountain at Potosi in the Bolivian highlands, the revenue had begun to decline sharply. The Truce of 1609 was especially reviled by Spanish nationalists as a great betrayal; the effects were certainly one-sided. As Don Fernando de Carillo, president of the council of finance complained in 1616, ‘it has been worse than if the war had gone on.’1 Rising politicians such as Olivares or Ueceda and many others, particularly those who had not served overseas and did not know the difficulties, were especially critical of Spain’s loss of reputacion. What added to their humiliation was the fact that the Truce of 1609 with the Dutch did not apply to global trade where the Dutch preyed on Portuguese and Spanish shipping. It allowed the Dutch to expand their trade, wealth, and empire in the East at Spanish and Portuguese expense; the Dutch also insinuated themselves again into Spain’s natural trading areas, in Spain itself, in the ‘Spanish’ Mediterranean and in the Caribbean. Meanwhile the port of Antwerp, formerly the centre of the northern renaissance, remained cut off from the sea. The Dutch controlled the Scheldt, so condemning the once great renaissance port to decline. Its inhabitants fled north to Amsterdam for economic and political reasons. Any shipping allowed through had to pay exorbitant dues to the state of Zeeland.

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  47 Underlying the malaise in the Spanish Empire was economic decline and the strains of financing massive global military commitments.2 In 1598 about 40 per cent of Spanish revenues went on debt servicing. By 1618 that proportion was much higher, with interest costs rising to more than 50 per cent of revenue. Nonetheless, the Crown’s 20 per cent take on bullion shipments remained a useful source of revenue and banking collateral throughout the Thirty Years War. Trade with their South American colonies was also under threat as interlopers cut in with contraband products which were more competitive than those produced by the increasingly sclerotic Spanish economy. Portugal’s empire was self-financing for the purpose of defending against Dutch depredations in Asia. However, this would begin to change after the end of the Truce in 1621 and the formation of the Dutch West Indies Company; Portugal would soon be calling on Spanish naval power to help it in Brasil. Even in 1624, many believed that South American bullion was still the basis of Spanish power: they are not great in territories which make him so powerful…for it is well known that Spain is weak in men, and barren of natural commodities … no, Sir, they are his mines and the West Indies which minister fuel to feed his vast ambitious desire of global monarchy.3 declared Sir Benjamin Rudyard in the House of Commons.

Olivares

Olivares is one of the most enigmatic characters of the Thirty Years War. He came into power in 1617, just as the storm in Europe was about to break. He lost power in 1642 as Richelieu, his corresponding French nemesis, was dying. Taking office on a wave of nationalistic fervour to recover a lost prestige from an almost mythical golden age, he has carried the burden of historical judgement for the ‘decline of Spain’. By the end of his reign the country was economically, politically and militarily on its knees following a failed war of attrition. Despite his failings, he was to become the most farsighted and imaginative statesman of the era, with a grasp of geopolitical grand strategic issues that was breathtakingly modern. He achieved much against a background of deep set and long-established difficulties. That he ultimately failed was as much a matter of the impossibility of the task that he faced, as the mistakes that he made. Olivares was born into an aristocratic family of the second rank although he was well connected with the great families of Guzman, Zúñiga and Haro. His father held land in and around the great colonial and commercial trading port of Seville, which was the gateway to the Spanish South American Empire. It was in Seville that he grew up, spending his formative years there in his twenties as he waited for appointment and preferment at court. Seville clearly influenced his close attention to trade and economic matters and sharpened his understanding

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48  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 of the strengths and weaknesses of Dutch power. Naturally for one living in a port city, he took a close interest in commercial and naval matters. His father had been a tireless public servant in Spain and in the diplomatic service in Rome; the boy was well schooled in matters of international politics. However, there was disappointment, even bitterness perhaps, at the father’s failure to be appointed to the Royal Council, to become a ‘grandee’, which carried with it the privilege of being able to leave the head covered in the presence of the king. The young Olivares was sent to university at Salamanca at the early age of 14 in 1601; it was an unusual step for a member of the nobility, but he became popular amongst his student fellows and was elected as their representative; it was an honour he would always treasure. How much he learned amidst the revelry of student life is unknown but he was to become a fanatical bibliophile who, in time, with wealth and power, would assemble the greatest private library in Europe, consisting of 2,700 books and 1,400 manuscripts even by the mid-20s. It drew visitors and praise from famous Renaissance scholars. Flemish Jesuit Claude Clement visiting in 1635 exclaimed, that the library is one of the most excellent both for its size and for the selection of books of every kind. Its fame is universal and deserves a visit. The count has an uncontrollable urge to go on adding to it every day, on account of his singular love of letters.4 His other great interest was the theatre, which he patronised in Seville: drama was to be the hook by which he snared the attentions and affections of the vacuous and hedonistic Prince Philip who was to become King Philip IV in 1621. By 1619 Olivares, despite his ugly looks, his bulbous nose, and a prominent chin, which threw his beard into a splayed pattern, had worked his way into complete psychological dominance over the young prince. So confident and dominant was he that on the day of Philip III’s death he openly boasted to the unsuspecting Ucueda that ‘now everything is mine … . yes without exception.’5 In taking over power Olivares enjoyed absolute command in a way that Richelieu could never establish with Louis XIII. ‘Olivares is as absolute with this King [Philip IV] as the Duke of Lerma with his father’ observed the English ambassador.6 He also networked in the febrile politics of the court, drawing together a sympathetic grouping of notables that coalesced around their unhappiness with the direction of Lerma’s Spanish policy and governance. Some were from his influential family, such as his uncle Count Zúñiga, ambassador to the Viennese court. Olivares’s instincts for power were both sharp and subtle. Having gained the confidence of the heir, he manoeuvred cleverly to front his bid for power by suggesting the installation of his experienced and respected uncle Zúñiga as a councillor under Lerma, realising that he was too young to reach the highest step in one jump.

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  49 Domestic policy would focus on increased unity and austerity. The Spanish court would become a dull place as the Duke of Buckingham discovered during his six-month stay there in 1623. When they took over, Olivares was just 34 years old and Zúñiga over 60. They agreed on a division of power with Zúñiga ruling the council as Privado (first minister) and Olivares ruling the king at court. He archly declined to take a seat on the council. Zúñiga was the figurehead, albeit an active one. Olivares realised that he could deflect opposition and gain more time, experience and political maturity if he fronted his bid for power with Zúñiga. It was a master-class in the Machiavellian arts. Upon Zúñiga’s death in 1623, Olivares took up the reins more directly as chief minister, having been able to construct a network of power and patronage unsurpassed amongst his peers in Europe. With his main interests in theatre and hunting, the king was content to operate under Olivares’s tutelage; underrated by history the king took increasing interest in affairs of state. Involving the king closely in his policies made it more difficult for Philip to overturn Olivares who showed enormous physical and mental stamina and worked long hours to maintain his personal grip on policy, power and the minutiae of global government. His hyperactivity is famously described by J.H. Elliott, who pictures him as ‘bustling around the palace with state papers stuck in his hatband and dangling from his waist, reminding those who saw him of nothing more than a scarecrow …’.7 He worked with a menagerie of secretaries and managed everything in minute detail; in modern parlance he was a ‘ hands-on micro-manager’. Hurtling around the corridors of power he would work late into the night, planning, plotting and manoeuvring in Hitlerian manner his army and naval units around a huge map of the globe like a modern commander–in-chief but without modern communication systems. Detailed instructions were all handwritten or dictated to secretaries. He gloried in it as if it were a vast and intricate game of chess with his opposite number Richelieu sitting in Paris, operating the pieces on the other side of the board. A devotee of the theatre which he enjoyed as art and propaganda, he saw the conflict in large, dramatic terms.8 Olivares’s love for plots and intrigue found new outlets in the vicious world of early modern international politics. No doubt familiar with the works of Machiavelli, he might have seized on this passage in the ‘Prince’ about French politics: ‘You can easily invade if you win over one of the barons. There always exist malcontents and those who want charge. These for the reasons explained can open up the state to you and facilitate your victory.’9 Forming a cornerstone of his international strategy over the twenty-five years of his rule, he funded and encouraged innumerable plots amongst the dévot Catholic opposition in France. There would be endless opportunities to satisfy his taste for clandestine chicanery and espionage. All of this was supported by the employment of hundreds of writers to produce propaganda, publish underground political pamphlets in foreign countries, and spread rumour.10

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50  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 More than any previous world leader, Olivares understood the key economic issues that were the main drivers of success and failure in war. Indeed, economic dominance and the destruction of Dutch commercial power was the object of war. He had a clear understanding of the vital weakness in the Dutch system. Like Admiral Dönitz in 1939–45 and his First World War predecessors, Olivares sought to destroy the Dutch economy and ability to fight by unfettered maritime raiding on Dutch commerce from Dunkirk and other channel ports. He recognised the importance of the interconnection between land and sea operations, resurrecting and reinvigorating the Spanish navy, which was for the first time included in the military honours system. As Mahan points out: ‘To attack the commerce of the enemy is therefore to cripple him … . Money, credit is the life of war; lessen it and the vigor flags; destroy it, and resistance dies.’11 However, his ability to reform, like that of Richelieu in France, was hamstrung by the immediate requirements for cash which ruined his well-intended innovations. New in power, Olivares exuded a determination to change the very nature of the Spanish spirit: ‘we must bend our efforts to turning the Spanish into merchants.’12 (13 March 1624) But in the end the culture of Spain and the need for short-term financial fixes led to high war taxes, shortage of credit, and foreign currency controls. Nor could he control the persecution of Jews and conversos by the Inquisition; autos da fe still went on. All of this made his quest for strong economic performance quite hopeless. Not only were the times not propitious for reforms, but the reforms lacked a national consensus; they were to be imposed from the top. His union of arms programme, intended to equalise taxes and war contributions, only partially succeeded because it was seen as a Castilian imposition, made for Castilian interests. The educated classes were not inured to trade or hard work but sought work as soldiers, placemen-bureaucrats, priests, monks or fortune hunters in South America. The Spanish enjoyed a stiff concept of honour; stiff as the elaborate ruffs which kept their heads at the aloof and superior angle, which was mocked all over Europe. Olivares could do nothing to turn around the introverted and xenophobic culture which led to the execution of thirty-nine ‘New Christians’ at an auto da fe in Cordoba 1625. Some relaxations in residency laws for conversos were introduced in return for their investment in Spanish government debt. But how could Olivares alone breathe life into a stifling culture of fear and oppression which suppressed commercial energy as well as the people most likely to drive trade and investment? There were simply not enough people attuned to his new concepts. Unlike Peter the Great in Russia a century later, he never enjoyed the sort of autocratic or tyrannical power which could drag a culturally conservative and unwilling population to thoroughgoing reform. There was brilliance in some of his schemes and concepts, but he was overoptimistic and prone to making ‘gamblers’ last throws’, more in hope than in expectation. His temptation to adventurism was noted after the Mantuan

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  51 decision by a diplomat in 1629, who described him as being ‘very inclined to novelties, without taking account of where they may lead him’.13 Power corrupted his judgement as well as compounding a certain mental instability and capriciousness of character, which became more pronounced with age, as it does with all politicians. Compounding the stress and depression of an overworked obsessive, some say that he also was suffering from syphilis, a common complaint in the aristocracy. It seems likely that he died on the verge of madness. Like Richelieu and Father Joseph, he had no qualms about dealing with Calvinists or other Protestants if necessary; raison d’état prevailed. Sheer willpower kept him and the ship of state afloat. ‘I do not consider it useful to indulge in a constant, despairing recital of state affairs,’ insisted Olivares, ‘I know it and lament it without letting it weaken my determination or diminish my concern; for the extent of my obligations is such as to make me resolve to die clinging to my oar till not a splinter is left.’14 To maintain the Habsburg dominion in Europe and around the globe, Olivares had committed Spain to a war of attrition in an unbreakable Habsburg alliance with Vienna, a war to the death with the Dutch, and then against France and the Swedes. Nevertheless, his attitude to Vienna was a superior one; he would exploit them for his own needs, seeking to use their military assets for Spain’s own immediate purposes. The Mantuan imbroglio and the displacement of the Imperial army just as Gustavus invaded the Empire was a consequence of Olivares’s adventurism.

Olivares’s policy

The war against the Dutch was the primary aim of Spanish policy but there were related subsidiary objectives: to keep France out of the war and maintain the power of Vienna and thereby the Habsburg Imperium, as well as to protect Spanish communications to Brussels. Spain could not afford a two-front war. Supporting opposition inside France, whether Huguenot rebels or malcontent dévot aristocracy, was designed to keep the sleeping giant of European politics dormant or distracted. To this end, the French Queen Mother was to be supported and secret correspondence maintained with Louis XIII’s wife, Spanish born Anne of Austria. Despite his upbringing in Seville, the trading hub whose population of 150,000 exceeded Madrid’s, Olivares’s policies were Europe-centric, focusing on the maintenance of Spanish power and reputation on the continent. However, Spanish power in South America was an essential interest as well, hence his investment in a number of huge armadas to Brasil. For Olivares the defence of the Peruvian cash cow started on the coasts of Pernambuco and Bahia. The Asian Empire based on Manila, however, was an outpost without strategic importance, managed through Mexico’s viceroy. With trade directed through Acapulco, Olivares had little knowledge or interest in the region.

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52  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 He failed to grasp the possibilities for destroying the Dutch trade in Asia by effectively combining with the Portuguese, as recommended by Jacques de Coutre,15 Antonio de Morga and others, whose reports he must have seen. However, he could hardly have opened another front, given the existing strains on his overstretched resources.

Spain; financing, social and economic problems

Lisbon’s New Christian [nominally converted Jews] merchants were increasingly turning away from wealth-producing trade to financing of asientos (Spanish bonds) issued from Madrid to pay Spanish war debt. Hemmed in by regulation and the Inquisition, New Christian merchants’ dynasties had increasingly come to shun the commercial and political risks of overtly successful trade, instead seeking sanctuary in favours granted for financing Spain’s financial deficit, through intermarriage with impoverished Iberian nobility, or in purchases of aristocratic titles. When Olivares switched his sources of banking from Genoa to Lisbon in 1628, he was unconsciously weakening the Estado da India. Providing finance to the Spanish government was a means for New Christians to protect wealth against the random pogroms of the Inquisition, because in 1630 the Madrid government decreed that asientos were immune from sequestration by the Inquisition authorities. Private enterprise began to be elbowed out by unproductive financial activity, not only in Spain but, from the mid-twenties, in Portugal as well.16 Increasingly crushed by taxation, arbitrary forced loans, and artificially rigged exchange rates against the Vellon (copper currency), real economic activity, oppressed, exploited and starved of capital and talent, stagnated. Inquisition and auto da fe persecution of ‘New Christians’ drove out one of the most productive sectors of society. From the 1620s the burdens of empire began to outweigh the benefits as the Spanish were forced for political reasons to fit out huge armadas to go to the rescue of Brasil. Naval costs which consumed as much as 20 per cent of Spain’s state budget vastly exceeded bullion receipts, so defence for the global Empire became a drag on the efficient prosecution of the war in Europe, for example when the Dunkirk-based fleet was called away to defend the treasure fleets in the Caribbean after the Matanzas debacle and the loss of the treasure fleet to Piet Hein in 1629. Pressure on Dutch merchant shipping in the North Sea lessened. Empire was also a continuing drain on manpower, the shortage of which began to affect Spanish ability to put soldiers into the field. Following on from net emigration of 450,000 in the sixteenth century, a further 700,000 emigrated from Spain in the seventeenth century. Higher wage rates elsewhere attracted labour from increasingly impoverished Spain. The net effect of Empire was to greatly diminish Spain’s capacity to mobilise resources, financial and human, for the Habsburg alliance and defeat of its enemies in Europe.

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  53

Spanish politics and foreign policy, 1619–21

In another development, in which Olivares is credited with a leading role, his uncle Count Baltasar de Zúñiga was invited to return from his ambassadorial post at Vienna. Zúñiga joined the council of state in July 1617. As former ambassador in Vienna, Zúñiga, unlike Lerma, believed that the maintenance of Habsburg power in the Empire was ‘key’ to Spanish primary interests. Supported and pushed on by Olivares, Philip III’s favourite, operating in the shadows, Zúñiga came to head the party in the country representing those saddened and angered by the perception of decline and corruption, convinced that the Habsburg grip on Europe and its Empire was faltering. The perceptions were linked to other factors, the financial crises and loan defaults, a sense of moral lassitude, a sense of guilt at luxury as if God was punishing them for their decadence. Restoration of reputacion involved not just containing the Protestant powers but rolling them back; driven by Jesuit ambition, Ferdinand II was completely in agreement with this approach which ran in tandem with his temporal ambitions. With the Ottomans in a quiescent phase, Zúñiga won the argument. With Philip III’s support, a reluctant Lerma was forced to offer money to the Emperor in July 1618 in the form of a 200,000-ducat subsidy, to help Ferdinand in the Bohemian crisis ‘since if the Empire should be lost to the House of Austria through the lack of it [money],’ advised Lerma on 26 August, ‘nothing in Italy will be safe.’17 Lerma’s foreign policy had previously been focused on the Ottoman threat. Lerma was ousted by Zúñiga and Olivares soon after. From the first moment the policy of Zúñiga and Olivares started to be more assertive of Spanish power in Europe. In an early policy speech Zúñiga is reported as saying, ‘In my view if a monarchy has lost its reputacion, even if it has lost no territory, it is a sky without light, a sun without rays, a body without soul.’18 In response to the revolt in Bohemia the policy involved robust support for the Imperial house. In one of its first moves the new Spanish government put pressure on Emmanuel of Savoy who was known to be giving aid to the Bohemian rebels; the Spanish ‘demande passage through Piedmont and Savoy for 2,500 men,’ reported British diplomat Isaac Wake on 18 July 1619, ‘which the governor of Milan had order to send out of the state of Milan into the low countries.’19 It was the build-up for the renewal of the war. Troops and experienced officers such as Count Bucquoy and Dampierre were sent to the Emperor, as well as financial subsidies. The problem in attacking the Dutch was well understood by Zúñiga, the first Spanish council member with foreign policy responsibility from 1619. War aims in 1621 were quite limited but there was no sign of any real desire by the Dutch to negotiate. If that nation had not been so eager for war, Zúñiga would probably have settled. ‘We cannot by force of arms reduce those provinces to their former obedience …,’ wrote Zúñiga in 1619 to his secretary Juan de Ciriza,

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54  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 ‘impressed by the great strength of those provinces by both land and sea, … that state is at the very height of its greatness while ours is in disarray.’20 ‘To promise ourselves we can conquer the Dutch is to seek the impossible, to delude ourselves.’21 In a letter dated 28 November 1621, Olivares, unlike Zúñiga, had few doubts, ‘Almost all the kings and princes are jealous of your greatness,’ he wrote to the King. ‘You are the main support and defence of the Catholic religion: for this reason you have to renew the war with the Dutch and with other enemies of the church who are their allies; and your principal obligation is to defend yourself and attack them.’22 The Dutch truce was seen as the defining legacy of the corrupt and weak Lerma regime; if the terms were not satisfactorily renegotiated there must be war. The new Spanish government in 1619 required that Antwerp’s access to the sea via the Scheldt be opened, that attacks on the trading Empire, especially in the far East must stop, and that the Dutch government must acknowledge Spanish suzerainty. It was an ambitious but completely unrealistic negotiating stance. The painter Peter Paul Rubens, also a diplomat for Spain, wrote, ‘This city languishes like a consumptive body,’ whereas war was a boon to the Dutch economy. Political developments in the Dutch Republic after 1609 had also hardened militant attitudes; similarly, in Spain, many of the Castilian nobility and Grandees, the military caste, welcomed the opportunity for war, but Zúñiga, despite acquiescence in an aggressive foreign policy, still hoped for peace and maintained negotiations till the last.

Defenestration of Prague

On the evening of 21 May 1618 a group of Protestant Bohemian noblemen met in the Prague Palace of Albrecht Smiricky. They were very angry. Trust in the good intentions of the Emperor to honour the ‘Letter of Majesty’ of 1609 had broken down. The letter which guaranteed religious and political rights had been negotiated by the powerful Bohemian barons in the era of civil strife, The fact that the court had moved from Prague to Vienna during the reign of Emperor Matthias exacerbated the mutual distrust; distance had also led Vienna to become detached and complacent regarding developments in Bohemia. The meeting consisted of a cabal of leading Protestant nobles, including Count Turn, Ulrich Kinsky, Liwin von Rican, and Paul Kaplir. They decided that next day they would storm the castle with their supporters and launch a coup d’état in the traditional Bohemian way. In Prague, the Emperor was represented by Imperial ministers Jaroslaw von Martinitz and Wilhelm von Slawata, both Catholic representatives of leading noble Czech families. From the castle, they handled the administration of the Bohemian Realm and Estates. There followed the revolution of 22 May 1618 which is described at the start of this book.

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  55 At first this rebellion looked like a minor matter which could be negotiated by an accommodation but the crisis escalated. On 26 August 1619, the Bohemian Directorate overthrew Ferdinand as king and offered the crown to Frederick V Palatine, one of the Empire’s seven electors. Everyone knew that acceptance would trigger war; Count Solms, 28 August 1619 had from the first warned Frederick, ‘If it is true that the Bohemians are about to depose Ferdinand and elect another King, then let everyone prepare for a war lasting twenty, thirty or forty years. The Spaniards and the House of Austria will deploy all their possessions to recover Bohemia; indeed the Spaniards would rather lose the Netherlands than allow their dynasty to lose control of Bohemia so disgracefully and so outrageously.’ However, Ferdinand of Styria was the ‘heir apparent’; strongly supported by Spain, he wanted to worsen and exploit the crisis, not reduce it. It was this determination to win decisive political and military victory over the rebels that would put the entire Habsburg role in the Empire and their dominion in Europe into question because they risked a harsh reaction. When Frederick V elector of Palatine, leader of the Protestant Union, accepted the Bohemian crown from the rebellious directorate in December 1619, this usurption of what the Habsburg Emperor regarded as his patrimonial right and counter-intervention by states operating the normal balance of power policies. The unintended consequence was that Spain and Ferdinand would be staking the entire Habsburg systerm in Europe on a wager of war., could only lead to war. It was a challenge which the Emperor, supported by Spain was delighted to accept because it fell in exactly with their geo-political plans ahead of the resumption of war with the Dutch Republic. Spanish Generals Spinola, Cordoba and de Bergh were prepared for action against the Palatine in the Rhine Valley and the Dutch holdings of Julich and other outposts on the lower Rhine. For the Spanish, the revolution in Bohemia followed by Frederick’s acceptance of the Bohemian crown, an adventure of dubious legal provenance, offered an ideal justification for intervention. They set their sights on a takeover of the Palatine’s strategic fortresses which straddled the ‘Spanish Road’ along the Rhine, something they may have felt a need to do anyway, but the crisis gave them political cover for an act that would otherwise have generated general opprobrium and wider resistance. Securing the Rhine was essential to maintain Spain’s unbroken communications to Spanish Flanders and Luxembourg, linked back to Spain via Lake Constance, the Inn river, the Stelvio Pass, the Valtellina valley, Milan and Genoa. However, in looking to restore Habsburg power in Europe Ferdinand and Olivares also risked it in its entirety because a backlash could be expected against this aggressive demarche in Viennese, German and Bohemian politics. The idea of marching large armies through the Empire was bound to detonate paranoia and fear across Europe, so disturbing the balance of power and setting off the ‘security dilemma’. Intervention in Germany would be met by counter-

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56  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 intervention. It threatened escalating and exacerbating rivalries, old wounds, and revanchist ambitions around the Baltic, in Italy and the Hungarian borderlands. Once Bohemia and the Palatine had been defeated, and the Protestant Union emasculated, no sufficiently strong entity remained to defy the Habsburg powers, except by alliance with foreign interveners. Perhaps unwittingly, the chain reaction would pose an existential threat to Habsburg Imperium both in Europe and across the world, an uncontainable global pandemic of war. In support of James I’s daughter Elizabeth, Frederick’s wife, English troops would soon move into the Palatine to garrison key fortresses. Other potential interveners, Denmark, the Dutch, Sweden, Venice, Savoy and Transylvania, looked on with varying degrees of appetite.

Ferdinand II

Ferdinand II is something of an enigma in the story of the European war. His portrait shows a short and stocky man with ginger hair and the typical jutting jaw of the Habsburgs. He was educated by Jesuits, which determined his lifelong, passionate devotion to the Catholic faith and the aims of the CounterReformation. Enjoying an absolute confidence and belief in the righteous imposition of that faith in lands under his control, he was the poster child for the Jesuit policy of infiltration of the centres of power. This policy aimed at a Catholic renovation and crusade by all means, including coercion, to reestablish the Catholic Church in Protestant lands. The Jesuits were the ‘shock troops’ for the pope. Lamormaini, Jesuit confessor to the Emperor (1624–37) gloated, ‘great things can be expected from this emperor and perhaps even all Germany [may] be led back to the old faith, provided … [the pope and emperor together] take up the matter vigorously and see it through with persistence.’23 Like many monarchs in Europe at the time, Ferdinand took on the ideology of absolutism, which was a new political concept supported by Jesuit scholars and polemicists. The absolutist dogma dovetailed with Ferdinand’s political ambitions and Counter-Reformation zeal. Philip II’s funeral oration in 1598 included these words, ‘The eminent power that a king has derives from God and is communicated by him. Those who resist and rebel against the King resist God and break God’s established order. The king’s subjects have to obey their master who has the place of God upon this earth.’24 Supported by the Jesuits and armed with absolutist doctrines, Ferdinand II rarely doubted his ‘righteousness’ and infallibility. It was a poor substitute for good judgement and it would cost his ‘subjects’ dearly. His tendency to hubris in victory led him to great mistakes which gave succour to foreign interveners in Germany and turned loyalists into rebels. Ferdinand was the model Catholic devotee. The papal nuncio Caraffa wrote of him in 1628:

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  57 he normally drinks or sleeps little; … if it is a feast day, the emperor then takes holy communion, and hears a German sermon. This is usually given by a Jesuit and lasts an hour … spends the rest of the morning and often much of the afternoon in council meetings. When he is not doing this he goes hunting, of which he is much enamoured. Generally, he tends to have one day in council and the next for hunting.25 He, like the Calvinists, knew with certainty that he would go to Heaven, but just to make sure he wore a hair shirt and whipped himself in private. And during the siege of Vienna in his darkest hour, he is said to have received the blessings and aid of Christ himself, who looking down from the Cross spoke to him in Latin, ‘Ferdinande no te deseram’ (I shall not desert you.) A commemorative print was published with Ferdinand on the Mount of Olives, surrounded by sleeping noblemen.26 The belief in his own divinity through God made all his actions holy; he was after all the Holy Roman Emperor, temporal partner of the pope himself, and his consciousness of his special status detached him from the real suffering of ordinary mortals through the course of the Thirty Years War. Ferdinand made a conscious decision to re-establish intolerance, to upset the delicate balance in the Empire which he inherited. Armed with absolutist religious and political dogmas, he intended to fashion a strong political identity for the Hereditary Lands at least, and for the Empire if possible. He covered his moves with legal arguments, which however merited at times, never passed the test of proportionality. Bloody civil war and social chaos could be the only result of such ambitions. Pagés remarks on ‘His recklessness in undertaking to convert back to Catholicism a country in which there was no longer more than a handful of Catholics is staggering.’27 Ferdinand kept his distance from the dirty business of government. In the Habsburg style, he kept himself at one remove from the Royal Council or the Council for War, where policy memoranda were drawn up and discussed by the Royal Councillors, of whom Eggenberg was the most important. Other key councillors included Questenburg, Lord Harrach, Swarzenburg, Slawata, and Count von Trauttmansdorff. As a result of the Emperor’s lofty detachment, Ferdinand only met for short interviews on a few occasions with his great general, Wallenstein. Nor did he have regular meetings with his great ally in the war, Maximilian of Bavaria, although they were related by marriage and lived in capitals not far apart. He shirked taking direct responsibility for his decisions, often interposing his will by the Aulic Council or special committees of theologians. Living up to his nickname Katzenjammer (hammer of heretics), in Graz in 1600 he had organised the burning of 10,000 Protestant books, thereby establishing a sorry tradition in German politics. From 1598–1605, 11,000 Protestants were forced into exile and that was only the beginning for a man described by C.V. Wedgewood as ‘benevolent’. Protestant churches and schools were closed.

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58  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Astute at times, he understood well enough how to manipulate the traditional loyalty and greed of Lutheran stalwart John George of Saxony and other Lutheran princelings, to split the Protestant powers; he even compromised with the Calvinist Elector of Brandenburg, so splitting the Calvinist states. Never consistent, he could on occasions compromise with radical Protestantism; he did so in his Hungarian policies by the compromise of Sophron in 1622; a sensible policy, it helped secure stability on his southern border for most of the Thirty Years War. Adroit exploitation of conservatism and loyalty to the concept of Empire, which was still the prevailing political belief in both Catholic and Protestant states, was worth an army to the Imperialists. On one issue Ferdinand did not follow his cousins in Spain. There was no Inquisition as such (though witch hunting was rife) nor was there the xenophobia which characterised Spanish politics and society. Under Ferdinand there developed that polyglot multi-culturalism which would become the hallmark of Habsburg rule until its collapse in 1919. Apart from Germans and Austrians, many Italians, Bohemians and other races were accepted into the ranks of the nobility; the army for example was replete with Italian generals, counting four army commanders in the course of the Thirty Years War and many other senior officers. There is no clear understanding of his war aims but the facts are a useful guide; his policy horizons certainly expanded in tandem with military success in Germany. Led by religious ideology, he aimed at rebalancing the Empire system so that more power flowed directly to Vienna. Influenced by a famous tract Automania, published in 1586 by Reichshoftrat official Andreas Erstenberger, he agreed with its main tenets which were that the Catholics in Europe had been too accommodating to the Protestants. The accession of Ferdinand, even the threat of it, was likely to lead to war and revolution. Austrian evangelicals reported ‘Parrish churches violently taken … Churches pulled downe and blowne up with gunpowder … one hundred preaches and ministers commanded upon paine of death to depart the province of Stiria …  .’28 He reaped what he threatened. When it cut to the chase, Ferdinand’s main concern was the preservation and expansion of his core patrimony in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary-Croatia, though this was not obvious until the Habsburgs were facing military defeat in the 1640s. The essential prioritisation was made in 1624 when the chancery for the Habsburg hereditary lands was split off from the Empire’s chancery. However, he endangered both his patrimony and the Empire in 1627 at the Diet of Regensburg by seeking the titular bauble of King of the Romans for his son in return for sacrificing Wallenstein. There was little sustained moderation or wisdom in the man.

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  59

The Dutch economy, 1600–1648: military-industrial complex

The Habsburg Imperium was faced by the most formidable economic superpowers in the history of the world; in pitching themselves against the power of the Dutch Republic, the Habsburgs would need not to defeat the enemy on land but on sea, where the Dutch had a large numerical, logistical and productive advantage. Moreover, the Dutch, unlike the Spanish, could make war pay; war for them was in many senses self-financing and when government funds were needed, they were easily raised at low cost through the bond market. Writing in 1622, Thomas Mun, economist, member of Parliament, merchant and EIC director, said that the Dutch ‘serve and sell to other princes, ships, ordnance, cordage, corn, powder, shot and what not, which by their industrious trading they gather from all quarters of the world.’29 A small country with a population of about 1.6 million in mid-century, the Republic by the turn of the century had achieved staggering economic success and wealth. From their watery and defensible fastness of rivers and dykes the Dutch were forced to trade, to live, to buy food: this existential necessity combined with the confidence of the elect, drove the economy to become an aggressive and Imperialist capitalist state. In order to survive, the Dutch had to become a maritime power and internationalise. Amsterdam’s merchant community alone was about 1,500 strong by 1620, with many arriving from Antwerp who contributed to raising the amount of capital available for trade by 50 per cent.30 The Jewish community formed a considerable part of Dutch commercial success. Many New Christians emigrated from the Iberian Peninsula to avoid tax and the Inquisition; emigration perhaps accounted for up to 10 per cent of the Portuguese population through the sixteenth century where the Sephardic Jewish population had been as high as 20 per cent of the total.31 Many of them went to Amsterdam; others populated the burgeoning Portuguese Empire. International networks propagated international trade including trade from Brasil.32 Dutch commercial success in the seventeenth century lay in deeply rooted cultural factors, including freedom, toleration, fair regulation and justice systems for the resolving of commercial disputes; none other than the philosopher Spinoza, scion of a merchant family, put his finger on the basis for Dutch success: ‘For in this most flourishing state, and most splendid city,  His religion and sect is considered of no importance: for it has no effect before the judges in gaining or losing a cause.’33 A major cash earner, and the origin of the Republic’s primitive capital accumulation, was fishing in the North Sea, an activity which in 1630 still employed some 7,000 fishermen on 500 fishing vessels of 20–30 tons. Thousands more people were employed in the warehousing, processing, preserving and distribution business onshore. It was a primary source of protein for the populations of extensive maritime zones of Europe. Other fishing activities included whaling in Spitzbergen and cod fishing off Greenland and

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60  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Newfoundland. The Dutch carried 75 per cent of the total eastward trade in salted herring to the Baltic and returned with cargoes of salt. Primitive capital accumulation from this business fed the industrial and commercial take-off in the Dutch Republic. As the waterlogged soil was unsuitable for cereal farming, the rural economy focused on intensive horticultural production, hops, fruit and vegetables, livestock, husbandry and industrial crops like flax, hemp, and dyes.34 The rural population benefited from the urbanisation of the state, the first industrial economy, such that the producers of food could enjoy high prices and easy access on the waterways to take produce to market in the wealthy local towns and metropolis. In return farmers developed enough surpluses to afford fine manufactured goods from the cities. Inland waterways, especially the Rhine, but also the Weser, Elbe, Oder and Vistula, further extended the tendrils of the Dutch economy into middle Europe. The Dutch enjoyed the virtuous circle of economic development, benefitting from low transport costs for movement of products, the advantages of critical mass, and economic/producer clusters, an important ingredient in economic development according to Professor Ricardo Hausman of Harvard.35 The Dutch merchant fleet expanded by nearly ten times between 1500 and 1650, owning about 50 per cent of all European ships, three times more than the English by 1650. The Dutch developed and built new types of efficient cargo-carrying vessels, which were one third more efficient in crew-to-ton ratio than rival nations. The vessel called the fluyte became the first mass-produced ship design in history. The vessels of 200–400 tons of efficient standardised design had optimum cubic capacity with no armament, particularly suitable to the grain trade. However, at this time, cargo ships were capable of a dual function, and some vessels were heavily armed with twenty to forty guns and capable of easy conversion to carry still more cannon. All VOC ‘East Indiamen’ trading vessels were built to warship standards. Shipbuilding was standardised in design with many innovations in building techniques using wind-powered saw mills or cranes, to improve productivity. Producing ships which were 40–50 per cent cheaper than the nearest rivals36 was a great advantage in trade and in war. Holland’s shipbuilding industry was a massive enterprise located in many parts of the country. The Dutch controlled 75 per cent of the world’s oceangoing fleet. Replacement of this fleet along with the demands of extremely rapid trade growth implied construction of about 600–900 vessels per annum. Excellent ships meant faster voyages, lower maintenance and fewer casualties, so lower insurance; it meant competitive power which displaced other rivals. Along with the shipbuilding industry, ancillary industries and services grew enormously, including ship chandlery (a myriad of shipboard staples, sails, ropes, wire, dried foods, barrels, anchors, instruments, etc.), mapmaking, pilotage, and insurance. Even during the war the Spanish and Portuguese shipbuilding industries relied on Dutch chandlery.37

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  61 Exports from the Baltic increased from an annual average of 1,179 metric tons per annum to 7,747 metric tons between 1620–24 and 1645–49.38 The Dutch controlled up to 60–70 per cent of the Baltic carrying trade from 1578 to 1657. This trade, largely based on the Hanseatic cities of northern Germany, ducal Prussia and Poland, especially Danzig, was by far the largest trade flow in the world. The Dutch enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the carrying trade to Russia via Riga, Libau and Memel. Grain was shipped through these ports along with other major product lines such as hemp, flax, tar, copper, iron bars, and manufactured metal products from Sweden. The Dutch carried 60 per cent of cloth eastwards into the Baltic; on the westward route they carried nearly 80 per cent of wheat and rye. Other products exported by the Dutch were processed sugar, luxury goods, weapons and other manufactures. From a notary report of 5 July 1631, we know that a certain Michel de Spinoza had a warehouse in the Prinsengracht district of Amsterdam ‘in which miscellaneous merchandise was stored, such as sugar, brasil-wood [for dye] and candied ginger’.39 One Spinoza shipment, which came under dispute, was a consignment of forty barrels of raisins whose condition was said to be unsatisfactory. But in truth there was no trade or product which Amsterdam did not absolutely dominate, from French brandy controlled by the Sephardic nexus out of Nantes,40 to the 124,000 guilder per annum fur trade from New Amsterdam (Manhattan), the dried fruit and nut produce of north Africa, the saltpetre trade from India, or the cannon trade from Sweden. Sephardic Jewish merchants and Ashkenazi Jews emigrating from war-torn Germany boosted Amsterdam’s population. Jewish merchants traded in a worldwide nexus, being strong in brasilian sugar, african slaves, and in Asia. Their business transcended the war as they were working on both sides and lubricating trade between the belligerents, especially the Sephardics with their Iberian connections. The Republic was not merely an entrepôt and trading nation, but the first fully diversified industrial state. Fine products, household goods, linen and textiles were produced, or processed and finished. It became the centre of the diamond trade, and gem-cutting for the production of jewellery became an important business. Gems were imported from around the world, notably from Benjarmassin in Southern Borneo and from Burma. There was smelting and metal manufacturing, including extensive small-arms and munitions production, and other sophisticated manufacture. Food processing, which had begun with the herring industry, moved on to other sectors: by 1622 the Dutch food processing industry boasted twenty-two sugar refineries in 1630 which increased to forty by 1650.41 In the mid 1620s they were handling cargoes from nearly 250 vessels per annum from Brasil alone.42 Distilleries were big business as was ship-biscuit production. Soap and dyestuff manufacture founded the chemical industry. High-quality brass kitchen utensils, books, bricks, paper products, scientific instruments were all produced on an industrial scale. Just

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62  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 look at the wonderful still life elements in pictures by artists such as Vermeer to view the wealth and range of luxury objects. The printing industry and an associated book auction industry mushroomed as demand for books from the wealthy middle classes soared. Not only were religious tracts, bibles and books such as Calvin’s Institutes in high demand, but travel and adventure books based on true stories from mariners returning from Asia were especially popular.43 Printing, mainly based on Amsterdam, also catered for the huge demand for cartography/atlases and also for the printing of newspapers which took off after 1609, along with printing for business purposes: contracts and share certificates, bonds etc.44 Leiden was the centre for fine textiles and linens; imported cloth was made up into clothing or finished cloth because 47 per cent of the value added was in the dying process in which Dutch technology and expertise excelled.45 Leiden production of cloth increased from c. 50,000 pieces in 1600 to c. 100,000 pieces in 1648.46 The Dutch had a major share in the arms trade, for obvious reasons; it was a growth industry during the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War. The Dutch were arms producers themselves, and acted as an entrepôt for Swedish exports of finished arms, especially fine brass guns and raw materials for weapons, iron ore and copper, and for the arms produced in German cities. They supplied all sides with munitions, including the enemy. Recorded exports to the Royalist army in England alone between 1642 and the end of 1646 amounted to 74,580 firearms, 40,454 swords, 13,700 pike heads and 12,332 pieces of armour. In 1643 Queen Henrietta Maria arrived by ship from Holland with a cargo of thirty-two cannon, 10,000 firearms and seventy-eight barrels of gunpowder. Nearly half the cannon used at Edgehill (1642), the first battle of the Civil War, were recently imported from Holland. Amsterdam’s leading arms dealer Elias Trip imported 200–300 guns per year up to 1622. Enormously wealthy, the Trip family could afford to have their portraits painted by Rembrandt.47 Increasing demands of war and higher production from newly-opened Swedish forges under the control of his compatriot De Geer led to huge importation from the late 1620s. In just one consignment in 1627, de Geer supplied the Dutch army with 400 iron cannon48 and exported 1,182 cannon in 1630 with an advance payment of 223,000 guilders. Trade was organised by the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) which had been founded to consolidate individual eastern traders in 1602. This was a government-inspired merger which had a strategic military intention as well as a business purpose; an investment vehicle backed by government monopoly could efficiently manage the risks of long-term investment in lengthy, capital-intensive voyages, where each ship required 100,000 guilders of capital, four times the amount needed for the shorter Baltic trades or double that for Africa or the Caribbean.49 In the early days of Asian ventures prior to 1600, loss rates ran at 20 per cent. Capital surpluses from the rentier class, plus the need to diversify or cover risk,

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  63 led to the development of an international maritime insurance market. The Spinoza family were market participants, like a Lloyds’ member, and they were also beneficiaries of insurance payments.50 Not solely a capital market and an insurance exchange, Amsterdam was also the major international market for bank loans and traded debt. The Amsterdam Exchange Bank was established in 1609 and the Lending Bank in 1614. Letters of credit, and ‘acceptances’ (of Bills of exchange), the bedrock of modern finance, greased the operations of the first industrial society. Correspondent banking relationships and offsetting accounts across European financial centres enabled rapid growth in international trade by efficient and low-risk movement of money obviating the need for physical movement of specie by use of correspondent banking and offsetting balances. Demand for credit also required supply. Efficient, transparent and honest exchanges provided the mechanisms for an efficient exchange between borrowers and investors. The result was cheap, sustainable and timely finance for the Dutch military system at a cost of about 4 per cent, which was half the cost of Spanish debt and a quarter of the cost of French debt. The VOC made a significant impact on strengthening the Dutch economy by the start of their entry into the wider war. Cumulative trading capital surpluses from Asian enterprises amounted to nearly 6.5 million guilders by 1608, and this kick-started collateral lending against shares and investment via the mechanism known as primitive accumulation. Some investors arbitraged by raising shortterm debt and investing in high-yielding VOC shares. Heavy trading on the VOC ‘repo’ market51 helped reduce short-term money rates to 5.34 per cent in 1620, down from 8.14 per cent twenty-three years earlier;52 it helped to deepen and widen a market dominated by bills of exchange and negotiable IOU/private debentures. By the war’s end 60 per cent of government debt was provided by bearer bonds, the flexibility of which also provided another active component to the repo market for capital market deepening, to provide an alternative liquid vehicle for recycling savings into investment. Marxist economist Rosa Luxemburg postulated that ‘Militarism fulfils a quite definite function in the history of capital, … a decisive part in the first stages of European capitalism, in the period of the so called “primitive accumulation” as a means of conquering the New World and the spice-producing countries of India.’53 In fact the Dutch had already reached this stage thanks to surpluses generated by Baltic trade and herring fishing; the Imperial drive into high-risk and distant ventures was funded by an economy which was already mature and spinning off substantial surplus cash flows. In another innovation, both the VOC and WIC raised capital by floating their shares on a public stock exchange, which was actively traded with as much as 3 per cent of the stock turning over each month. There were 1,100 different Amsterdam investors in the VOC with about 55 per cent of capital being

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64  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 subscribed from Amsterdam and the balance from cities such as Middleburg in Zeeland and Hoorn. The new rentier class (the ‘Regent’) town councillors and rich merchants needed investments for their surplus cash and were happy to diversify their investments into these new and risky overseas adventures. Ancillary services such as accounting, law, notary and arbitration services grew alongside the development of modern capitalism. Michel de Spinoza used arbitration services to settle a family business/inheritance dispute in 1639 ‘in order to prevent a law suit, trouble and costs’.54 Merchants benefitted from the demands for food and armaments from the embattled powers in Europe and it is estimated that the Dutch population grew by some 300,000 through the war years as immigrants, many of them driven by the war in Germany, flocked in to find work. The Amsterdam population grew in the same period from 50,000 to 200,000.55 In 1621, the Dutch controlled 50–60 per cent of Brasil’s shipping. There were various means of maintaining their Spanish trade; obviously flag of convenience shipping was one method but a vital role was played by Nantes. Equidistant between Spain and Holland, the port acted as a transhipment centre between the Republic and Spain. Many émigré Sephardic ‘New Christians’, such as the Spinoza family, used Nantes as a halfway house on their journey to final exile in Amsterdam; these families also provided the trading and financial links to Iberia. The wealth of the Dutch was reflected in the army which was to build up to a regular force of 75,000 men, but capable of expansion for brief periods to 130,000. It was a model without precedent in the European war and presaged the future: a level of modernity not realised by other states until well into the next century and beyond, of soldiers enjoying regular pay, rations, barracks and state-sponsored medical care. Discipline was second to none, ‘exemplary’.56 For the soldier of a more rapacious or mercenary disposition, life in the Dutch army was too boring because there were too many restrictions and fewer opportunities for looting and rapine. As Grimmelshausen writes in Simplicius Simplicissimus: I … trotted off to join the Dutch. There I found I was paid more punctually but life in their army was too boring for my liking. Discipline was as strict as in a monastery and we were expected to live as chastely as nuns … it was time for me to leave the Dutch as well since I had raped a girl and it looked as if the fruit of my act was soon to see the light of day.57 The success of the revolt had given them confidence and self-belief. This is reflected in the corporate and group portraits done by the artists of the new Republic from 1600–1650, such as Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer. The style of the art is practical, modern, sometimes photographic; the portraits exude understated self-confidence and corporate pride; the landscapes give witness to a wealthy and prosperous rural economy, and the still lifes show off the rich

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Habsburg Domains, Ferdinand and the Defenestration of Prague  65 materialism of everyday life for the new middle classes; books, plate, glassware, furniture, pewter and silverware, linen, glass, pottery, wines and plentiful victuals. Sumptuous materials are counterpoised against the studied simplicity of the fine-patterned black-and-white lace garments of Calvinist purists. The Dutch enjoyed a standard of living far surpassing that of other European peasants. Indeed, they were farmers not peasants. Along with all this went a strong sense of civic society for which the 1642 painting The Night Watch by Rembrandt is symbolic.58 Good administration and the rule of law, civic duty, underpinned by Christian values were the mutually reinforcing virtues of this Republic. Unless a knockout military blow could be landed, how could the Habsburg Imperium expect to win a long war of attrition against Dutch economic might?

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Chapter III

The Thirty Years War: Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634 From Vienna to the White Mountain and the wars of the interveners

F

ar from being a walkover, the Bohemian directorate put up a very strong military effort in the two years following the defenestration of Prague on 23 May 1618. They reached the walls of Vienna in 1619 and won a number of battles against Spanish-army-officered Imperial forces. Although several battles were also lost, the directorate and their generals, Thurn, Zirotin and Hohenlohe, did more than hold their own. Several battles were won and the Imperial army chased back to the gates of Vienna; the Imperialists were swept out of Moravia. The only significant defeat was the destruction of Mansfeld’s corps on an advance from Pilsen at Zablat in June 1619. This defeat was caused by Mansfeld’s abiding habit of refusing to coalesce with his allies which meant that his little army was overrun by superior numbers, including Colonel Wallenstein’s regiment of ciurassiers. It was a failing that would be repeated many times. The actual tactical damage done was limited. Mansfeld managed to flee on horseback and scuttle back to Pilsen, but it did cause a collapse in Protestant morale in Germany, one of the factors behind the withdrawal of the Protestant Union from any thoughts of supporting Frederick; the latter was elected king by the rebel Bohemians, deposing the Emperor, an act widely regarded as illegal usurpation by Catholics and Protestants alike. Three main turning points decided the war and the fate of the Bohemian revolt. First Maximilian threw in his highly-trained army and joined it to the Imperial army; the Bohemians were thereafter heavily outnumbered. Secondly John George of Saxony, a Lutheran loyalist, who headed one of the most powerful princedoms, was induced to join the campaign against the Bohemian Federation. He invaded Lusatia, one of the four parts of the Bohemian Federation, which had been signed over to him as the price of his loyalty, and then proceeded to attack Silesia. Lastly, by the Treaty of Ulm, the Protestant Union deserted Fredrick and disbanded, allowing freedom of movement for Imperial, Bavarian and Spanish troops to attack the Palatine. With Spanish armies under Cordoba and Spinola moving against the Palatine from Luxembourg, and in the absence of any intervention from France or others, they were cowed into submission. Potential allies, Dutch and English, were too far away to make a difference,

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634 67 while Bethlen Gabor, the Transylvanian Calvinist Prince and Ottoman satrap, was a febrile and unreliable ally who twice withdrew from the conflict and was late in joining Frederick’s army in its hour of need as the main army retreated to Prague in the autumn of 1620. The price of Maximilian’s entry into the war had been the award of the Frederick Palatine Electorate to Maximilian, a prize long coveted by the Bavarian prince. He was also awarded control of the Upper Palatine and lien for the purpose of taxing the emperor’s own patrimony of upper Austria. Frederick was put under the ban of the Empire; all his territories and property were confiscated. Ferdinand, in dire trouble because of the Bohemian directorate’s success in resisting the Imperial army and threatening Vienna, had little choice but to accept Maximilian’s demands; however, the long-term political fallout was disastrous in its impact in alienating moderate opinion in the Empire. Ferdinand put Frederick ‘under our and the Holy Roman Emperor ban for having in the years immediately preceding, been the principal instigator and ringleader of the most disgraceful and dangerous rebellion, the like of which has never been seen … and thereby according to the law deprived him of his Electorate of the Palatine’ (Deed of enfeoffment from Emperor Ferdinand II 25 February 1623). Maximilian secured the Electorship Palatine. Ferdinand looked to soften the threat to all the princes of the Empire by ruling that the enfeoffment did not prejudice the rights of Frederick’s children. But the damage was done; nobody believed that Maximilian would give up his Electorship or the Upper Palatine. Ferdinand’s use of properties expropriated under the ban of Empire, a trick he would repeat to pay back debt owed to Wallenstein, was to have dire long-term effects. The knock-on effect was to cause intractable political problems by creating a store of bitterness on which interveners could freely draw. Once the Bavarian and Imperial forces were joined, Maximillian and Tilly developed a clear objective and timetable. They were confident of defeating the enemy once their main field army could be pinned down; they would do this by aiming directly for Prague, so forcing the Bohemians to a decisive battle which would result in the subjugation of the Bohemian-Moravian revolt and total victory. Mansfeld’s force locked up in Pilsen could be dealt with afterwards. Maximilian’s strategy was fast and overwhelming victory at minimum cost. At the battle of the White Mountain in 8 December 1620, just a few miles from the gates of Prague, the Bohemian army was swept off the battlefield in one hour of hard fighting. Spanish-trained tercios of the Imperial-Bavarian army advanced up a very steep incline against a partially entrenched Protestant army under a fractured and amateurish command with the king absent from the battlefield. The redoubts which should have been a good protection for the army were unfinished for want of spades: ‘The spades I had brought to the camp at my own expense had been damaged so much at Rackonitz,’ lamented Anhalt later, ‘that we only had 400 usable ones left. This meant we had to fetch some

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68  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Battle of White Mountain 8th December 1620 De

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1 Bohemian army occupy last position

Star Palace

before Prague after night march retreat on 7th.

2 Ineffectual cannon fire opens battle 8th

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Dec 11 a.m.

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3 Imperialist veteran tercio advance in the late morning 12 a.m.

4 Leaving incompleted redoubts Bohemians

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enemy; just 1 hour.

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Bohemian army flees to Prague 1.30 p.m.

7 Frederick’s elite lifeguard destroyed at Star Palace 2 p.m.

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Semi-finished redoubts

Imperialists Bavarian Spain Cavalry Tercio-Infantry Bohemian Protestant Cavalry Infantry

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from Prague, but this took so long that our entrenchment was hindered and remained far from perfect … .’1 A week earlier, good digging and fieldworks had persuaded the Imperial army not to attack at Rakonitz, but the lesson was not learned; despite weeks available for preparation nothing had been set in hand for defence, either on the field of battle or in the city. Cannon were few and the 10,000 Hungarian light cavalry, sent from Transylvania by Prince Bethlen Gabor, were not trained to stand in battle; they fled before the experienced Imperial cuirassiers. Naive and ill-disciplined, the Bohemian army which had acquitted itself well in the previous three years under solo commands, melted away like wet snow. The mere sight of these orderly tercios ascending the steep incline was enough to panic many of the green Protestant troops, because, recounted Anhalt, ‘as soon as the enemy arrived about 300 or 400 paces from Count Thurn’s infantry, our soldiers started to shoot without order or sense and even against express orders, shot in the air and immediately started to flee, seemingly in the grip of fear … .’ General Bucquoy, the Imperial commander who had the main direction of the attack had ordered an oblique flank attack. It rolled up the Bohemian army from left to right, detonating a ripple of panic along the lines. Some units fought hard but their efforts were piecemeal and overwhelmed by greater numbers. It was a rabble that fled for the protection of the city. From the mob of soldiers, Anhalt ‘could only recover six of them who agreed to defend the city walls’.2 Elizabeth and her husband, now to be dubbed the Winter King, fled the city. At one stroke, the Habsburg Imperium in Europe and the Counter-Reformation had taken a great bound forward after decades of retreat.

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634 69 Prague had not been prepared for defence, so with the capture of the capital the defeat of the Bohemian revolt seemed doomed. Most of the rebel provinces including Silesia and Moravia were soon overrun. However, the result was not as decisive as it appeared. Maximilian would suffer the very thing he had hoped to avoid by his overwhelming attack and achievement of a decisive battle. Gabor continued fighting and embers of resistance continued in Silesia and eastern Moravia, near to the Carpathian Mountains. At Pilsen mercenary Count Mansfeld did not surrender. Instead, induced by payments from the Dutch and others, he took his small army on an odyssey across Germany, crossed the Rhine and began to feast on the lush green land of Alsace, surviving on exactions from towns and cities, as well as the occasional subsidy from sympathetic Protestant states. In the Rhineland Spanish armies were able to take over most of the Palatine but English and Scottish soldiers under Sir Henry de Vere still occupied the three key fortresses. What had seemed like a perfect ‘knock-out’ victory now began to spread out. Military strategist Lawrence Freedman writes in his recent book ‘future war’, ‘If the enemy proves resilient then over time non-military factors would become progressively more important … few states knowingly entered into an attritional long war, yet that was often what they got, and they suffered as a result.’ 3 Furthermore, the ferocious counter–reformation actions in Bohemia were unwise. After the comprehensive Protestant defeat at the battle of the White Mountain in November 1620, eighteen leading protestant citizens, including many members of the Czech intelligentsia, were horribly executed in Prague. There followed a pogrom and mass property confiscations which enriched a ring of Bohemian noblemen who had also pulled off a major currency debasement scam. Utraquist, Lutheran and Calvinist groupings were persecuted, their churches closed or handed over to Catholics; Jesuits took over the entire educational establishment, the universities and the printing industry. Several hundred thousand Bohemian refugees fled from Bohemia to other parts. Low-level war and resistance would continue in Silesia and Eastern Moravia for several years. Spanish General Count Bucquoy, a hero of the White Mountain, would be killed during a minor siege on the Hungarian border with Transylvania. Meanwhile, the Imperial army suffered a number of reverses against Gabor’s army which on one occasion came within an ace of forcing the surrender of an entire Imperial army on the plains of western Hungary. Only Wallenstein’s calm resolve and Bethlen Gabor’s lack of artillery saved them. They were saved by the free-spirited Transylvanian cavalry’s dislike of siege work; ‘avoid dealing with the Germans, for with time they burrow in trenches, and it takes great effort to get him out of there,’ advised Gabor.4 Despite these reverses, all the princes and states of Germany were put on notice of the depredations in Bohemia and the Palatine and the calamitous effect of the ban of Empire on Frederick V, the ‘pathetic winter King’. Other princes were cowed; Ferdinand might extend his power and pick them off one

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70  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 by one. If for no other reason but fear some other states and princes of the Empire would be tempted to fight before it was too late. The shock waves from this clash at White Mountain would reverberate for several decades and could not be contained within a short war or ‘police’ action against a rebellion. Unintended consequences from Ferdinand’s dealings could not be contained, so the war exploded across the continent and drew in other nascent conflicts in the Low Countries, the Baltic, in Italy, in the Swiss Alps, the Rhineland and on the Hungarian frontier. The balance of power had been shattered and interveners were drawn in, both to restore that balance and seize opportunities amidst the chaos. Saxony and Maximilian of Bavaria were just the first two to pick at the German carcass; others would follow. What had started as a localised revolt turned into a multi-polar war; it was indeed to a large extent what Oñate, Zúñiga and Olivares had hoped for. If Habsburg dominion could be extended and re-imposed on all of Germany, if the Counter-Reformation could take back the entire Empire, then not only would Spanish communications to Flanders be protected but the Dutch could be threatened on their vulnerable eastern flank and politically isolated. Olivares’ strategy was vast in concept; he understood the broad geo-political economic issues: trade and economy were both the strength of the Dutch and their Achilles heel; hence the build-up of naval units and privateers in Dunkirk to prey on Dutch merchant shipping and the fishing fleets of the North Sea. Olivares’ eventual goal was to conquer the German Baltic ports and close down the source of Dutch wealth in the Baltic. However, even in 1624 after the defeat of Mansfeld, this still seemed like a distant dream; it was after all important not to antagonise moderate Lutheran states such as the Electorates of Saxony and Brandenburg. The danger for Ferdinand as for Maximilian was knowing when to stop; Ferdinand was not really in control of his main army which was commanded by Tilly and the Bavarians. As the war expanded so did the horizons of the victors; mean and penny-pinching Maximilian was increasingly conscious of the cost overruns as a war that had been anticipated as a one-campaign effort extended into its fourth year. Naturally he would start to look for recompense and his sight soon alighted on the lower Palatine, the wealthy part of Frederick’s patrimony which had not yet been distributed. Maximilian was becoming increasingly fearful of the expansion of Spanish power on the Rhine which in the end might threaten him. In his way, he was as fearful of Habsburg dominion as the Protestant princes; this angst would by degrees lead him into discussion with the French. From an early date, Richelieu saw the detachment of Bavaria as an essential block on Habsburg power; it remained France’s key war aim till the end, second only to the destruction of the Habsburg alliance and Imperium. War began to spread in what might be called ‘the time of the Paladins’. Other individuals came forward to raise the flag of Protestant rebellion, as Bavarian, Spanish and Imperial troops started to chase down Mansfeld’s army.

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634 71 They included the Duke of Württemberg, Christian of Brunswick, the SaxeWeimar clan from Thuringia, the Duke of Baden-Durlach and Christian of Halberstadt. Often known as the ‘mad Halberstadter’, he wore, in the tradition of champions and courtly love, a white glove token of Elizabeth of Bohemia in his hatband. Paladin motives were mixed and assorted; they included adventurism and opportunism, fear of Catholic advances and Ferdinand’s intentions, general disgruntlement or unfavourable decisions from the Riechskammergericht’s (Imperial Court). Legal decisions over an inheritance had for example embittered the Saxe-Weimar clan. From the fractured polity of the Empire enough malcontents emerged to fan the embers of revolt and recruit Czech emigres. Mansfeld and the Paladins were defeated one by one. However, at Weisloch on 27 April 1622, Mansfeld won a fluke victory where the Bavarian army was caught by a sharp counter-attack as they advanced. It gave Europe and Frederick a briefly trumpeted triumph. Mansfeld survived a series of Imperial victories and his hungry retreating army gained a dire reputation for pillage, looting and all the general brigandage that surrounded a Thirty Years War army. Mansfeld had little strategy except to ‘exist’; the battle losses were in at least two cases the result of his refusing to combine his forces with his ‘allies’, which meant that they were repeatedly trapped and overwhelmed by large numbers. His nominal employer Frederick V had minimal influence on Mansfeld; eventually the ‘Winter King’ simply withdrew recognition for Mansfeld and abandoned the rabble. Trapped by a Spanish army under Duke Feria as he retreated to the safety of the Dutch Republic, Mansfeld was able, at some cost, to force his way through at the battle of Fleurus. The Dutch saw his arrival as a boon as they sought to lift Spinola’s 1622 siege of Bergen-op-Zoom; his troops were attached to the Dutch army. Bergen-op-Zoom, a strategic place on the Scheldt, the loss of which threatened Zeeland and the unblocking of Antwerp, was duly saved but not thanks to Mansfeld. Plague and hunger ruined Spinola’s army, which was diminished by over 20,000; the defenders who were supplied by water suffered little by comparison: the Dutch navy were able to bombard the Spanish siegeworks. As usual, many of the defenders in the Dutch army were Scots mercenaries, including the commander, Henderson, who died heroically in a sally, for he stood all the fight in as great danger as any common soldier, still encouraging, directing, and acting with his pike in his hand. At length he was shot in the thigh: he received his wound at the front, or, as most say, being over earnest he stepped into his enemy’s trenches.5 Mansfeld was feted in London in 1624 as the Protestant champion; promised men and money, he returned for another campaign. He emerged from the Dutch Republic, having overstayed his welcome, once more to undertake a joint campaign with Christian of Brunswick. Tilly’s Bavarian army attacked,

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72  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 overrunning rearguards meant to protect Mansfeld’s retreating columns. The army was utterly destroyed at Stadtlohn in 1623; just a few cavalry remnants crossed the nearby border into the Dutch Republic. Frederick’s capital at Heidelburg had already been captured by Tilly’s army in September 1622, where its commander, Sir Gerard Herbert, was killed in defending the breach; the fortress of Mannheim defended by Sir Horace de Vere was captured a year later after being stormed by Cordoba’s Spanish army. Frederick V’s famous library at Heidelberg was shipped to the Vatican and the elegant palace despoiled. It was the first major cultural theft of the war, but not the last. The English voluntarily surrendered the strong fortress of Frankenthal in 1624, James I vainly hoping to secure Spanish diplomatic help to end the war and restore Frederick to his Electorate. Direct English intervention was at an end, though mercenary elements of Scots and English continued to play a major part in the defence of the Dutch Republic and later became a key element in Danish and Swedish forces. English intervention had been ineffectual; delivered in penny packets, the logistical tail and level of experience was never enough to sustain a full field army. Nor was there the political will for James I to do anything more than make a show of protecting the patrimony of his son in law. James was trying to balance all the parties and move towards a Spanish alliance as an attempt to parlay this into Spanish influence on Vienna to restore the Palatine; talk of a Spanish match with the Infante led to the diplomatic outrage and quixotic ‘secret’ visit of Charles I and Buckingham to Madrid. Misreading Olivares influence or willingness to negotiate with Vienna about the Palatine, the duo were humiliated by Olivares and bored, they returned to England nine months later. War with Spain soon followed. Charles would marry Henrietta Maria of France instead. England had feted Count Mansfeld when he turned up in London in 1623, and the mercurial mercenary had secured funding for an army of 12,000 men gathered at Dover. Ending up in the Rhine Delta over the winter 1624–1625, 12,000 Englishmen dwindled to just 600 within nine months, having achieved nothing. One officer complained, ‘We die like dogs and in the face of the enemy we could not suffer as we do now.’6 Just as Mansfeld’s army was being destroyed, Cardinal Richelieu was emerging as the chief minister in Louis XIII’s government; sensing the danger to France of the growing Habsburg power in Germany following their string of victories, he began to draw closer to the ‘Dutch Republic’. However, with the Dutch on the defensive, an active new intervener was now needed if the Protestant party in Germany was not to be crushed by the Imperium. Promised subsidies by the Dutch, the English and the French under a pact agreed in The Hague in 1624, Christian IV of Denmark decided to intervene in the war. In the event, subsidies were paid late, if at all. However, the main source of funds was Christian’s own cash stockpile of 10m Reichsthaler collected from

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634 73 the sound tolls. He started to muster troops in the Lower Saxon circle, taking in soldiers from the defeated Protestant armies. Such officer recruits included the inevitable Count Mansfeld, the Saxe-Weimars and many others. Christian’s aim was both military and political. With his primary army he would strike south from Lower Saxony and raise the flag of Protestant revolt in territories already aflame with anger and fear at the ravages and exactions committed by Tilly’s army.

Wallenstein

With a major intervention threatening, the Emperor had received an astonishing offer of an army of 50,000 in the spring of 1625. The ‘offer’ would be one of the pivotal points of the war. From nothing, Austria would suddenly gain one of the great professional armies of the war. It was a proposition which put Maximilian in his place and changed the course of the war, introducing to the world stage one the most remarkable human phenomena of the seventeenth century. Wallenstein’s story was a drama that was made for the theatre. Schiller would write the play 200 years later: his meisterwerk. Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, was a Czech. Born in 1583 into a minor branch of one of the great Czech families, ‘Waldenstein’ as he was called, was soon parentless. His guardians saw to his education well, and he was sent away at the age of 13 to a school for classical education in Silesia, not a great distance from his home in north-eastern Bohemia. At university in Nuremberg he led a rowdy and dissolute life. Raised as a Czech speaker his education was in German. Wallenstein had a chip on his shoulder. Well connected in Imperial circles, he was nonetheless a poor relation with a small inheritance and a mediocre estate at Hermanitz. He was an unloved orphan, which led to a prickly exaggeration of his superiority, and a tendency to bully the weak became natural expressions of his deep-seated insecurity. He rushed restlessly from one great project to another with frenetic energy and massive intelligence. But he always moved on, projects half finished, in his quest for happiness, for peace with his tortured, lonely soul which was unassuaged even by the fortune tellers he hired. By 1625 he had become Military Governor of Prague and Duke of Friedland. 1626 saw him as commander of the entire Imperial army of 50,000 men increasing to 131,000 in 1627; by 1628 he was a fabulously rich prince of the Empire having been additionally granted by the Emperor the duchies of Sagan and Mecklenburg. Heads of state and the chief ministers of Europe corresponded with him directly. How did this minor aristocrat achieve all this? An enigma to many historians, it was a mystery at the time and accounts for the dark and occult rumours. Like the Count of Monte Christo, he attracted curiosity, admiration, jealousy and fear. In search of a fortune, Wallenstein set about the systematic exploitation of his excellent connections. His first and most important lucky break came through

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74  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 his sister’s marriage to the enormously wealthy and influential Moravian aristocrat, the much older Lord Zuerotin in 1604. With Zeurotin’s influence Wallenstein first became a chamberlain at the Imperial court, a minor and undemanding post. His patron, who sent letters to the Emperor expressing his protégé’s desperate interest in a military career, lobbied on his behalf for a military position in the Netherlands in the service of the Habsburgs. What is clear from the foregoing is that contrary to countless histories, Wallenstein was no parvenu, freebooter, mercenary, or condottiere. Wallenstein was, from the first, a nobleman from a respected family and a loyal servant of the Emperor: his cousin Slawata was an important Imperial minister. He may have been from a minor branch of the Waldenstein family, but it was a name that carried much weight and honour in Imperial circles. However, from the start Wallenstein disliked the atmosphere and manners of the court. Spending as little time there as possible, he sought power not as a courtier on the inside but as a wealthy landowner and soldier from the outside. The remarkable point about Wallenstein’s political ascendancy was that it barely involved any contact with the Emperor in person. His rise was mediated almost entirely through his family and supporters at court such as Imperial Treasurer Lord Harrach, his second wife’s father. Untypical, it would prove to be a fatal flaw in the relationship with the state. At the age of 23 he made his big bet. Brought up in the Utraquist Bohemian brotherhood and with his patron in the Moravian brotherhood, he took the risk of converting to Catholicism in 1607. Luckily for Wallenstein, his relations with Zeurotin were not ruined; and Ferdinand was the coming man destined for the Imperial throne and an aggressive leader of the Counter-Reformation. Attending at court in Vienna, he received information from a Jesuit friend about an extremely wealthy widow in Moravia. Wallenstein dropped everything. He was soon married in May 1609 and controlling a fortune of 600,000 Reichsthaler. It was wealth that enabled him to play his next big gambit for Imperial favour. His chance arrived in the course of the next Imperial border war with Venice, over the Uskock piracy problem in the Adriatic. The Venetians, driven to distraction by Uskock piracy from Habsburg lands, attacked the Imperial border fortress of Gradisca with an army of mercenaries in the summer of 1617. The siege had lasted, and attempted relief was going badly. At this juncture Wallenstein volunteered his services, paying for the provision of 180 cuirassiers and eighty musketeers; arriving in camp with his immaculately presented and finely accoutured regiment, he soon showed that they were more than just pretty soldiers. On 13 July he led the van in attacking enemy lines, holding a breach long enough for supply wagons to get through to the defenders. He repeated the feat on the 22nd. Using his initiative, Wallenstein took a grip on Moravia following the defenestration of Prague in 1618; he raised a regiment of cavalry. Fleeing the territory before the Bohemian army of Thurn, Wallenstein captured the

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634  75 province’s treasury at Olmutz and transferred it to Vienna. When a senior cavalry officer’s loyalties began to wobble, Wallenstein showed his cold-blooded ruthlessness by personally running him through with his sword in front of the entire regiment. A common nostrum in the study of Wallenstein is the tag of ‘mercenary’ which is repeated ad infinitum. For example, in acclaimed, academic prizewinning works such as War in Human Civilization, Azar Gat, Professor of National Security at Tel Aviv University, writes, ‘Albrecht von Wallenstein, the most successful condottiere …’ whereas Wallenstein’s personal interests and connections were thoroughly integrated at every level with Habsburg Austria. Despite the lack of friendship, Wallenstein does seem to have had some happiness, enjoying a tender and loving relationship with his second wife, the daughter of Lord Harrach. This late onset of tenderness in Wallenstein’s life is remarkable. I thank you a thousand times that you were glad to have me with you, and that without me you are weary … . I heartily wish that your affaires could soon be concluded and I could be so happy as to see you with me … .7 It was perhaps the first time that he had enjoyed domestic peace and harmony. It was a happiness that came to him late in life and it may partly account for his increasing longing for peace, his loss of appetite for battle and oft-repeated threats to resign. Towards the end, he was simply trying to escape the quagmire of war and move towards a settlement that would confirm him in his possessions. Wallenstein lacked the common touch. He was aloof and arrogant in manner. He found the intrigues of courtiers, the labyrinth, contemptible. His personal meetings with the Emperor were short and very rare. However, he corresponded copiously with key members of the war council such as Harrach or Eggenburg and with others close to the fickle Emperor, such as Lamormaini, the Emperor’s confessor. Highly educated but an emotional man, Lamormaini’s detestation of Protestants of all stripes was fanatical. He led the ultra faction in the Royal Council and successfully defeated the ‘political’ moderates by influencing the Emperor’s Counter-Reformation crusade which was launched through the Edict of Restitution of 1629. His incantations of glee at Protestant defeats, and attributions of miraculousness were the ramblings of a hysteric, which were not unusual in a time when both sides of the religious divide would attribute outcomes to divine intervention. However, when Wallenstein was needed to restore the situation after the trouncing at Breitenfeld in 1631, Lamormaini pleaded for him to return. He wrote a grovelling, dissembling and unctuous letter excusing his former support for Wallenstein’s dismissal:

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76  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 I hear that evil things have been whispered to your highness about me. I neither ask nor do I concern myself about that. I am a man of the Holy Church whom it behoves to attend more to the voice of God than the chatter of mankind … in July and August when the state of affairs was otherwise, totally different from now, I was of the opinion that it was inadvisable to burden your highness again with this office. What sensible person can make of this a reproach to me? Many Jesuits were trained in politics and scheming; others were great teachers, writers, or scientists, or became experts in gunnery and gun-making such as Adam Schall in Macau. The Jesuits there even parlayed their expertise in cannon making and other technological knowhow for political and religious privileges from the Ming regime which was under pressure from Manchu invaders; the strength of the Catholic Church in China today is based on their efforts. Others still were dedicated Christian missionaries in Asia, led by the shining example of Saint Xavier. Another trait of Wallenstein was a workaholic appetite for control and for detail. For example he wrote to Taxis, his estates’ manager, ‘Have a keen eye in all ends and places of our duchy, that beer is not overcharged, also that bread and other victuals and all things else that man cannot forgo in his undertakings are brought and kept to a cheap rate.’8 Nothing escaped his eye, whether it was the installation of more furnaces at the forge in Schwerin and the integration of its cannon-ball production into his supply system, or instructions to Taxis about planting lime trees, or his detailed orders to de Witte in Amsterdam for damasks, tapestries, carpets and furniture. Troopers were issued with hand mills for grinding corn, or charcoal to make gunpowder. Making a detailed scrutiny of the accounts for all his enterprises from beer production to arms manufacture, gunpowder production and so on, he also supervised the detailed plans for the renovation of his palaces, the construction of monasteries or the establishment of educational institutions. Wallenstein ran it all by copious letter writing to his agents and suppliers. His estates and enterprises produced huge revenues, yielding some 1.8 million Reichsthaler per annum. He was also a pragmatist, never a Catholic zealot, despite his early links to the Jesuits. Always travelling with a large team of secretaries and bookkeepers to tally the sums owed by the Emperor, he was the very model of a modern major mogul. The extent of his orthodox loyalty to the Emperor, as opposed to the freebooter image of modern myth, is displayed by the magnificent baroque palace which Wallenstein built in Prague, jostling for position amongst the palaces of his aristocratic peers. Erected on the base of a palace purchased from the Tricka family, no expense was spared in exhibiting Wallenstein’s wealth or his modern, sumptuously appointed tastes. It is located beneath Hradčany Palace which sits high on the cliff above Prague’s Little Quarter. Certainly the finest of all the palaces belonging to the elite, though it lacks the views of

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634  77 the Lobkowiz palace high up in the old quarter, it boasted a very large Italian garden, extensive stables, and an ornately decorated grand salon or assembly room which is now the home of the Czech senate, one of the finest assembly halls in Europe. The ceiling is decorated with reliefs of weapon clusters; themes are overwhelmingly martial, including the fresco allegory, by Baccio del Bianco, of Wallenstein riding through the clouds supported by an angel, on a war chariot pulled by four horses, testament perhaps to a vaulting ego. It was not untypical of the period, except that the convention of three horses pulling Mars’s chariot is broken: Wallenstein’s chariot is pulled by four horses which in mythology is the privilege of the Sun God. Ironically, he would indeed fly too close to the sun. His earthbound presence was too distant from the Emperor’s court.

Wallenstein and war finance

Even in 1619 Count Gondomar remarked in correspondence to the King that ‘warfare today is not a question of brute strength, as if men were bulls, nor even of battles, but rather of winning and losing friends and trade, and this is a question to which all good governments would address themselves.’9 War was about economic strength and logistics. With the cost of a regiment at 450,00010 gulden per annum (about 350,000 Reichsthaler) Wallenstein was clearly not offering to fund it all himself; even his fabulous wealth would not be enough for that, but he could make outlays for the start-up costs, including the commissioning of many colonels who raised regiments with their own capital and at their own risk for the provision of equipment, food, horses, clothing and signing-on bonuses. Food and clothing would be deducted from soldiers’ pay. Thereafter the army would depend on ‘contributions’ made by territories under conquest or control and cash provided by the state through regular income, taxes and customs duties. War was extremely costly. In four years of war, Christian IV had spent 8.2 million Reichsthaler by 1629.11 A standard 20,000-man field army cost about 3 million Reichsthaler per annum. Wallenstein would eventually raise an army of about 150,000, the Swedes similarly. Costs for the Swedish army in 1630–34 were 38 million Reichsthaler. At Heilbronn, estimates put forward by Sweden suggested a cost per annum for the Swedish field army of 8.5–9.5 million florins per year.12 In reality, Wallenstein was offering his organisational skills and his business genius. Nevertheless, the illusion seemed to have persisted in some malign quarters that Wallenstein was offering to pay all by himself from his fabulous wealth. One of his supporters at court Lord Harrach, his father-in-law, defended him in this, ‘He [Wallenstein] complains of the court’s belief that he should and can conduct the whole war out of his pocket, says he never promised more than to set up the army and bring it into position … .’13 Wallenstein used a combination of borrowing in Amsterdam through his banker, de Witte, and the levying of ‘contributions’ to finance the war. Against payment, he supplied much of the army’s food and equipment from his own

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78  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 estates and factory or workshop enterprises in the duchy of Friedland, which were geographically well placed, adjacent to the Elbe river. Supplies could be shipped by barge from the riverine port of Aussig, as he advanced his army along the line of the Elbe towards the borders of the Lower Saxon Circle. Uniquely, Wallenstein was not just a contracting entrepreneur general but a major contractor to his own enterprise. This complex undertaking required accurate accounts of sums owed; in due course his credits to the Emperor would be offset by rent-earning conquests and grants of territory. It was a speculative and highly-geared military-industrial enterprise, geared financially and politically. Wallenstein’s credit with suppliers and bankers such as de Witte and the syndicates in Amsterdam depended on the assumption that his credit was sovereign-backed, i.e. by the Emperor. There was, however, one problem with the Salva Guardia system. A higher rate of contribution could be obtained by promising not to quarter the army in a town or city. There was little point in paying for protection if it meant letting the fox into the hen coop. But that would worsen conditions for the common soldiery, who had to sleep in the open. Monro complained of the greed for money contributions whereby ‘souldiers were usually commanded to lie in the fields, and not suffered to quarter in the townes, which they had taken for feare to hinder the payment of moneys imposed on them…avarice has been the losse of many armies’.14 There was therefore a difficult trade off between contented soldiery with lower rates of attrition by desertion or sickness, and the requirement to raise funding for supplying the army. However inadequate, the army was also funded by increased taxation from the Habsburg hereditary lands with the Emperor providing 4 million florins from 1625–30, and Spanish subsidies of 3 million florins were paid directly to Wallenstein’s army. Wallenstein was never strictly speaking a ‘general contractor’ independent of the financial support of his master, the emperor even if his army may have approached fiscal and administrative independence at a few points during his first generalship.15 Wallenstein provided loans of nearly 7 million florins by 1628, some from his personal revenues, some by payment in kind, and still more provided by the loans raised on his credit by de Witte, the Flemish Calvinist banker.16

The grudging acceptance of the offer, 17 April 1626

When the Emperor sought to raise his own army and reduce his dependence on Maximilian he was thinking in terms of 20,000 men. The offer of 50,000 took the Emperor and his counsellors by surprise. The fusty, jealous and second-rate advisers around the Emperor temporised and haggled over the ‘free’ offer. Wallenstein refused a suggestion that only 12,000 should be raised. He rightly understood that the numbers required for decisive victory would need

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634  79 to be much larger. While the politicking continued in Vienna, the enemy grew stronger and Wallenstein pressed his political contacts, notably Lord Harrach, so that his Majesty temporise no longer over the recruiting, while the foe by no means dallies but daily assembles more men … . I have made the offer myself to serve his Majesty and this I will most loyally carry out. But if I see that time is wilfully thrown away, and that it is only intended to begin the enrolment hereafter when the enemy is at our throats, then I will enter no such labyrinth wherein my honour must be sacrificed.17 (June 1625 letter to Harrach. Emphasis added, highlighting the code word for political infighting at court.) His words were merely truthful, but such rants in correspondence often found their way to the Emperor. Eventually, under the pressure of events the Emperor appointed Wallenstein ‘as capo over all his troops currently in the Holy Roman empire.’18 Six weeks later, as if to hide the decision from his jealous and prickly brother-in-law, who would have noticed that the appointment was contrary to the agreement he had signed with the Emperor, Wallenstein was confirmed as ‘Independent general over this our expedition despatched into the Holy Roman Empire’.19 Wallenstein’s army quickly came into being with his own and Imperial cash injections to get it off the ground; under the practical reality of the threat Battle of Dessau

24th April 1626

2 Elbe River

1 Wallenstein secretly reinforces

5

bridgehead 24th-26th April.

2 Wallenstein positions cavalry

unobserved behind a large wood.

3 Mansfeld’s outnumbered army attacks sfeld

Dessau bridgehead.

4 Wallenstein forces counter-attack.

Man

4

5 Surprise attacks on flank and rear of Mansfeld’s army.

6 Mansfeld’s cavalry escapes down the

3

Elbe.

Note: Wallenstein’s counter-punch

1

tactics revealed in his first battle as

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80  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 to the Empire, the figure of 20,000 was soon set aside. Efficient and wellsupplied, his army soon defeated Mansfeld’s isolated command at Dessau Bridge. Wallenstein’s army also gave the emperor political independence from Maximilian of Bavaria on whom he had been reliant. Chastened by being defeated yet again by his maverick insistence on an independent command, Mansfeld’s defeated army joined with another Danishbacked army commanded by Duke William of Saxe-Weimar on the line of the Elbe. Meanwhile Christian IV’s army marched down the line of the Weser to confront Tilly’s Bavarian army coming up from the Rhineland. Both sides stopped to capture key towns as they progressed. On 27 August 1626 the armies met in full battle array at Lutter where Christian, who had been retreating in the face of superior numbers, had been forced to turn and stand after his rearguard had been overrun. His army faced Tilly’s experienced veterans, plus 6,000 cuirassier cavalry sent by Wallenstein. It was virtually annihilated; only a few thousand cavalry escaped. Snarled up in a forest logjam on a narrow track the retreating Danish baggage train was taken wholesale. Meanwhile, in a continuation of the starburst strategy aimed at attracting support and undermining the Emperor’s hold on his newly conquered Bohemian federation, Mansfeld and the Duke of Saxe-Weimar (the elder) slipped round Wallenstein’s flank and advanced rapidly down the line of the Elbe into Silesia. Battle of Lutter 27th August 1625 N

1

5

E

W

Lutter

S

8

3 2 4

1

As the battle starts Christian IV dealing with

2

Green Danish army crosses the stream to

3

Christian IV arrives at the battle 1.30 p.m.

4

Tercios advance smash the enemy 2 p.m.

5

Wide cavalry flank attack to cut off Danish

6

Imperialist cavalry advance to engage Danish

7

Imperialist-Bavarian cavalry flank attack 3 p.m.

8

Christain leads cavalry to hold open road for

baggage train snarl up 10-12 p.m. attack 12 p.m.

retreat 3 p.m.

cavalry 3 p.m.

retreat 4 p.m.

River

6 7

1klm

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634  81 The intention was to rouse rebellion and raise supplies and money in this territory, so threatening Bohemia on its eastern side; a further aim was once again to link up with Bethlen Gabor who erupted from the Transylvania with a horde of hussars. Town after town was taken in this sweeping movement; each one was garrisoned. Mansfeld then suggested dividing the armies for a purpose unknown, although his penchant for independent marauding was well known. Strategically outflanked, Wallenstein’s army chased back after the advancing Danish armies. Mansfeld’s undisciplined army weakened as it advanced and was reduced to remnants by the time it had crossed the lower Carpathians and linked up with Gabor. Saxe-Weimar’s army came to rest on the west side of the Elbe river; the steam went out of this army too upon the sudden death of the old duke. The sum of their achievements was weak garrisons left in a string of Silesian towns. Worn out and reduced, Wallenstein’s army, after its long march from the north, confronted Gabor’s army of light Hungarian cavalry, Turkish janissaries and a few thousand of Mansfeld’s German remnants. These withdrew in the face of an army with a balanced command of infantry cavalry and cannon, of which Gabor had few. Wallenstein wanted to avoid battle too; he had some respect for the Hungarians, having been surrounded by them at Goding in 1620. Criticised for not chasing the retreating Gabor’s horde, Wallenstein’s much reduced and weary army retired into winter quarters on Imperial lands; this drew yet more opprobrium from the armchair generals at the Viennese court, because he drew ‘contributions’ and tax from the territories of many senior aristocrats at the court on whose land he put his army into winter quarters. The event added to his enemies in high places and provided ammunition for the critics of this maverick ‘upstart’. The former Duke of Saxe-Weimar’s remnants meanwhile retreated to their Silesian garrisons under the command of Colonel Mitzlav of the Danish army. Mansfeld was abandoned by Gabor and with a few retainers, including the young English adventurer Sydenham Poyntz, travelled through the Ottomancontrolled Balkans with the aim of reaching the Ragusa on the Adriatic, in hope of finding a ship to England. Mansfeld died en route in circumstances that are unclear although he is said by the rather unreliable Poyntz to have donned his armour in a fevered last hurrah! Poyntz was taken into slavery by the Turks, spending several years in the galleys before finding his way back to Germany. Born in Reigate in 1607, Sydenham Poyntz is one of the great chancers. An apprentice boy in London, he escaped to the wars with the Dutch and then Mansfeld, on his own admission for reasons of youthful adventure. He served in the German wars for nearly twenty years as an itinerant mercenary, a foot soldier, cavalryman and officer, securing booty enough to buy an estate. He changed sides to Wallenstein’s Imperialists and was present at Breitenfeld, Lutzen and Nordlingen; making his way to the English Civil War, where he served at Naseby. He became commander of the Parliamentary Northern Horse at the war’s end and won a resounding cavalry victory at Rowton Heath

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Venice

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Sept 1626, at Levice, Wallenstein faces down the combined

7

SALZBURG

Surrounded by Gabor's Transylvanians Wallenstein saves the

6

10th june 1619.

Wallenstein's cavalry win the battle of Zablati against Mansfeld

garrison in the Uskok war with Venice.

distinguished in relieving and resupplying Gradisca's Imperialist

After funding his own regiment in 1616, Wallenstein is

the high Tatra in mid winter to ask for aid.

Ottomans Wallenstein is wounded 1605 and makes a trek over

During the Kassa campaign of the Long War against the

a region of guerilla fighting against the imperialist 1621-26.

sisters' husband in the Carpathian foothills which later became

5

4

3

Wallenstein moves to live on the estates of Lord Zerotin, his

2

Friedland 1622.

Wallenstein's birthplace 1583-later to become the Duchy of

1

Wallenstein’s 1 Trek in a t n u White Mo SILESIA Kraków

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The Carpathians Campaigns

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634  83 in 1645. But, a quarrelsome man, he soon fell out with the independents and was arrested by his own men as the army became ‘democratic’. He ended up switching sides, rebelling against the Commonwealth, then defecting to Prince Rupert’s navy. He disappears to history as governor of the Leeward Islands and possibly Antigua thereafter. He is rumoured to have died in Virginia. Not a well-educated man, his writing is poor and erratic. Some see his writings as being embellished but the cross references are accurate enough. Wallenstein met with Imperial Counsel advisers at Gollersdorf near Vienna and planned the campaign for the following season. Being so near to Vienna, it is remarkable that the leading Imperial general did not go into the city and meet the Emperor and that the Emperor did not insist on it; it was a trait of Wallenstein’s pride and independence that would have disastrous long-term consequences, but such was his aversion to the sycophancy and machination of court politics that he shunned the place as if it were a plague. In the campaign year of 1625 Wallenstein’s armies quickly dismantled the string of Danish-held cities in Silesia; Colonel Mitzlav had abandoned them to ‘seek orders’ from Christian IV in the north. They had little will to resist as they knew that no help would come from a thoroughly defeated Danish army which had fallen back to the Baltic before the might of Tilly’s army. Meanwhile Wallenstein advanced rapidly northwards having cleaned up the Danish-held garrisons. Unopposed, Tilly recaptured all the places lost and rode down the dregs of Christian’s army; Wallenstein invaded Jutland where Christian’s remnants either dissolved or went into garrison behind the strong defences of his fortresses. Wallenstein’s Imperial army would spend the winter of 1625–26 feasting comfortably on contributions from the lush rolling hills of Jutland, so saving the Imperial exchequer. It seemed certain that Christian IV must soon sue for peace. Winter quartering on enemy land at last, Wallenstein’s stock rose high at the Imperial court. With North Germany and the Baltic coast in Wallenstein’s Imperialist grip, the entire balance of European politics was changing. Ferdinand’s political creditors rushed to cash in their chips and call for the return of favours. Sigismund had already had the benefit of 10,000 troops including heavy cavalry to help him with his war with Sweden on the Baltic north coast of Poland. He sent all twelve ships of the Polish marine to Wallenstein to join with a fleet being assembled by a Spanish adviser whom Olivares had sent from Spain. It was Sigismund’s intention that he would join with the Habsburgs in sending a fleet to Sweden to reconquer his patrimony and the throne. Olivares’ great dream was of a fleet which would dominate the Baltic and therefore ruin the Dutch economy by cutting off 90 per cent of their international trade. As Wallenstein started to take an interest in naval matters it seemed that Olivares’ strategic ambitions regarding the defeat of the Dutch Republic were close to realisation. Not only that, but the dominance of Wallenstein in north Germany would eventually mean pressure against the vulnerable Dutch eastern border.

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84  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

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Military Developments in the Thirty Years War 1618–1634  85 However, Christian was never so brave nor competent as when the chips were down. Safely ensconced in waterbound Copenhagen, the Danes on their island held out, protected as they were by the powerful Danish navy, the king’s personal pride and joy. Unfettered by any rival navy that could challenge him, he used that naval power to unleash some successful raids on Imperial positions on the German coast; but his army was trounced by Wallenstein again after landing at Wolgast. When Wallenstein moved against the rebellious hold-out port of Stralsund in April 1628, Christian responded by shipping in Scottish troops to fill the breaches; they fought and clung on in the face of desperate attacks by Wallenstein’s Imperial army. Scottish officer Monro describes how 600 Swedish troops, mostly Scots volunteers, landed under fire on 23 June 1628 just in time to help repel heavy assaults on the 24th, 27th and 29th directed by Wallenstein in person. Vicious hand-to-hand fighting ensued. ‘[O]n the last storme,’ recounted Scottish mercenary Monro, ‘by the breake of day the enemie entered our works, and was beate backe againe with great losse, with swords and pikes and butts of Muskets.’20 The Swedish commander was killed and the casualties mounted. Monro was carried off injured. Matters still looked desperate but in the nick of time Gustavus Adolphus sent over the Swedish fleet with more men and supplies. By the time the siege was called off on 31 July, Sweden was fully in charge of the city; the Emperor had acquired another intervener in German political and military affairs. It was a signal defeat for Wallenstein and left the door open to Swedish intervention. the high-water mark in Imperial successes. Born in Rossshire in 1601, Robert Monro was typical of many Scottish officers: a gentleman descended from minor nobility of Clan Monro, he went to the wars to become a professional soldier, for patriotism, religion and money; making his mark with the Danes he then transferred to Swedish service where he helped establish the excellent reputation of Scots troops and officers. Leaving Germany in 1638 he fought successfully against Charles I in the Bishops Wars before going to Ireland to lead Protestant Scots against O’Neill’s Catholic rebellion. Converting to the royalist cause he was captured and imprisoned by Cromwell; upon release he would serve out a long life on his wife’s estates in County Down. Despite Wallenstein’s pleadings over many months, the Emperor had failed to seize the initiative for a favourable peace which would have advanced his power but potentially kept out interveners from Germany’s affairs. What Wallenstein well understood was that the Imperialists, despite their overwhelming victories, did not have the manpower or resources to hold down a hostile northern Germany. However, with victory and the self-righteousness bestowed by God’s mission and grace, Ferdinand did not know how to stop; he was egged on by his Jesuit confessor and courtier cheerleaders who rode the wave of Wallenstein’s and Tilly’s victories.

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Chapter IV

Gustavus: the War in the Baltic

G

ustavus Adolphus’s entry to the German war against the Habsburgs and Bavaria was a seminal moment in the development of the war. It introduced a significant, experienced and well-funded military power to the war, as well as a soldier of some talent and reputation; passed over last time by the Treaty of The Hague 1625, by the Dutch, French and English in favour of support for Christian IV, Gustavus had not then been willing to compromise on price. After seven years of constant fighting in the Baltic with Poland, Gustavus’s position had reached stalemate. In 1621 he had captured the major trading port of Riga, after a six-week siege, to add to his possession of Tallinn and Estonia farther north and the Province of Livonia (modern-day Estonia and Latvia were his). Riga’s capture catapulted him to the attention of Europe; it had involved a fleet of over 100 ships landing an expeditionary force of 15,000 men; a determined Polish attempt to recapture the place failed and, due to improvement in Swedish arms and tactics by the use of increased firepower, victories were won against the Polish army with their fearsome winged hussars and their long lances.

Gustavus Adolphus

Gustavus Adolphus was just 17 years old when he ascended to the throne in 1612. He inherited from his tyrant father Karl Vasa I a disastrous two-front war; the War of Kalmar against the Danes over disputed claims in Lapland and the Ingian war aganst the Russians over compensation for the withdrawal of Sweden’s claim to the Russian throne and contested territory around Lake Lagoda. From the start of his reign, Gustavus led his troops from the front. In 1612 he was involved in large scale border raids against Denmark where he had to be rescued from capture or drowning on one occasion when his horse fell through the ice. He showed his ruthless by laying waste to various Danish districts and towns. Faced with a war in Russia, Gustavus decided to cut his losses in the war with Denmark with a swap of captured places; under the treaty of Knäred in January 1613, two Norwegian provinces incuding Jamtland were returned to Denmark and the island of  Öland and its main town Borgholm was returned to Sweden along with Kalmar on Sweden’s corresponding east coast. On the west coast of Sweden, the Danes traded the key fortress of Älvsborg (near Gothenburg), which they had recently captured for one million reichsdhaler; the so called ‘Älvsborg Ransom’. What Gustavus learned fom the

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Novgorod and Gdov returned.

by treaty of Stolbovo with Russia in 1617 but

Note: Gains in Karelia, and Ingria confirmed

Windau, Libau and Memel.

Treaty of Altmark 1629 gives Sweden

Captures Bizai and its fortress.

Wallhof Jan 1626.

Defeats Polish army in decisive battle of

Follows up by capture of Bauska 1625.

in 1625 and.

Captures Mitau, Kurland capital, again

1622.

1621, then Wolmar, loses Mitau in

Captures Mitau and Jagaleva citadel

1621.

Captures major trading port of Riga

and again 1625.

Gustavus launches major invasion 1621

Fails to capture Pskov 1615.

1617) but

Captured by Gustavus 1614 (returned

1617.

Captured by Sweden 1611, returned

Swedens Baltic Empire

88  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 failed war was that Christian IV’s powerful navy had the strategic capability to launch surprise attacks on key coastal assets. Sweden’s naval programme would aim at parity with the Danes and soon Gustavus would be using naval power not just tactically but for major strategic operations against his Polish enemies. Apart from the Danish war, Gustavus also inherited from his father a war against Russia where Swedish forces had captured the provinces of Karelia and Ingria and captured the important Russian city of Novgorod. From 1614 he took command in several sieges in the snowy wastes of Russia on the Eastern side of Lake Peipus, west of Swedish occupied Novgorod. Not just the first major test for Gustavus, he was facing off against the new Tsar, Michael Romanov I, who remained in Moscow. Ingria and Karelia as well as large tracts of Russia, approx 7,000 square miles were in Swedish hands by the end of the conflict. They controlled lakes Lagoda, Ilmen and Peipus as well as the river Neva including the sight of the future St Petersburg. Despite a successful Russian counter-attack in 1613, which dislodged the Swedes from Gdov, Tikhvin and Staraj-Russia, the Swedes still held very significant bargaining chips prior to the Viborg Peace talks, which lasted from 1613-14. Due to the war of Kalmar the Swedes found themselves extremely overstretched. General de La Gardie even financed some of the campaign on his own credit with the fortune he was making from trade in sables! Gustavus’s aim overall was to ‘offer peace in one hand and a sword in the other’. However, the twenty-year-old Gustavus, who had landed at Nava with 2,000 reinforcements in his first overseas campaign as king, became bogged down in the siege of Gdov which rested on the upper eastern side of Lake Peipus. Arriving at the long siege of Gdov in August 1614 after two Swedish assaults had failed, the third assault commanded by the King succeeded on 10 September 1614 in encouraging the enemy to agreeing a surrender. This success was greatly aided by the strong logistics system introduced by Gustavus who introduced shallow draft shallops for use on Lake Peipus, to bring down supplies from Narva. (Roberts, Gustavus vol I p.84) Such detailed planning including the use of waterways would be a characteristic of Gustavus’s military style from the outset of his career. The garrison was released on terms and went south to reinforce the strategically placed city of Pskov with thick curtain walls and massive square bastions topped by the Onion domes of the Cathedral. A religious centre, it boasted 46 monasteries. With the northern long nights and snow about to close down the campaigning season, Gustavus’s army which had suffered considerable losses could not follow on hard to exploit their victory. Campaigning in such remote and inhospitable climates was not a comfortable experience. The King’s Chaplain Johannes Rubeckius who accompanied him, describes how, ‘At one time we would be forced to sit on our horses all day in rain and mud; at another we would go sledging through the snow and the bitter

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Gustavus: the War in the Baltic  89 weather, though the weather was never allowed to interfere with the morning sermon; sometimes we were at sea in the storm and roaring waters; sometimes on land, campaigning amid the din of battle. Then the drum would sound and the guns go off; and in the middle of a sermon, or while we were preparing one, we would hear the alarm and the order to mount….’ Moving south in the 1615 campaigning season, Gustavus subsequently laid siege to the fiercely defended fortress city of Pskov strategically positioned on the south side of lake Peipus. Historically one of the three great cities of Muscovy and member of the Hanseatic League, the population was still approximately 15,000. The city had resisted previous sieges and enjoyed the benefit of thick curtain walls and huge bastions as well as a garrison of 4,200 plus 350 of the Czar’s Streltsky from Moscow. Supplies and reinforcements which could enter through siege lines which were deficient in numbers of besieging troops. As usual Gustavus was in the thick of the fighting so close to the action that famed Swedish general Evert Horn was struck down besides him. Gustavus was slightly wounded. Gustavus led an attack in person on 9 October. An all day struggle, the defenders, apart from using muskets, resorted to old fashioned stones and logs as well as boiling tar and oil; the bastion was captured again but retaken. After a prolonged siege from 9 August to 27 October and three costly assaults, the last of which saw his troops occupy a key bastion only to be blown sky high by a mine sprung by the defenders, the Swedes withdrew. It was an attempt to seize a key city stronghold as a bargaining chip prior to peace talks. The failure resulted in the Swedish army being reduced by combat losses and disease from 16,000 to 4,500 in a two and a half month siege. Gustavus’s army consisted of Swedes, Scottish and German troops. Thereafter, Gustavus always avoided long sieges and prepared diplomatically before launching campaigns to avoid war on two fronts. However, with little more to be gained in Russia, Gustavus could settle for an advantageous peace by securing Ingria and Karelia but gave up both Gdov and Novgorod. More importantly the Treaty of Stolbovo 1617 set the strategic parmeters for Gustavus’s later invasion of Poland and then Germany because it developed into an informal alignment with Russia which secured his strategic left flank, while simultaneously threatening Poland’s eastern borders with the new revanchist Romanov regime. Gustavus had identified Poland and their potential Habsburg backers as his primary enemies; not least because King Sigsmund of Poland had been overthrown by Gustavus’s father, and the Catholic Polish King was determined on recovery of his patrimony and Counter-Reformation in Lutheran Sweden. Tsar Michael Romanov (1596–1645) dreamed of recapturing Smolensk, the capital of White Russia, from the Polish occupiers. Stolbovo was a diplomatic coup of exceptional importance and showed Gustavus’s talents in

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90  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 diplomacy and grand strategy; wise before his time he knew when to quit and take his winning chips off the table. He had been brought up to be King with much the same level of educational care as his rival across the sound, Christian IV. Under the instruction of his personal tutor, John Skytte, later a member of the Rad (royal council), he was educated to a level far beyond what might be expected for a small, backward and new country on the fringes of Europe. Educated in Latin and German, unusually Gustavus commanded both English and the Scottish dialect: the latter would prove very useful in future years when negotiating to hire Scottish mercenaries. In addition, he was well educated in mathematics, theology and law. He was a modern renaissance monarch locked into a remote and huge northern fastness of endless forests, lakes, islands and inlets, and clearings for peasant agriculture. A thousand kilometres long and 300 wide, when combined with Finland and northern Livonia, the nation occupied territories which made it one of the largest countries in Europe by territorial size. A young man in charge of a young country and with a contested regal inheritance and a threatened Lutheran religion, for Gustavus and for Sweden, legitimacy and identity were potent drivers of the collective national psyche. Gustavus, with remarkable insight and astuteness, recognised that he had to bring his people and especially the elite with him on his journey of legitimisation and identity. His father had left many enemies and broken families by his purges and cruelty; reacting to insecurity by paranoia and murder, he had held power by terror. At the start of his reign in 1611, Gustavus was hemmed in politically by the elite who would brook no further tyranny. He never cavilled over the restraint but embraced consensus, never doubting his ability to lead and persuade his people. Speaking at his farewell to the Estates in May 1630 before his invasion of Germany, he invoked his own sacrifices and warned of his mortality; speaking in the language of the peasant he declared: since it is wont to fall out that the pitcher is borne so often to the well that it is broken at last, so it will be with me; that I who now in so many dangers and occasions have shed my blood for the welfare of the Swedish realm – though hitherto by the gracious protection … .1 The danger came from the embittered elites who might be tempted to link up with foreign enemies, especially his uncle Sigismund Vasa, King of Poland who had been overthrown by Gustavus’s father; however, Gustavus’s charisma won them over. He built Sweden’s aristocratic elites into a winning team with élan, esprit de corps and rewards. He forged an all-encompassing military machine, the first military-industrial complex. With revanchist Catholic Poland threatening his regime, staunchly Lutheran Gustavus had to be on his guard. He decided early on a pre-emptive attack as the best form of defence against the gathering twin threats of Sigismund and the Habsburg backed Counter-Reformation. Across the Baltic sea the mission of the Jesuit seminary established at Braunsberg in

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Gustavus: the War in the Baltic  91 Ducal Prussia was orientated towards the recovery of Sweden for the CounterReformation and the restoration of Polish King,Sigismund Vasa, to the throne usurped by Gustavus’s father. An important Polish faction under chancellor Prince Jan Zamoyski opposed Habsburg connections, especially after Maximillian of Austria  had invaded Poland in 1587–88 in the disputed Polish election. Zamoyski had defeated the Habsburg army but Sigismund remained unmoved in his pro-Habsburg intentions. Establishing important links to the Papacy, a papal envoy Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini, later Pope Clement VIII, mediated a peace treaty and alliance with the Habsburgs in 1589 by the  Treaty of Bytom and Będzin  in March 1589. This was followed by a typical Habsburg marriage alliance in 1592, when he married Habsburg Archduchess Anne in Krakow, after she avoided Zamoyski’s attempts to block her at the frontier. The suspicion of Habsburg ambitions with regard to Poland would be a constant theme in Polish politics thoughout the Thirty Years War as many magnates feared that Habsburg troops might be used to launch a coup against the power of the Polish Sjem and its oligarchic constitutional system. Suspicion of Imperial intentions was not surprising as the Habsburg family had an unmatched reputation for the tricks of dynastic aggrandizement. In Poland they had a foot in the door and the Jesuits provided Sigismund’s confessor. Understanding exactly Sigismund’s revanchiste purpose in aligning with the Habsburgs, Gustavus rose to the existential challenge by militarising. The threat was very real; Sigismund had invaded Sweden with a mercenary army in 1598 and was defeated on 25 September 1598, at the Battle of Linköping. With a new young King on the throne from 1611, Sigismund would probably try again, most likely with Habsburg backing. The other signal aspect of these developments in Poland was the intevention of the Papacy to act as a ‘firefighting’ mediator in conflicts between Catholic polities. As the Counter-Reformation gained in strength through the first twenty years of the new century as it sought to direct all Catholic states in a grand coalition against Protestant heresies and polities. Such mediatory diplomacy was a constant factor during the Thirty Years War, even during the pro-French tenancy of Urban VIII 1623–1644. Physically Gustavus was stout, slightly Asiatic in appearance, but with a strong jawline, goatee beard and moustache. His physique was strong and he enjoyed robust good health. A heavy drinker, campaigning life and the camp agreed with him. Characterised by his youthful energy, Gustavus projected an extraordinarily powerful charisma. Apart from his boisterous nature, Gustavus was a pious Lutheran who led the singing of psalms before battle; his army was run with strong discipline and a strict moral code. Unlike his great rival Wallenstein or other monarchs of the period, he was not inured to creature comforts or luxurious living. For him, the winter was often not a time to find quarters but to make war when the other party least expected it. He demanded the same robustness from his servants, ministers and troops. Gustavus’s navy

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92  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 was expected to keep station on blockade off the coast of Danzig even during winter months, a requirement unheard of at that time. His exacting standards and impatience combined with a hot temper. Gustavus exuded an extraordinary confidence and was usually very decisive, although this could overshoot into impatience and impulsiveness. Power and the exercise of it sat easily with him, but the truly impressive part of his character, rare at any time and especially in the age of kings, was his political ability, sensitivity and adeptness in consensual leadership. Men followed him; women swooned. Despite a constitutional arrangement forced on him at the time of his succession, he never cavilled against the restraints on his power. Rather, he embraced consensus politics with his people and the nobility in the Riksgdag (the national assembly) and the council (Rad). Nor was he averse to delegation and the sharing of power. The key to the remarkable achievements of his reign was the appointment of excellent subordinates both civilian and military. None was more important than Axel Oxenstierna, leader of the aristocratic oligarchy in the realm, who had forced through the new constitutional settlement, but with whom he enjoyed an open and affectionate friendship, as his letter of 4 December 1630 demonstrates, ‘Trusty and well-beloved, I greet you well … . Do your best not to weary of the service of king and country; for I would rather trust my welfare to your zeal than to any other man’s.’2 Similarly young in age to the young king, Oxenstierna became his first chancellor; a formidable intellect and a capable administrator, the duo would transform Sweden and Europe It would become a famed partnership. As the poor relations of Europe, the Swedish nobility and senior officers were probably more influenced by material incentive than any others fighting the war. Gustavus cleverly inveigled them into buying into his Imperial dreams by offering them land and latifundia in the new ventures of the eastern Baltic. Even before the invasion of Germany his ambition was already Napoleonic in scale. It would grow exponentially following military victory. War objectives were the strengthening of Sweden’s economic-military potential and security. His nobility was being involved in a joint economic enterprise. But, unlike Napoleon, he led from the front, sharing the dangers of war directly in the manner of Alexander the Great or Caesar. A warrior by nature, Gustavus loved the thrill of close-quarter combat, and was invariably under fire at the head of his men, which would cause him to be seriously wounded in several skirmishes of the Polish war. At the battle of Dirschau for example in 1627, he came to sword strokes with the enemy, having the guard of his rapier badly damaged when fending off a sabre slash.3 He appealed also to glory and the traditions of ancestors, encouraging them to uphold ‘the far flung fame and immortal name of your gothic ancestors … to be known all over the world, so it may again shine with lustre…whereby you have shewn yourselves the true heirs and descendants of the Goths, who in their day conquered almost the whole earth

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Gustavus: the War in the Baltic  93 …  .’4 Well tutored in classical history, he had an epic vision of himself, his state and Swedish legend. The state building project merged with the need to establish his branch of Vasa legitimacy. Gustavus did not inherit his father’s cruel and bloodthirsty trait which marked the reign of terror from 1594–1611. Nevertheless, he was a ruthless negotiator, a master of the unsentimental use of power, and in this no one in early modern Europe surpassed him: but rational, always prepared to walk away from a negotiation if the terms did not match his needs. His motto may well have been taken from Themistocles: ‘I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion.’5

Baltic War

Swedish foreign policies developed by Gustavus and Oxenstierna focused on regime security, and building national identity in the face of Polish irredentism from the deposed Sigismund and counter-reformation threats. Denmark also laid claim to Sweden, their former province. Sweden decided to be pro-active in taking the fight to the Poles by capturing key cities in the Eastern Baltic, in Livonia especially. As they grew in power, Sweden also looked to roll back the Danes and expel them from the Scandinavian littoral. The fight for control of the Baltic would eventually merge into the wider fight against the Habsburg Imperium. In Polish Livonia Gustavus faced a powerful enemy whose economic and military strength was well respected in Europe especially after its victories over the Habsburgs in 1589, its various victories over the Russians and over the Ottomans at Chocim in Moldova 1621. His reasons for invasion were twofold. Firstly he sought territorial expansion and increased control on Baltic Trade. Gustavus achieved strategic surprise with an invasion of Livonia by an armada of 138 vessels.6 He captured the wealthy trading port of Riga and extended Sweden’s domain to the whole of Livonia. The population of rural Livonia was only 120,000, but they were an important grain supplier to Sweden. With much of the land untended after the depopulation of the late sixteenth century there would be ample property to give to his generals. Gustavus extended Swedish dominion into Poland’s associated territory in the Duchy of Kurland to the south-west. Secondly, taking the initiative Gustavus wanted to strike a blow at his uncle, the dispossessed claimant to the Swedish crown, whose ambition to launch yet another attack on Sweden was no secret. If possible Gustavus would force King Sigismund to recognise his legal right to the Swedish throne at some future peace conference. There were several truces along the way to 1626 when he repeated his logistical triumph in a surprise invasion of 20,000 troops, including cavalry, on the PolishEast Prussian shore at Pillau near Konigsberg; ironically the dukedom was a fief of the Polish crown and its duke was none other than his brother-in-law, the Elector of Brandenburg. Before the Polish army could muster, Gustavus had taken over a string of towns and castles including the massive old Teutonic

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98  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 1

Sweden attacks in Ingria againsty Novgorod and Pskov 1611-17.

2

Sweden gains Ingria and Karelia from Russia, Treaty of Stolbovo 1617.

3

Invasion of Polish Livonia, capture of Riga 1621, Polish attack.

4

Invasion of Polish-Prussia June 1626.

5

Large troop reinforcement 1627.

6

Swedish attacks fail and so do Polish counter-attacks 1626-1629.

7

Wallenstein Imperialists reinforce Poles 1628-1629.

8

Wallenstein attacks and occupies Danish Jutland 1627-1628.

9

Stralsund besieged by Wallenstein’s forces 1628-9.

10

Danish destroy Hapsburg fleet at Wismar spring 1628.

11

Danish & Scots forces reinforce Stralsund June 1628.

12

Swedish [including Scots] reinforce Stralsund June 1628.

13

Danish forces land at Wolgast Aug 1628.

14

Wallenstein defeats Danish Army on Wolgast 1628.

15

Gustavus lands Swedish army at Peenemunde 1630.

16

English force of 6,000 troops land to support Swedes 1631.

17

Sweden launches surprise attack on Denmark Dec 1643.

18

Imperialist army attacks Sweden in Jutland.

19

Denmark defeats Dutch fleet twice at Liskedy in the Baltic, southwest of Jutland, May 1644.

20

Naval battles; Denmark defeats Sweden July 1644 at Kolberger-Heide and Sweden

and the Dutch defeat Denmark Oct 1644.

knight headquarters at Marianburg. The ring of cities around the Frisches Haff (sea lagoon) was well defended. Most importantly, he blocked the Vistula and besieged the free Polish city of Danzig which meant that Polish grain traffic was cut off from its west European markets; grain prices in Europe rose sharply. Despite a successful naval counter attack by the Danzig fleet on the blockading Swedish squadron on 28 November 1627, the Swedish blockade was only raised for a few months. With strong defences round Miewe, Gustavus controlled the Grosser Wiede grazing grounds and won several battlefield successes. He won a notable campaign to relieve his outlying garrison in the Teutonic fortress of Mewe and at Dirschau where he was wounded leading a cavalry charge. His defences were probed in many places by Poland’s outstanding commander General Stanisław

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Gustavus: the War in the Baltic  99 Koniecpolski, victor over the Ottomans and the Tartars, but Gustavus’s ability to move troops rapidly by boat along the sheltered waterway of Frisches Haff enabled him to deploy to threatened points swiftly with the advantages of interior lines. His defence of prepared fortifications including plentiful masked cannon was too difficult for the Poles to take on, although Polish Fabian tactics by cavalry raiding sometimes took a heavy toll on Gustavus’s supply chain. There followed tough years of campaigning, which included a number of reverses. Gustavus suffered a serious stomach wound in one amphibious attack in 1626 which would prevent him wearing armour and again at Dirschau in August 1627 he was shot in the shoulder, a wound he would proudly show off to Christian IV. However, the defence lines held; what he was not able to do was achieve any solid successes when he broke out of the bridgehead, although the town of Strasburg was captured in August 1628 and General Wrangel won an important snow bound battle at Gorzno in February 1629. There was a major strategic and political development when in June 1629 Wallenstein’s victorious Imperialists sent 10,000 troops under Von Armin to reinforce Sigismund. However, resistance from the powerful anti-Habsburg faction in the Sejm meant that only 5,000 Imperialist troopers were admitted to the kingdom; not the full contingent of 10,000. Nor were they allowed to enter towns so they had to bivouac in open fields. For the first time the Habsburgs and Sweden were directly in conflict. Imperialists and Poles defeated Gustavus at Honigfeld on 27 June 1629 when he was surprised at a 3:1 disadvantage. When trying to follow up their success, the Poles would be defeated by Gustavus outside Marienburg’s defences losing 4,000 men in July 1629. Despite Habsburg aid, victory was no nearer and the war was in stalemate with outnumbered Gustavus still comfortably holding his own and retaining control of vital economic regions around the Vistula Delta and Fisches Haff. When Sigismund came under pressure from a coalition of his powerful grainproducing barons and the anti-Habsburg faction, as the renewal of the war with Russia approached, he felt constrained to offer a truce. This was most agreeable to Gustavus because he and Oxenstierna had reprioritised their foreign policy to concentrate on defending north Germany from the Imperialists who now occupied the entire north German shore facing Sweden except the port of Stralsund. With major Imperial armies sitting across the Baltic within easy striking distance of Sweden, Gustavus’s main priority was to blunt that threat. By the Truce of Altmark of 16 September 1629, Sweden gained enormous economic advantages by retaining all rights to tolls and customers around Prussia and the Eastern Baltic, including the major ports at Riga, Windau, Libau, Memel and Konigsberg. More importantly they gained a two-thirds share of Danzig’s and Elbag’s toll and customs dues, plus those of ducal Prussia where they were in occupation. The income from these provided Gustavus a timely monetary boost for his invasion of Germany in support of the Protestant

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Gustavus: the War in the Baltic  101

Main Road

2

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Drainage Water Channels

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Siege Lines

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Relief Supply Convoy by river and road

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Dirschau (Swedish Camp)

50 klms

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Battle for Mewe (Poland) 12th Sept - 2nd Oct 1626

Vistula Corridor

Citadel Teutonic held town) (Swedish

2 klms

Polish Infantry/Cavalry Swedish Infantry/Cavalry Grazing Horses

nz

50 klms

Graude

Teutonic Knight Church Citadel Wagons of relief column

1 Mewe is besieged by Sigismund’s Polish army of 16,000, early September.

2 Probing attack from Dirschau base by Gustavus’s 2,000 infantry along the levee September 22nd. In the broken ground/irrigation ditches, Polish Hussar counter attacks are blunted but the Swedes forced to scamper back to their fortified camp.

3 Another attack further along the levee 29th September; orderly retreat back to base. 4 After receiving reinforcements from Sweden Gustavus launches final relief campaign for

Mewe. Swedish attack along the levee to break through Polish defences on Vistula corridor to Mewe lower town is turned back October 1st.

5 Thurn makes a feint cavalry attack on the Polish right. Poles drive them off in a limited counter attack, fearful of being ambushed by Swedes lurking in the forest.

6 Swedish infantry in the shadow of a steep hill storm the heights in a surprise attack against unsighted Polish infantry positioned on the crest, rather than the military crest of the hill...

7 …and evict Polish infantry then defeat Polish cavalry and infantry counter attacks over two days.

8 Mewe is relieved on 2nd October when the outflanked Polish infantry abandon the Vistula corridor defences and the supply convoy passes by road along the river and by barge.

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S

E

10

klm s

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Str

right as planned and fled.

Polish army dissolved, was rolled up from left to

6 Caught off balance at the critical moment the

forest to attack the rest of the Polish line.

5 Other Swedish units debouched from the thick

oblique assault from left to right of the Polish line.

cross roads intending to overwhelm them by an

Wrangel’s Swedes attacked the enemy at the

4 With 3,400 men packed on the right wing

deployment.

units on the left of the line became confused in

Cossacks burnt the local village. Polish cavalry

for battle on an open plain beyond the forest and

Hussars, Cossacks and German cuirassiers ready

3 Potocki prepared the main Polish cavalry force, of

lightly defended by Polish dragoons.

advanced and captured the bridge which was

2 In the morning of the 29th Wrangel’s Swedes

February.

from Elbing, with 5,500 troops, 27-28th

Strasburg Wrangel advanced with a Cavalry corps

1 Under orders from Oxenstierna to relieve

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Battle of Gorzno [Poland] February 29th 1629

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1

Gustavus: the War in the Baltic  103 cause. Gustavus covered his exit from the Polish theatre by negotiating an alliance with Poland’s most dangerous enemy, the Romanovs, whose army he helped arm with cannon. He also arranged to train them by the secondment of Scottish officers on his staff. Diplomatically secure, with Poland neutralised, Gustavus now had a free hand to attack the Habsburgs in Germany and expand on the successful defence of Stralsund against Wallenstein’s Imperialists. There was a second and even greater significance to Gustavus’s decision to invade Germany, because for the first time France became heavily engaged in Germany by making a military alliance. The terms of the Treaty of Barwalde with France in January 1631 provided subsidies to Gustavus while allowing him a free hand in fighting the Habsburgs as he wished. Beset by Huguenot problems and rebellious nobility at home, the treaty offered France a cheap ‘mercenary’ method of restoring the balance of power in Germany. Gustavus, so Richelieu hoped, would be his catspaw against the Habsburgs.

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Chapter V

The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War Richelieu’s policies and political developments, 1620–27

‘F

rance in the 1610s was still recovering from the Wars of Religion and indeed many of the socio-political tensions which the wars had generated remained only just under control.’1 France had suffered nearly forty years of religious war between 1562 and 1598, an époque of devastating internecine conflict that ended only when Henri IV, the Calvinist heir to the throne, converted to Catholicism. It was a period of chaos, which boosted the egos and pretensions of a uniquely arrogant noble caste, who were precious about its right to rule in tandem with the sovereign. French prestige was therefore at a low point. Just as the nation was recovering under the leadership of Henri and the administration of chief minister Sully, a Catholic religious fanatic assassinated the king. The nation was thrown back once more into regency government under the sectional and Counter-Reformation inspired leadership of Marie de Medici, the regent and Henri’s widow; religious rebellion and noble revolt against the rule of Marie’s Italian cronies was the result. Marie’s pro-Spanish devotional foreign policy was to become the fault line in French domestic and European politics; the internal struggle for power in France revolved around foreign policy and questions related to the handling of the Huguenot ‘state within a state’. Its resolution was central to the course of the Thirty Years War. Significantly, and a signal for the future, Louis’ first foreign policy and military decision upon being liberated from his mother was to send troops to support Savoy’s fight against Spain over Monferrato. It was a policy which picked up from those of Henri IV, and would in due course be developed still further by Richelieu. After Concini’s assassination, when Louis XIII’s favourite Luynes launched the coup d’etat by thrusting a rapier into Concini, Marie de Medici’s chief minister, the nobles including Condé and Nevers, drifted back to court where, in alliance with Luynes, they joined the Royal Council. Louis took power. The Queen Mother, exiled in Blois, kept Luçon (Richelieu) besides her as chief adviser, although in secret correspondence he regularly reported on her to the Council. She cavilled under the disgrace until February 1619 when she escaped from the 160-foot tower in Blois by climbing down a ladder then slipping down an improvised slide before posing as a prostitute to get past the outer guards. There followed a low level civil war after which Luçon, who kept his links open

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  105 to Luynes, was re-installed as Marie’s chief councillor, pushing aside her other advisers. Peace was agreed at Angoulême in April 1619 after some desultory fighting. For his services Luçon, gained a cardinal’s hat and was known thereafter as Cardinal Richelieu. Marie returned to court in 1620 and Luynes died of natural causes in 1621 after failing to capture Montauban from the Huguenots. Policy divergenices were masked in the early years because both the dévots and the nationalist faction which wanted to confront the Habsburg threat were unified in their belief that the suppression of the Huguenots was a priority. Richelieu returned to court with the Queen Mother, re-entering the administration with the portfolio of commerce and marine before joining the Royal Council in 1624; following a period of turmoil and incompetent administration it was sheer talent plus the patronage of the Queen Mother which allowed Richelieu’s appointment despite Louis’ personal misgivings. It was a complex period of power struggle: the disputes between the Queen Mother and Louis XIII provided him with opportunities to be politically useful. The crucial factors were the abiding support of the Queen Mother, and Richelieu’s nomination as Cardinal. Marie de Medici may have quarrelled with her son, but her regal status ensured that she could not be ignored as a political force.2 In the Luynes period Louis XIII had achieved some success in bringing several Protestant provinces under state control after military expeditions from 1620 to 1622. The siege of Montauban in 1622 failed miserably before the great fortress which resisted the puny efforts of a thoroughly inadequate and unprofessional military. However, the campaigns against the Huguenots were only the start of a policy which was to be driven much harder by Cardinal Richelieu. One of the political advantages of the anti-Huguenot policy was to unite the factions of the King and the Queen Mother; in this Richelieu was instrumental behind the scenes. He used it to rise to the top position of political power; it also helped delay the moment when he would have to choose which faction he would ultimately support or indeed lead. Richelieu’s domestic and foreign policies were symbiotically linked. In conception they were extremely simple. His domestic policies were laid out in his unfinished Testament Politique in 1635, and despite some embellishment with hindsight, the essentials of policy started with the suppression of the centrifugal tendencies in French politics, including not just the Huguenots but the rebellious and capricious aristocracy. No doubt in reaction to the chaos of the previous century, Richelieu sought to enact the theories of absolutism and divine right which had become current under the influence of philosopher Bodin. In order to elevate the glory and majesty of Louis XIII strict discipline and control was to be brought to all sections of French society, including the Catholic Church where the Jesuits and Jansenists, as well as the existing

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106  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Huguenot problem, provided new challenges to state control. ‘Richelieu was no less vigorous against the clergy than he was vis-à-vis the Seigneurs and the Parliament. He wanted them subjected to the same degree of state discipline as the other power blocks.’3 One new edict which was strictly enforced was the banning of duelling, although this did not seem to interfere with the regular sword fights between the King’s and the Cardinal’s musketeers, (blue and red) which was a source of pride and amusement for their respective protagonists, almost as if they were footballers. The primary tasks would involve the subjugation of the Huguenots and the taming of the higher nobility who had brought chaos to France for nigh on 100 years. Not surprisingly, the chaos of the religious civil wars caused a sharp political-intellectual reaction, which was the genesis of divine right and absolutism. Pierre de Belloy, a jurist from Toulouse writing in 1587 On the authority of the King and the treasonable crimes committed by the Leagues argued that ‘Power was never in the people. It came directly from God, to whom all rulers were responsible. To rebel against a prince was to rebel against God,’ and a king could give out and enforce the law ‘without the consent of anyone else whatsoever’.4 To elevate Louis as absolute monarch in his realm was a necessary part of the absolutist transformation in domestic politics whose collateral and ultimate goal was the restoration of France’s prestige and place in the European order. This inevitably meant a confrontation with the Habsburgs and their ‘perceived’ European hegemony. As the latter policy developed, the objectives of the French foreign policy became clear, including the objective of pushing out France’s frontiers or at least her sphere of influence to the natural borders around France on the Rhine, in Lorraine and the Alps and in French-speaking Artois. Richelieu’s policies on territorial acquisition were not as clear as those of his successor Mazarin, but he did wish to re-establish France’s legal claims to suzerainty over Lorraine and Sedan, which had become alienated over the course of the previous century due to Crown weakness. The modern idea of France’s ‘natural borders’ was becoming current, along with a growing sense of Gallic nationalism that was quite different from legitimacy derived solely from a feudal dynastic state. With Spain controlling nearby territories, Paris was under constant threat. Cities such as Arras and Dijon lay just over the border with Spanish possessions; they were within easy reach of Paris. With the opportunity provided by war Richelieu would look to remove these threats. Memories of the Spanish-backed Catholic League and the ultramontist rebellion of the Guise family during the religious wars were all too recent. In whichever direction Richelieu looked from Paris he was surrounded by Habsburg power. To the north there was Flanders and Artois, to the northeast Luxembourg and to the west Lorraine and Alsace, held by the Habsburg Emperor. To the south-east of Paris lay the Spanish-controlled Franche-Comté,

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  107 acquired after a deal to support Ferdinand’s election to the Imperial throne and in surrender of the Spanish king’s claims. Finally, to the south there was the Spanish border, which at that time extended beyond the Pyrenees to include Roussillon, thrusting into the south of France. Meanwhile, at sea, Spanish fleets, troop convoys and warships passed around the French coast on their way to reinforce the garrisons in the Netherlands. As marine minister, Richelieu set about building up France’s naval capability, dockyards and arsenals. Richelieu aimed to break out of Spain’s ‘strategic straitjacket’ and re-assert French traditional interests or spheres of influence, including northern Italy. He backed up his policies by vigorously argued polemics published in official and unofficial pamphlets in opposition to damning pamphleteering by the dévot camp. In this work, his sharp-penned assistant and polemicist the Capuchin Friar Joseph took a leading role. One pamphlet was titled On the progress and conquests of the King of Spain and the House of Austria in Germany, Switzerland, the Grisons, Italy and the frontiers of France since the death of Henry the Great 5 (Henri IV). The import of the article was clear. France was threatened; France needed to arm itself against the peril to the nation. It was the essence of the ‘Gallic’ policy that would dominate French foreign policy for the following two centuries. The domestic and foreign policies were intimately linked because the religious factions and over-mighty nobility had pulled France apart, drawing in foreign powers. The effect had been to destabilise and weaken the French state. The strengthening of the state required the ruthless suppression of religious factionalism on both sides; the Huguenots would be humbled along with their foreign backers and the dévots who looked to Spain for support would be crushed in like manner. In foreign policy terms this meant that Lorraine, whose territory rested threateningly close to the heart of the nation, providing refuge and a launch pad for conspiracy or invasion, had to be brought under French control either directly or as a client state. This would not be easy as proud and warlike Charles of Lorraine was also related to some of the great and rebellious noble factions, such as Montmorency (Guise) who was to launch a revolt from Lorraine in 1631. He soon moved into Olivares’ orbit. Charles would also come under the spell of irrepressible siren the Duchesse de Chevreuse whose lovers and political salon were inveterate plotters against Richelieu and the Crown. The key strand in this Gallic policy was to attack Habsburg interests around Europe with the aim of disrupting their power and lines of communication. The long-term strategic aim was to break the Habsburgs in France, which was geographically complete with the exception of the mountainous Maritime Alps border with Savoy. Despite a marriage alliance through Louis XIII’s sister Christina, even Savoy was sometimes in the thrall of Spanish power, succumbing from time to time to Spanish pressure to send troops through the principality to Spanish-controlled Franche-Comté on their way to the Netherlands.

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108  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 In his testament Richelieu rationalised his policies with the clarity of hindsight but his objectives were always consistent: Three things entered my mind: first to ruin the Huguenots and render the King absolute in his state; second to abase the power of Austria [both Spanish and Imperial branches]; thirdly to discharge the French people of heavy subsidies and tailles, enabling the King to repossess his domains which are capable by themselves of sustaining him handsomely.6 He would spectacularly fail in the last objective. The Huguenot nuisance had temporarily been resolved by the Treaty of Montpellier in 1622 but the tensions simmered because it was not properly implemented; the dévot in the Council and at court were outraged at the lenient terms offered to the Protestants. They wanted to side with Spain and the radical Counter-Reformation. The problem was sidelined rather than solved. Tension simmered beneath the surface of French political life; everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before internecine strife, assassination or noble revolt erupted once again. When Richelieu took over as head of the Council in 1624, after the arrest of La Vieuville on corruption charges, he was only barely the primus inter pares, having ranked lower in office than several other notables. Still tainted in the King’s eyes by his associations with the Queen Mother’s faction, his political position was far from secure. The Queen Mother was also a member of the Council along with four others, so Richelieu could easily be outvoted. His title remained Secretary of State for Commerce and Marine. In the Council Louis XIII sat at the most important meetings and there was only a majority vote in his absence. Intrigue, but also talent and hard work, brought Richelieu to the top. With stealthy resolve he increased his power, planting his creatures in key financial roles. Ultimately it was the lucidity and rational force of his policy documents which brought him to power, allied to the fact that his policies would ultimately mean war. Still in awe of his father’s martial reputation, Louis XIII was always fascinated by weapons and militaria as a youth, and was easily pulled into Mars’s orbit. A gun fanatic, he built a collection of 337 exquisite hand-made firearms. As chief minister, Richelieu quickly defined the main lines of policy in a memorandum to Louis XIII: ‘As long as the Huguenots have a foothold in France the King will never be master of his own house and will never be able to undertake any glorious action abroad … the first and principal objective His Majesty must have is to ruin this party.’ 7 (Domestic stability and accord on terms set by the monarchy was the essential precursor to an aggressive foreign policy. He prepared for the latter in a thorough and professional way, developing an excellent diplomatic corps and even collecting legal documents which would further France’s territorial and dynastic claims.8 In the period 1624–26 Richelieu assumed increasingly weighty diplomatic responsibilities and scored some successes such as arranging the marriage of

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  109 Henrietta Maria to Charles, Prince of Wales, as well as the establishment of cordial contacts with the Swiss Leagues, theoretically a fief of the Empire. Both policies were small stepping stones in his anti-Habsburg plan. The English part of the scheme was to have a difficult genesis; good relations with England, key to removing a prop for the Huguenots and giving France a free hand against the Habsburgs, proved to be elusive. Richelieu dealt in logic; nobody could have predicted the random and madcap impact on French foreign policy and domestic affairs of Europe’s greatest preening egotist, James’s first minister, the Duke of Buckingham. He may have been, in Richelieu’s words, ‘ill-bred, boastful and empty’ but he was the power in the land. Richelieu also underestimated puritan Protestant fervour for the Calvinists and the consequent support enjoyed in Parliament for the Huguenot cause. Richelieu’s strategy for taking on the Habsburg power was to offer encouragement to anti-Habsburg allies, notably the Dutch, Savoy, the Venetians and especially the Swiss Grisons who sat astride the strategic alpine Valtellina Pass between the two Habsburg powers, north and south of the Alps. The breaking of Habsburg hegemony in Europe would be a key aim of French foreign policy. A policy started by Henri IV before his assassination in 1609, it was revived by Richelieu and Henri’s son Louis XIII from 1623. France sought to encourage a strong and independent Bavaria as a counterweight to Habsburg Austria, while hoping to drive a wedge between the Austrian and Spanish branches of the Habsburgs and end their joint Imperium in Europe. France under Richelieu would aim to indirectly attack Spanish interests at every opportunity, especially at trouble spots along the vulnerable Spanish Road to the Netherlands. Such interventions were usually done by proxy but involved some direct operations with French troops on occasions. Maintaining Dutch resistance was also essential because a unified Netherlands under Spanish control would leave France extremely vulnerable to attack; war against the Dutch would pre-occupy France’s enemy. The alliance and clandestine financial support for the Dutch Republic underpinned French policy; its effects were seen soon after the ending of the Spanish-Dutch Truce in 1621 when, in 1624, France secretly joined the Hague alliance to finance Christian of Denmark’s intervention against the Emperor. In 1625 Richelieu backed a Savoyard attack on Genoa, Spain’s key ally and the disembarkation point for troop ships from Spain. While the French had provided 8,000 troops out of the total army of 25,000, the Dutch financed another large portion. After screening off the port, the army settled down to a long siege. Genoese troops and militia who numbered 11,000 behind strong defences epitomised by the star fortress Diamante, were not likely to succumb to an assault. The French fleet also captured three Genoese vessels including a cargo of 650,000 pieces of eight, [gold coinage] as they tried to seal off the port by sea. There was little choice for the Genoese but to call for help from their allies. Spain duly obliged and succeeded in blocking Savoyard and French ambitions. Proud city state Genoa fell under Spanish control.

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110  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 In another indirect foray in the Swiss Valtelline in 1624-26 Richelieu and ally Venice failed to take control of the key valley on the Spanish Road from Habsburg control. The Valley was demilitarised by a papal peace keeping force including the young officer Mazarini. When a 7,000 man Swiss-French army under Marshal d’Estree marched in to the Valtelline in the autumn of 1624, the Papal army did not resist, except briefly at Riva and Chievenna on the WesternMilan end of the valley. France was joined in the invasion by Venetian raised mercenaries including the itinerant German mercenary Hagendorf. There followed desultory fighting against Hapsburg and Papal units. Soldier and everyman of the Thirty Years War, Hagendorf, saw action there under the Venetian flag I enlisted for the Venetians, joining their service, they moved us from one city to another where the quarters were. Thus from Breschia to Peschiera on Lake Garda, into an extremely beautiful fortress under which the lake flowed….In this year 1625, from Verolanuova to again to Brescia…to Val Camonica…from Val Camonica we moved to the Valtelline, where the King of Spain was opposing us. When count Pappenheim arrived, he attacked us mightily with cannons and expelled us from our posts and out of the Valtelline, so we had to retreat back to Tirano [a key town on the apex of the L shaped valley] Then we encamped near Riva and tried to capture the castle. But the Pope’s troops were encamped within, and negotiations began anew……in this year we were disbanded. The Swiss-Valtellina conflict would be settled by the Treaty of Monzon 1626; seemingly a neutral agreement, it favoured the Hapsburgs in practice because their de facto ability to pass through troops remained unfettered. The surprise in these events is the fact that ‘open war’ did not break out between France and Spain. It was certainly a risk to which Richelieu was alive. ‘I shall not emphasize that Spain, pressed to extremity by us might enter its forces into our kingdom of France,’ Richelieu warned Louis, ‘either from the Kingdom of Spain or from Flanders. It is easy to guard against invasion from Spain with small forces because of the lie of the Land.’ [Richelieu memo to Louis XIII] Louis XIII and his chief minister had been taking enormous gambles but in the end their judgment was correct at least in this; Olivarez was not ready for war with France, but he had other methods to bring France to heal. A Huguenot revolt was soon to break out and Olivares supported more assassination plots against Richelieu. Richelieu’s tenure as chief minister was peppered with plots to overthrow and kill him. These plots were always discovered before fruition by Richelieu’s extensive spy and informer network and ruthlessly supressed. A notable example was the assassination plot of 1626, which included much of the senior nobility, Gaston duc d’Orleans and Anne of Austria; an affair co-ordinated by the Duchesse de Chevreuse and her latest lover, Chalais, a close companion of the king, was discovered. Richelieu liked to interrogate conspirators in person, toying with their psyche, goading them, by turns threatening, sarcastic and empathetic;

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  111 he did not need to torture them as his questioning and manner always elicited the truth. Disowned by his lover, Chalais would be horribly executed, reciting his prayers up to the twenty-fourth chop of the blunt blade. Royal authority would be further demonstrated in the Comte de Montmorency-Boutville affair in 1627, in which the young man was executed for too publicly flouting the new law on duelling despite pleas for mercy from all of the aristocracy. Another area of interest for Richelieu was the eastern frontier, where domestic and foreign policy collided. The independent dukedom of Lorraine sat between France and the Rhine, as did the autonomous dukedom of Sedan belonging to the Calvinist Duke de Bouillon. Both principalities had traditionally been allied to France, but domestic noble opposition began to coalesce as both places became foci of plotting and safe boltholes for failed French rebels. The Duchesse de Chavreuse travelled regularly between Paris and Lorraine between bouts of exile, imposed and self-imposed; she schemed and plotted with rebels, English diplomats and Spanish generals and viceroys. Through the 1620s pressure from Richelieu began to ratchet up on these states. Lorraine was inexorably driven into the arms of Spain. After intermittent fighting, the province eventually would be absorbed by Richelieu, in consequence of which a devastating war of resistance would wreak havoc on the province 1634–48. Sedan was persuaded into uneasy compliance; the Duke de Bouillon would surrender Sedan’s independence in due course when he plotted against Richelieu. France fought a war by proxy and subterfuge for the first half of the Thirty Years War, until domestic troubles at court and with the Huguenots were resolved, or at least ameliorated. Until the Huguenot question was settled France was in no position to engage in overseas military adventures. Moreover, Richelieu had to bide his time in order to build up his power base and win over the King to an active anti-Habsburg policy as he sidled over from the Queen’s faction to the King’s. Bitter disputes and splits in the Royal Council with Marie de Medici’s faction over foreign policy also obliged Richelieu to develop his policy slowly. Nevertheless, with every Austrian Habsburg-Bavarian victory over the German Protestants, the urgency of France’s foreign policy strategies increased. Total Habsburg victory in Germany would completely upset the balance of power as well as threatening Dutch independence because of the Republic’s vulnerable eastern border.

The Edict of Restitution 1629

Catholics everywhere became giddy with the prospects of Counter-Reformation and its earthly rewards. The Emperor who had, since 1627 and the meeting of Catholic electors at Mulhausen, adopted crusading Counter-Reformation policies carried forward on the wings of relentless Catholic victories in the 1620s, as the Emperor’s Jesuit confessor, the militant ultramontist Lamormaini remarked on in 1627, ‘the wonderful manner in which the Lord frustrates all the designs and schemes carefully conceived against the emperor and reduces

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112  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 them to nothing is clear to see from his nearly continuous virtually miraculous victories … .’9 Ferdinand’s own fervent piety and hopes were fuelled still more by Lamormaini, his confessor, and by the Jesuit General in Rome, Vitelleschi, who promised 2,500 masses a week in support of the ‘glorious enterprise’.10 Ultra zealots such as the Bishop of Wartenburg, the Bishop of Cologne and Maximilian pressed the Emperor and the ultra faction at court to take aggressive and harsh measures against Protestants, i.e. to exploit military success to mount the CounterReformation; the true faith would be carried forward on the point of a sword. The product of these dreams turned reality was the Edict of Restitution issued on 6 March 1629 which, with legal argument, set out the reasons for the Edict’s purpose which was, on pain of Imperial ban, to take the clock back to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 (and the Passau Compromise of 1552). The Edict’s purpose was to order the restoration of all ecclesiastical properties alienated in the years since, including bishoprics, prelacies, monasteries and convents. Ferdinand’s policies were led first and foremost by his religious passions; nothing else could explain the introduction of the disastrous Edict of Restitution which, while theologically and possibly legally justified, was a policy of such antagonism for the Protestant body politic that it galvanised and united his previously divided enemies. Lamormaini was near the mark when he wrote of the Emperor in 1627, (his) ‘one and only thought, is to restore to the Catholic faith and church his provinces and Kingdoms and all Germany.’11 (Emphasis added) It would also be a vehicle for political control through the use of his military power which would be needed to support his commissioners. Meanwhile Jesuit numbers increased significantly. They were already strongly embedded in Germany before the war began, ‘From foundations at Cologne in 1544, Vienna in 1552, and Ingolstadt in 1556, they expanded into three Jesuit provinces. The Rhine with its headquarters at Cologne counted on close to 600 Jesuits by 1614, and in 1626 it was divided into two provinces, the lower Rhine with 406 members…and the upper Rhine with 434 members…Munich and Ingolstadt numbered 465 members in 1611…….Austrian and Bohemian provinces, the former counting 850 members in 1634, the latter over 600.’ Robert Brierley, The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War, Cambridge 2007,  p.7-9 Pro-French Pope Alexander VII, who succeeded Urban VIII in 1623, was of course supportive of the Edict but he was cautious and his general position was neutral between the Ultra faction at the Imperial court and the moderate politica faction. Wary of the fanatics and the excesses of Lamormaini, the Jesuit confessor to the Emperor, he referred to them as zelanti in his correspondence. His main aim was the reconciliation of France and the Habsburgs to a common Catholic front more in damage limitation and risk reduction against the advance

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  113 of the Protestants than as a crusade against Protestants. Cardinal Klels who had been ousted by Onate’s coup d’etat in 1618 expressed the moderate and practical Catholic viewpoint on the Edict; ‘through it one loses the love for the rulers of the land…(it) will only make people emigrate.’12 Wallenstein had similar opinions. The legal argument against the Emperor’s stance was in effect the same as the practical argument: alienated church properties had been so long under new ownership without legal challenge that the sudden rush to law raised the issues in law of both legitimate expectation and proportionality. The Protestant owners and purchasers of these properties had a right to expect, after such a lapse of time, that they owned them properly, because no notice of contest had been made. Similar to adverse possession in the common law, civil law (Roman Law) in Europe, including Germany, has traditionally recognised acquisition prescription. So, while the Emperor’s and the Catholic Church’s legal claims to title appeared incontrovertible in law, in fact they were not. Even today such cases are difficult and controversial, for example the ‘Berlin Squatters’ case. Ferdinand’s Edict was draconian, ‘absolutist’ and lacking in due process. The Edict’s language is direct and uncompromising, threatening and absolutist in tone: We, Ferdinand, by the grace of God, Holy Roman Emperor etc. are determined for the realization both of the religious and profane peace to despatch our commissioners into the Empire; to reclaim all archbishoprics, bishoprics, prelaces, monasteries, hospitals and endowments which the Catholics possessed at the time of the Treaty of Passau 1552… . we declare herewith that the Religious Peace of 1555 refers only to the Augsburg Confession as it was submitted to our ancestor Emperor Charles V on 25th June 1530; that all other doctrines and sects, whatsoever names they may have, not included in the Peace are forbidden and cannot be tolerated [a direct attack on Calvinism]. Opposition would ‘not only expose them to the Imperial ban and to the immediate loss of all rights … but to the inevitable real execution of that order and be distrained by force.’13 Not just an empty threat, the Emperor appointed commissioners to put the Edict into effect. Like the commissioners used in Bohemia and upper Austria in previous Imperialist acts of oppression, they would hold a licence to call in Imperial troops to enforce the edict.14 So radical and extreme was this measure that the undoing of it against the Counter-Reformation fanaticism of Ferdinand II and his cohort of ultras would take considerable efforts; not just on the battlefield. The Edict envisaged a massive transfer of lands from the patrimony of the Protestant princes to the Roman church, an alien institution in many of the regions to be affected. In Württemberg, for example, the duke would lose half of his patrimony. In Ferdinand’s mind he was doing God’s will and upholding his duty as Advocatus

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114  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Ecclesiae, defender of the faith in accord with the historic pact with the Papacy which was the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire. In becoming a bitter theological and ideological war, as well as a war about territory, status and money, the chances of peace in 1630 receded ever further into the distance. Going into peace negotiations with Manichean dogmas is hardly the mindset that produces peace. Moreover, as the issues widened to include constitutional reform to stop such future acts of arbitrary and absolutist power, peace and the trust that must come first became harder still. His efforts eventually led to the Congress of Cologne in 1636 which the Emperor gladly agreed to participate in while the Spanish party of the dynastic alliance dragged its heels. But by the time some envoys had been established French war mobilisation was well in hand and the interest in a peace quite slight. Jesuits, of whom the fanatical Lamormaini was a prime example, would become the ecclesiastical backbone of the Counter-Reformation, of the revanchist papacy of Gregory XV, who strongly supported and encouraged Ferdinand’s CounterReformation. By 1615 there were 13,100 Jesuit priests, highly trained, educated and motivated. Confessors to all the Catholic courts of Europe, Jesuits aimed at power and influence; they were the pastoral wing of the victorious Catholic armies. Apart from power, education was the tool of influence by which they sought to control and convert. They took over the universities and their printing presses at Prague and Olomouc from the Protestant academics, many of whom were executed. Persuasive force ran in tandem with the sword and the power of Imperial patronage. They truly became the bogeymen of European Protestants, because of their enormous capability, power and fanatical ruthlessness. Several hundred thousand Bohemians fled before the Catholic terror.  Success expanded the horizons of the Habsburg alliance; with Wallenstein’s aid and some vessels sent by King Sigismund of Poland, Olivares even looked to build a Habsburg navy on the Baltic to smash Dutch Baltic commerce which accounted for about 90 per cent of their trade. In Poland, Sigismund, married to a Habsburg, saw the success as a God-sent signal for him to re-conquer his patrimony in Sweden and restore the Catholic Church. Sigismund readily contributed his few warships to the nascent Spanish-Imperial fleet in the port of Wismar. Already dominant before the war, the Habsburgs in 1627 were looking for a revanchist expansion rather than the status quo. If Olivares could build a powerful fleet on the Baltic and invade the defenceless Eastern provinces of the Dutch Republic from Imperial territory, the war would be over.

Louis XIII

The King’s psychology, his emotional instability and neurosis, was shaped by his love-hate relationship with his cold mother. Marie de Medici did not especially like her first born, but she doted on Gaston, the second child, known to contemporaries as Monsieur, the famously spoilt, dangerously capricious ‘spare’: ‘Monsieur had always been her favourite’15 noted his daughter Madame

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  115 de Montpensier in her memoirs. Louis had looked to his father with fear and admiration, but when Henri IV was assassinated at the age of nine the feelings were transferred to his bodyguard Luynes, the low-born noble and falconry expert whom Louis looked up to as father, friend, and protector. But there had also insecurity in regard to his father’s affection which had to be shared with the King’s bastard children. Luynes had decided psychopathic tendencies, even before his murder of Concini in the coup d’état which ended the Regency of Marie de Medici and brought Louis to power. Luynes was no fool, but he was hardly the person to inculcate education and knowledge. Anticipating Freud, his doctor recorded Louis’s dreams, including one about Lyunes dressed ‘as a Swiss guard with yellow cut off knickers, a fat green cod piece and a high ruff like that of a woman … .’16 Louis’s sexuality would be confused. Awkward and gauche through his life, Louis’s education was deliberately curtailed by his mother and the dreadful Leonora, his governess. In effect, he was infantilised. The reason is clear: Marie de Medici wanted to incapacitate him as a ruler of the country so that she herself could rule and be the indispensable executive even after he came of age. Aided by the astute de Luynes he became aware of the dangers from his mother and from Leonora and Concini; he played the game back, explaining that he ‘played the child’ so as to disarm his tormentors. When his bloody palace coup was eventually played out, his enemies, including his mother were taken completely by surprise. Leonora was executed. Second son Gaston became the irresponsible prince Hal of the regime; escaping the constraints of the palace he and his gang of young bucks and aristocronies would light up the haunts of Paris with rowdy drinking and womanising. Gaston had the same rumbustious temperament as his father without his intellect; he was not without charm and charisma. Unlike his brother, he was always popular, with the people, with the grandees and their wild scions, with the Parisian mob and with the Parlementaires. He acted as a magnet for baronial flatterers who reinforced his high opinion of himself; for many of the grandees, France had the wrong king and usurpation would become an on-off project for both Gaston and his mother. Along with Louis’s mother, Marie de Medici, Monsieur would be a constant thorn in the side of his brother, a rebel who could not be executed and who exploited the moral hazard of his blood ties and rank to participate in innumerable plots against the regime. He was a coward and a faithless friend; his cronies paid in blood while capricious Gaston skipped free. Luynes trained Louis in hunting and fantasy military role-plays whereby Louis could ape the martial virtues of his father. Mock-up fortresses were constructed; Louis would endlessly play soldiers. He collected weapons, especially firearms, obsessively. Probably the largest collection in Europe, his fully catalogued assembly of firearms, mostly exquisitely decorated wheellock pistols, numbered 337. He was ‘encouraging French gunmakers to greater efforts to perfect their

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116  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 art’. Gunmaker Marin le Bourgeois, for example, is credited with developing the flintlock mechanism.17 Such martial fantasies, and the hero worship of his father, Henri IV, led him naturally to favour Richelieu’s anti-Habsburg ‘gallic’ Foreign policy. Louis’s XIII neurosis and psychological problems were added to significantly by his marriage to Anne of Austria on 28 November 1615. Too young and uninstructed, the consummation failed, leading to cruel jokes around the court which had Louis exclaiming, ‘Look out! I’m about to go and piss in her body!’18 For the scheming Queen Mother the difficulties of the marriage were a boon ‘and Queen Marie de Medici,’ observed de Motville, the Queen’s lady in waiting, ‘being convinced that, to hold control over the young prince, the young princess must not be on good terms with him, intrigued with such perseverance and success in creating misunderstandings between them.’19 It took a further four years before the marriage was consummated; his amorous relations with Anne remained intermittent throughout his reign. Strangely, sexual congress with Anne, including the eventual conception of Louis XIV, occurred at times of maximum political stress. The contrast with the bawdy confident masculinity of Henri IV could not be starker. Louis’ fragile psyche was underpinned by Richelieu, whose clear grasp of policy, control of the nobility, management of the constant destabilising plots and schemes, and grip on the administration provided the backbone to government. Richelieu served the capricious king with utter loyalty and total deference. Richelieu was the unctuous minister who propagated new ideas on ‘absolutism’. ‘I have not the words to acknowledge the honour that your majesty does me in all respect. What consoles me sire is that …. healthy or unwell … I will have no thought, movement or action which does not have your service as its aim.’20 A bi-sexual Louis also enjoyed an ambiguous relationship with several young women, including the future and infamous Duchesse de Chevreuse, ‘an early exemplar of the attractive, pleasure loving, wilful, and quarrelsome favourite type [men and women] that led Louis XIII time and again to distraction, love spats and unhappiness’.21 Louis was a bi-polar character, with a bi-polar sexuality, alternating between bouts of depression and lassitude, with bursts of activity in hunting and military grandstanding. With an unstable duality and mood swings he was a capricious, cruel and dangerous master to serve. As de la Rochefoucauld commented in his memoires, Louis ‘desired to be mastered but cavilled when he was’. Richelieu came to dominate the king’s psyche, though he was never certain of this and suffered agonies of doubt and nervous exhaustion in consequence. For Richelieu, ‘maintaining the King’s support was a matter of political survival: plots, conspiracies and other domestic intrigues … placed him in a state of constant tension.’22 Louis was likewise threatened by the same plots: he needed Richelieu with his secret policeman’s brain and spy network to maintain his rule

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  117 against internal and outside threats. Richelieu’s position was helped by his sheer competence and the power of the logic, which he expressed in clear memoranda, for decisions in which the options were carefully set out, but ‘guided’ toward Richelieu’s desired policy. Richelieu was careful never to presume royal assent, realising that this could be fatal. Insecure and inadequate, Louis had to feel that he was in charge. Another reason for Richelieu’s popularity with the king was his success; as Louis noted as early as 1626, ‘everything, thank God, has succeeded since you have been here [in my council].’23 After the triumphs in 1628–1630 over the Huguenots, the English, Lorraine, Savoy and the Spanish, his position was unassailable, despite the best efforts of the dévot faction. Louis only really had some momentary doubts about Richelieu in 1642 after a period without important military success, when the social costs of their policies were becoming all too visible. De La Rochefoucauld’s views were typical of much of the ultramontist and rebellious aristocracy. King Louis XIII … had a feeble health, he was severe, defiant, hating the world; he wanted to be ruled and was anxious to be ruled. He had a spirit of detail applied only to little things, and what he knew of the war suited more to a mere officer than to a king.24 Some of this is the overwrought polemic of the opposition factions but the last point has a strong ring of truth; Louis obsessed about detail and would be more angry and intolerant over a parade-ground point of protocol (as de Bussy Rabutin discovered when he led a parade on foot rather than horseback) than if a general had lost an army. The King undoubtedly developed with his favourite minister a sort of bunker mentality in the face of constant plots and rebellions, allied with the danger of the Habsburgs who inspired so much of the political opposition.

Cardinal Richelieu: Machiavelli’s disciple

Cardinal Richelieu was one of the great charismatic political phenomena thrown up by the chaos of early modern Europe. Richelieu transcended his religious calling to manipulate the levers of diplomacy and war as one of the great masters of modern realpolitik. If he comes across as the ultimate model in sinister Machiavellian arts, it is hardly surprising: he never hid his admiration for the Italian political philosopher and the methods that Machiavelli espoused. As defined by Isaiah Berlin’s study of Machiavelli’s Originality, Richelieu believed that only under strong rational government could a society prosper.25 Canon Louis Machon, Richelieu’s protégé, even wrote an Apology for Machiavelli. This was not the only intellectual influence on the highly educated churchman who was also familiar with Bodin’s ideas on absolute monarchy. The concept of raison d’état, the phrase forever linked with the cardinal’s time in power, derived

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118  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 from the work of Giovanni Botero, Della Ragion di Stato of 1589, translated and published as Raison et gouvernment d’état in 1599. Richelieu’s ruthlessness also produced its own intellectual clique, including his personal librarian and scholar Gabriel Naodé whose book Coup d’état (1639) also helped justify Richelieu’s more dastardly actions such as kidnapping, blackmail and murder: ‘bold and extraordinary actions which princes are bound to execute in difficult and well-nigh desperate affairs, against common law, without even observing any order or form of justice, setting particular interests at risk, for the sake of the public good.’26 Perhaps France’s President Mitterrand had these words in mind when he authorised the bombing attack on the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand. Born in 1585, Richelieu was descended from a noble family of middling status but with a history of reliable service to the monarch in military affairs. The desire to promote the strength and glory of the family was common in the age and in this Richelieu was both typical and successful. On his rise to power, Richelieu displayed cunning and patience, being able to dissemble, flatter or play the sycophant as circumstances determined. He was rarely caught out by events, and when he was he had taken good care to prepare his ‘insurance’ schemes by maintaining amicable relations with the other side. He also learned how to quietly and imperceptibly shift allegiances in order to gravitate to power, sidling across from Marie de Medici to Louis XIII through the 1620s. His rise to power started with his appointment by Marie as her counsellor. Despite providing secret information to the king on the queen’s activities, Richelieu was still suspect as late as 1624. Louis held grudges and said of his future minister, ‘There’s a man who would dearly love to be in my council; but I can’t agree to it after all he has done against me.’27 Nonetheless the gradual ingratiation with Louis through 1621–23 was to reap its eventual reward. He joined the council in August 1624, having become a minister in April of the same year. It did not take long for Richelieu to capture the king’s high regard. When in power he knew how to keep it. The Venetian ambassador commented, ‘It seems for certain that the new structure will be more difficult to overthrow than the preceding one.’28 Richelieu also supplied the king’s needs for handsome young companions. Richelieu had an intuitive understanding of the mechanics and psychology of power. He understood that political legitimacy was a precious commodity; that it only derived from the king and that it could be used by focus and strength of purpose to dispose of the culture of aristocratic opposition and rebellion that had become endemic since the wars of religion. In his memoirs, Richelieu wrote, ‘I recognised in the course of this conflict [the Queen Mother against Louis 1617–19] the weakness of the party drawn from separate camps, which no internal bond except the like-minded resolve to overturn the government.’29 Over the years he formed important personal relationships with his ‘cabinet’ of advisers: these included Friar Joseph, the Capuchin, whom he had employed as

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  119 a political propagandist and flysheet writer while serving Marie de Medici. For a man characterised as a cynical, sinister, calculating, and ruthless power player, Richelieu had one extraordinary personal weakness; according to a confident Bois-Robert, ‘his eminence liked to laugh.’30 He would also mischievously tease or play pranks on his coterie. Enjoying the company of young women, he doted playfully on his niece and others, even flirting with arch-enemy the Duchesse de Chevreuse. Bois-Robert’s lampooning of Spanish hero Le Cid must have been particularly enjoyable, even if Richelieu did not have the benefit of watching Charlton Heston with rigor mortis riding into the sunset along the Costa del Sol. Mazarin’s rise to power owed much to his talent and intelligence, but also to the fact that Richelieu was charmed by his humour. Richelieu liked to surround himself with a sort of ‘menagerie of talent’. One of the great scholars of the age, Grotius, the international jurisprudence and legal philosopher, who fled to asylum in Paris, was utterly reviled by Richelieu: Grotius was pompously humourless, coldly rational and intellectual, whereas Mazarin, his most famous acquisition, was cultured, charming and wittily intelligent in his political analysis. Mazarin made Richelieu laugh. When Oxenstierna, another humourless automaton, made Grotius Sweden’s ambassador in Paris, Richelieu attempted unsuccessfully to have him removed. Richelieu appreciated humour and charm; like Oxenstierna, Grotius had neither. A febrile and sensitive man, humour was Richelieu’s relief from chronic stress; he even deployed mischievous ‘gallows’ humour or irony when playing with his victims. Richelieu also developed a taste for pomp and luxury in public, but for reasons of state. He used his position to amass a considerable fortune of 20 million livres. His love of power and luxury, and the development of palaces such as the château at Reuil-Malmaison bought in 1633, had a political point. The château, rebuilt by the cardinal, was bought for 105,000 livres. Another 780,000 livres were spent on it; its superb buildings and formal gardens can still be visited. Richelieu’s display of the trappings of power bolstered his status in an age when such symbolism was important; Richelieu was in effect saying to the great nobility, ‘the state is greater than even you’. It was the beginning of absolutism and the primacy of the state over local and feudal interests of the aristocracy. Government needed technocrats selected on merit. Richelieu’s extravagant tastes contrast with the frugality of his personal life, his simple furnished apartment and his limited consumption of staple foods, usually taken in private. As a Renaissance man he had refined cultural and intellectual tastes; the Académie Francaise was his creation. He employed many of its early members in writing government propaganda, the output of which was prolific during his rule. Except where raison d’état demanded ruthlessness, Saint Augustine’s ideas on mercy were practised, most notably in his post-victory dealings with the Huguenots. No doubt Richelieu had read Francisco de Victoria, who deemed

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120  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 that ‘victory should be pursued with moderation and Christian humility’.31 (De Jure belli Hispanorum in Barbaros, 1532). In his will he left money for the conversion of Huguenots to the true faith. He was not slow to kill Chalais, Bouteville, Montmorency, Cinq Mars, Maréchal Marillac and many others. He would have killed many more, had not the nobles du sang been untouchable: they were too well connected to the king to be assassinated. Richelieu was a master secret policeman. He used torture, tricks or ruthless cross-examination to wring confessions from his victims or accusations against strings of other co-conspirators, maliciously toying with their fragile psychologies, exploiting their loneliness, fear, or insecurities by playing off one prisoner against another. He destroyed Chalais’ confidence by telling the young man that his mistress, the duchess had dumped and disowned him. Or he used money to turn witnesses, to buy informers, and plant spies both at home and abroad. Kidnapping enemies was a favourite tactic, though on advice from Father Joseph, he would moderate his enthusiasm for this method. Foreign nationals in influential posts were bribed, such as key members of the Dutch Estates. He had an unerring ability to spot trouble in advance, to buttonhole potential conspirators, to turn them into informants, by bribery, threats, promises of advancement or blackmail. During the siege of Arras (1641), he called French Huguenot colonel Count Gassion back to Paris to warn him not to become involved in plots; he was given a diamond ring by Richelieu as a token of the cardinal’s esteem but, though swearing loyalty, he would only do so ‘without intrigue and without betrayal’.32 Richelieu’s intelligence network was unsurpassed. It had to be, because without it he would have been assassinated. He was to Louis what Walsingham was to Elizabeth I. As an administrator he was a hard worker and had an eye for detail; he also exercised meticulous control on military affairs down to methods of recruitment, provisions, promotions and appointments of senior and junior officers. Although he had a good grasp of military matters, he never resolved the structural weaknesses in its finance and organisation, nor did he align grand strategy with the resource capacity of the nation. French military efforts were always overextended on a multiplicity of strategic objectives. Distrustful of the Generals from the higher nobility he would pair them against his loyal creatures. but this system failed to enhance military efficiency and neither did his use of ‘intendants’ to act as government commissioners, agents and political commissars. On the question of the need for reform, he would have agreed with the dévot opposition, but war with Spain was a priority, which could not be postponed. He simply added to the ramshackle system, feudal in both finance and military organisation, and improvised with ad hoc methods of money-raising which were inefficient and ultimately self-defeating. Absolutist control was attempted through the use of intendants who accompanied armies, as well as the state

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  121 direction and negotiation of supply contracts. Neither policy was very effective. Intendants were roundly detested by professional soldiers such as Turennne. Richelieu’s mental moods were also aggravated by ill health, notably neuralgia and migraines, and from 1621 increased attacks of skin ulcers and haemorrhoids. In moments of stress he would often burst into tears.

Duchesse de Chevreuse

One of the most remarkable characters of the time, the famous duchess, nicknamed La Chevrette, became the most fatale of femmes fatales. She acted for many years as the cipher and co-ordinator of the noble opposition to the rule of Richelieu and as an agent of Spain at the heart of the French realm. Had she succeeded in any of her many deadly endeavours over three decades, the history of Europe would have been very different. Being at the centre of every plot against the regime, she often came close to achieving her aims. She helped to hobble France’s power and gave great encouragement to her enemies, in particular Spain, but also to the Imperialists, England and Lorraine on other occasions. Born into a great noble family, Marie de Rohan-Montbazon married the King’s favourite and chief minister the Duc de Luynes. He died in 1621, and with some haste she married the Duc de Chevreuse of the Guise and Lorraine families. Known to her circle as ‘La Chevrette’, she was most immediately notable for her ravishing beauty: but it was not beauty alone that set her apart. Charisma, that most elusive of qualities, had settled on her in abundance. She oozed elegance, sexuality, wicked wit and gaiety. Her entrancing eyes transfixed and seduced any man who looked at her: women too. Not just a tease, she was extravagantly promiscuous and fickle, taking new lovers before discarding old ones. A contemporary, Tallemant, wrote that she was ‘Pretty, mischievous, quick-witted’. Flirtation, seduction, and politics mixed with general malevolence and a wicked wit. According to de Motville, her rival for the confidence of the Queen, ‘her own gay and lively humour, … turned the most serious things of the greatest consequence into matters for jest and laughter’.33 She even beguiled Richelieu and enjoyed a dalliance with King Louis. Despite that, she became mistress and head of Queen Anne’s household, a post she did not occupy for long, because Richelieu removed her for being a morally and politically unreliable companion. She dabbled in risky behaviour of all sorts and was ‘wholly given up to these vain amusements’.34 While her removal was obviously a sensible and reasonable decision for the interests of state, from this point her hatred of Richelieu knew no bounds. The rest of her life was dedicated to bringing him down and indeed murdering him on behalf of disaffected nobility and the dévot pro-Spain party, to whom Spanish Queen Anne of Austria naturally belonged. One escapade which involved sliding on the highly-polished floor of the palace ballroom led to the pregnant Anne crashing into a balustrade so heavily that she lost her baby.35 Louis was beyond

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122  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 furious; securing a dynasty was one of the first duties of kingship. Having gone to the ‘distasteful’ effort of conception he would have to try again. Always the centre of attention, for her the court was a great game, by turns amusing and deadly serious. A natural rebel, she fixed her sights early on at the wreck of Louis’s life, his marriage, his reign, and his policies. The removal of Richelieu was a natural corollary. The exact origins of her venom are unclear and may have been her rejection by Louis; in any event, his destruction would be her lifelong work, obsession and passion. She was known at court for ‘her spicy taunts’ told against the Cardinal.36 ‘La Chevrette’, travelling to London with Henrietta’s entourage, was a huge hit in the capital. Returning to France, she then became the object of passion of the young Comte de Chalais. There followed the Chalais plot involving Gaston, after which Charles IV of Lorraine became her lover, offering her sanctuary in exile. ‘She will destroy this young prince’, Richelieu is reported to have said. 37 She did. Becoming a key member of the opposition she would hatch a plot with another lover, the English ambassador Lord Holland and the Duke of Buckingham who she encouraged to seduce the Queen; probably unsuccessfully but not for want of trying by the outrageous English fop. Her machinations were famously revealed when Richelieu kidnapped Montagu, the British ambassador to Brussels, along with his correspondence. For the Duchesse though, the passion of the political chase was inseparable from passion. Cardinal Retz, himself a leading dévot conspirator, said of her ‘She abandoned herself to politics because she abandoned herself to everything which pleased him whom she loved …  . Never did anyone pay less heed to dangers and never had a woman more contempt for scruples and for duties.’38 Retz’s comments are unfair, as if she were a mere chameleon for the views of her lovers; in fact the reverse was true. It was she who had a clear political programme; she used men, a fact admitted eventually by de La Rochefoucauld, one of her smitten admirers; writing in his memoires he said of her ‘Madame de Chevreuse had a great deal of wit, ambition, and beauty’, adding that ‘she was gallant, lively, bold, enterprising; … she almost always brought misfortune to the persons she engaged.’39 Having fallen out with her for her faithlessness and lack of regard for old friends, he would later go on to write, ‘Madame de Chevreuse forgot, in her exile, so easily all that I had done for her.’40 Her enemies knew where the danger lay: as Mazarin would say, ‘France only enjoyed political stability when she was not there.’41 She haunted Louis’s thoughts and fears for his country even on his deathbed. When she was eventually removed, France’s allies rejoiced.

The concept of frontiers and contrasting world views of ‘devot’ and Gallicans

As the concept of state developed, new ideas of ‘frontiers’ and ‘borders’ were becoming a matter of importance in international politics; the concept of frontiers can be traced to the late sixteenth century. Richelieu’s propagandist

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  123 and cartographer, Father Philippe Labbe, developed such ideas on behalf of his master, who sought to rationalise his territorial and frontier objectives: the idea that mountains were ‘natural fortifications’ was already current with Labbe and others from 1634 when war was declared on Spain, and would have informed the move to clip off Spain’s Roussillon above the Pyrenees.42 Richelieu’s testament noted that ‘It was the goal of my ministry to restore to Gaul the limits that nature has traced for her.’ An interesting sidelight on this text is the reference to Gaul, no doubt harking back to Vercingetorix. Ideas and concepts of frontiers emerged rapidly from the end of the 16th century along with concepts of statehood. It was implicit in the Empire’s ‘military Frontier’ and the Dutch fortress line. Frontier zones which had been fluid in medieval Europe, were a matter for local, often cross border, aristocratic magnates, started to become the responsibility of the new absolutist and centralised ‘Kingly state’. Political thinkers Grotius and Oetinger writing in the early 17th century, developed the idea respectively of ‘ fines naturales’ and a god given divide between nations by means of ‘natural’ borders. Increasingly these concepts were being reinforced by variances in race, language and religion. Luther had used the word Grenze rather than the vaguer word ‘mark’ (or March): the word ‘ frontierre’ which had had a military meaning in the 15th century developed by the early 17th century into the more modern meaning being formed by proto-nation states.43 The devot faction held an essentially borderless, medieval and decentralised world view based on feudal concepts, aristocratic grandees, and the universalism of the Catholic faith under Pope and Emperor. Richelieu’s Gallicist world view became oriented towards the ‘geopolitical frontier’ and central state control of defined territories, to be achieved, if necessary, with Protestant alliances; anathema to the devots. When Richelieu decided to fight the Spanish in Italy, furious Devot leader Cardinal Bérulle intoned ‘that this state will be punished if it does not avail itself of the means that God has put in our hands for the extermination of heresy.’44 For Richelieu, consolidation of the frontier defined his absolutist state. Stability and modernisation in France required the suppression of all religious factionalism.

The Mantuan War and the dismissal of Wallenstein

In June 1630, at the diet of Regensburg, Ferdinand II was faced with a most acute political crisis. With Germany now in his grip he was perhaps surprised to face enormous headwinds generated by his success. Complaints had been pouring in from all over the Empire about the proposed Edict of Restitution, about the behaviour of Imperial soldiery, about forced contributions, and the arrogance and over-mighty pretensions of Wallenstein. Despite his dominant military position Ferdinand was determined to exploit his advantages and secure his succession by having his son Ferdinand elected ‘King of the Romans’, and capitalise on backing for his entry into

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124  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 the Mantuan War and in support of Spain. However, such was the anger of the Diet members and the bile and jealousy felt by Maximilian towards Wallenstein that they would only agree to the election if the Emperor dismissed his commander-in-chief. To this he agreed. Maximilian had played a decisive role; his flirtations with Richelieu through determined French diplomacy over the previous five years had stoked fear that he might be detached from the Habsburg alliance. He also demanded further recompense for his military efforts. All these factors and the threat to the succession were crucial to the Emperor’s decision. The Imperial decision to remove Wallenstein was made on 13 August, but only on 7 September 1629 did councillors von Questenberg and von Werdenberg travel to Memmingen, where Wallenstein was holding court. Wallenstein feigned happiness to have been relieved of the onerous responsibilities, but the Emperor’s decision was disastrous for both men: the unintended consequences had wide ramifications. A proud man, Wallenstein had been humiliated and embittered by the ingratitude of the Emperor, with whom he had never established a true personal relationship. And to cap the hiatus, the Emperor did not even secure the election to King of the Romans for his son. Wallenstein’s banker, de Witte, upon whom the entire Imperial army edifice rested, went bankrupt upon news of the dismissal as his creditors called in loans. He committed suicide. While the Imperial army’s logistics chain did not immediately unravel, the military system had been damaged because supplies would only be forthcoming against cash. The Edict of Restitution that was passed by the Catholic majority at the Diet was a disastrous mistake on the part of the Emperor because, by opening the Pandora’s Box left by the Peace of Augsburg, he made sure of revolt by Calvinists and Lutherans alike. Protestant princes were faced with handing over the religious property which they had appropriated since 1555. So much was at stake financially that they had to rebel, and the Emperor’s action drove together bitter enemies. Oxenstierna, who knew Germany very well, put his finger on the dynamics of Protestant politics: ‘The princes and the officers here have no concern for the public interest, beyond mere words; but in truth those who have ecclesiastical lands in their territories may grab them; others, how they may get their hands on abbeys, convents and estates, and anything that is going.’45 Apart from Wallenstein’s dismissal, the other major mistake was one committed jointly by the Emperor and Maximilian. In an extraordinary show of hubris, with a new Swedish enemy at the gates there was an agreement at the Diet to reduce Imperial forces by 40,000 from over 120,000, and Bavarian forces by 10,000 down to 20,000. What was most extraordinary, the culmination of the policy errors on all sides in the Habsburg camp, was that, in the face of invasion from Sweden, the Diet was deliberating troop reduction. Both the Emperor and Maximilian of Bavaria had lost touch with reality, and both had underestimated the Swedish threat. Equally calamitous was the immediate

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  125 ruination of the financial and logistical structure of the Imperial army, which was already tottering under the burden of debt and increasing reluctance of creditors to supply more. In Madrid, Olivares was astonished and disappointed by the removal of the man whom he regarded as the key to victory; he had not been consulted. Moreover, the mistake was compounded by Ferdinand’s reaction to the Italian crisis. Olivares was pressing for a return favour; when the Mantuan dispute arose the Emperor was less concerned about the situation than Olivares, who was fearful of French intrusion in Italy. The Spanish Road might be blocked by Mantua’s possession of Casale which lay astride the road from Tortona to Milan. A Frenchman, the Duc de Nevers, was the successor to Gonzaga’s Mantuan principality: he admitted fealty to Ferdinand but provoked the Emperor by raising an army, marching towards Casale and scheming with Venice. Spain had already sent an army under the great Spinola to besiege Casale, and the French were debouching from the Maritime Alps to go to Casale’s relief. Spinola soon died of the plague. At the same time an Imperial army of 30,000, plus 6,000 cavalry under the command of generals Collaltro and Aldringen, duly crossed the Alps to besiege Mantua at the eastern end of the Po. Collaltro was formerly a member of the Imperial War Council, and jealous armchair critic of Wallenstein. On the march to Mantuan the Imperial army brushed aside some opposition from a small field army of 7,000 Venetian troops sent to support 4,000 French, Italian and Swiss troops (also supplied by Venice with a subsidy of 70,000 ducats) under Charles Nevers. At Regensburg, brilliant French diplomacy secured a stunning triple victory. The Empire had reduced the size of the army, sacked Wallenstein under pressure from Maximilian, and Poland, thanks to the French-brokered truce, was out of the war. Gustavus was free to intervene in Germany to maintain France’s war by proxy. Richelieu in his Political Testament commented with self-satisfaction that his policies had ‘to please Bavaria …(and) helped these princes depose Wallenstein from command of the armies of the Empire (which helped not a little to slow down the affairs of his master)’.46 Wallenstein had chafed in frustration in early 1630, understanding the geopolitical issues arising in Italy and the Netherlands, and the links to the Emperor’s domestic political agenda; he wrote to Collaltro ‘all of the enemies of the House of Austria have made peace among themselves and united to defend Nevers [over the Mantuan succession] … . If the Spanish had not attacked Nevers then France would not have become involved and nor would the Venetians.’47 Again in February, ‘both majesties would gain far more by turning their armies against the Dutch.’48 With his unerring strategic sense Wallenstein realised that the way to win the war was by the conquest of the Dutch Republic, which could be done by an attack on the Republic’s weak eastern flank, the chance to do so by naval attacks in the Baltic having passed. In April 1630 Wallenstein railed against the wishful thinking and complacency at court in Vienna; ‘they [the

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126  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Emperor’s advisers] believe the situation to be what they would like it to be, and think about recatholisation and not about recruitment.’49 The result of the Mantuan war was a disaster for the Emperor and for Spain. The Imperial army was decimated by plague during the fetid summer spent in encampments round Mantua, in the swampy miasma of the Po Delta. Collaltro died of the plague. Mantua was destroyed by plague too and occupied. When the threat of Gustavus combined with the defection of Saxony became too great, the Emperor had to make a separate peace at Cherasco with which the Spanish were obliged to comply because Mantua was the Emperor’s possession. Olivarez’s great Italian gambit faced stalemate on the battlefield but he was defeated by diplomacy when the emperor was persuaded to quit the Manutan war. On 13 September 1630 French diplomats, representatives of Savoy, and the Pope, met at the besieged Castle of Casale. The Pope’s representative was Mazzarin. Amid rumours of an imminent peace treaty, they hammered out one of the most bizarre truces in history, which typified the convoluted and clever style of the Papal delegate. The French would hand over the city to the Spanish besiegers while continuing to occupy the citadel. The Truce would run until 15 October and if by that date the relieving army had not arrived, Toiras, the commandant of the garrison, would have to hand over the citadel as well. Unusually another part of the agreement, in a reversal of the norms of war, required the besiegers to provide the besieged with food. Umberto Eco in his novel The island of the day before, lampoons the Truce agreement, ‘This was not waging war, it was playing dice, interrupting the game when the opponent had to go and urinate.’ 50 In reality all sides needed the agreement, the French to buy time and the Spanish to get shelter in the town for an army on the point of disintegration and infested with plague in its fetid encampment. With Spain’s famed commander Spinola dying it seemed the best deal on offer. He died on 25 September. The Spanish were playing for time too. A fullscale battle outside Casale between the fully-arrayed French and Spanish armies may well have sparked the comprehensive war which was only just avoided. Colonel Diodati describes what happened at Casale: ‘ We were standing in full battle order and Piccolomini had already had his horse shot from under him, when Mazarin appeared, bringing with him the peace [concluded at Regensburg on 13 October]. The generals on both sides dismounted and embraced one another. To sum it all up, “pax vobis”!’51 As the opening shots of the battle spattered the ground, Mazarini had galloped through the closing ranks of the two armies and into history, waving a piece of paper and announcing the Peace of Cherasco (1629) negotiated by Friar Joseph. This allowed for recognition of the Mantuan succession to a Frenchman and the withdrawal of the Spanish army to Milan and the Imperial army back to Germany. Casale was relieved. It remained French-garrisoned to the end of the war. In the process, Savoy was subdued and turned back to French loyalty; most

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  127 importantly Richelieu gained the fortress of Pinerolo on the Maritime Alps frontier with Savoy, which provided France with a secure magazine and entry point for future invasions. Armed with this triumph, Richelieu returned his attention to the final crushing of the Huguenot state by the siege and capture of Montauban; the Huguenots were forced into abject surrender of all their political and military privileges. Their political autonomy was completely abrogated; the physical representation of their defeat was the pulling down of the walls of all their towns, cities and garrisons and the forbidding of Reformed Church (Calvinist) convocations, except by express permission of the king. However, to the dismay and fury of the Ultramontists in the Queen Mother’s faction, his actions against the Huguenots stopped there; he accepted them as equal citizens who were allowed to follow their religion in freedom. Cherasco was the first major crack in the façade of Habsburg unity. The remnants of the Imperial army were sent north, hurrying back across the Alps in a race to reinforce Tilly in the face of the Swedish and Saxon onslaught.

France, Italy, and the Huguenots and the development of French foreign policy

Richelieu’s resumption of the war against the Huguenots in 1627 focused on destroying the main bastions of their power in the south-west as a precursor to mopping up the Montauban region in the south. The ultimate prize was la Rochelle, the powerfully defended seaport, and true centre of Huguenot and de Rohan power. The siege drew in the English intervention under the malign influence of the Duke of Buckingham, whose vanity and pride had been piqued by supposed slights acquired during his vainglorious and scandalous efforts to seduce the French Queen, Anne of Austria, during and after the English match negotiations for Henrietta Maria. Embellishment of history provided us with de Rochefoucauld’s memoires of lost diamond studs, which Dumas turned into the story of d’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers. Largescale land-sea operations and siege warfare ensued at la Rochelle and the key island of Isle de Ré; behind the scenes was another aristocratic plot organised by the Duchesse de Chevreuse, Lorraine, Savoy and her new lover, Lord Holland, the English ambassador. As usual, Spain was also involved with the plot and Olivares provided arms and subsidies to the Duc de Rohan’s Huguenot rebels. However, Richelieu’s victory and the defeat of the English, whose leader Buckingham was soon after assassinated, freed Richelieu politically and strategically. Louis was decisive in agreeing to key shifts in power and appointments. In 1627, he wrote to Richelieu: It has been a long time since I told you that it was necessary to strengthen my council. It was you who always hesitated, out of fear for changes, but it is no longer the time to mull over what persons may say. It is enough that

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128  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 it is I who will this … . I want those who are on my council to get along with you.52 Apart from a leaning to aggressive anti-Habsburg foreign policy, the king had decisively committed to Richelieu’s political status and his hard line on state discipline. He had come to realise that his own survival required Richelieu’s. Richelieu was able to intervene decisively in the war of the Mantuan succession in Italy in 1627 and 1628, leading armies in person to prevent the capture of the key fortress of Casale and restore a French nobleman to his Mantuan patrimony in the face of Habsburg opposition. Soon their leader, the Duc de Rohan, would be employed to lead an expeditionary force to Switzerland to take back control of the strategically key Valtellina. Unbound now by domestic constraints, Richelieu was able to focus on his foreign policy agenda. However, his switch to an openly active anti-Habsburg policy was anathema to the Ultramontists; this led quickly to a dramatic denouement between the Cardinal, the Queen Mother and the King who was recovering from a serious illness.

‘Day of the Dupes’: Three in a room – Turning point in the fight against Habsburg Dominion

The political crisis in the French court, which had been brewing for several years, was precipitated by the illness of Louis XIII; the disease had flared up after an angry interview with his mother about the cardinal on 22 September 1630 in Lyons, where Louis had returned from campaigning with Richelieu to avoid the plague in Italy. The king’s condition progressively worsened and by the 30th it seemed that death was imminent. At his deathbed the rivals for power, the Queen, Gaston his brother, and the Cardinal knelt down together in prayer. It is possible that their prayers were different. As the king lay dying, the enemies of the cardinal plotted for a quick coup d’état and assassination. Gaston would take over; the guards would be ordered to murder Richelieu. Richelieu was of course fully aware of what was at stake through his spies who knew all the rumours and plans of the enemy. The stress must have been close to intolerable. At stake were the future progress of the European War, the ascendancy of the Habsburgs, and his life. If France had been taken out of the balance, or even thrown into the balance against the Protestant powers, then the future for the Dutch and the northern German states would look bleak. The Dutch may well have come to terms and the Swedish appetite for bold intervention may have been curtailed. Meanwhile, on his deathbed Louis started to repair his relations with his mother. The push and pull of that relationship was the fragile flaw in the French political system. The Queen Mother, uncaring and unloving during Louis’s childhood, had an uncanny ability to manipulate his feelings and hone in on weakness. Not intelligent, she was nevertheless shrewd, ruthless and intuitive.

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  129 She knew that Louis desperately wanted her love, affection, and approbation. She, who had caused his deep insecurity and inadequacy, now exploited it for her political advantage. As Louis lay dying, he whispered to her, ‘I am twentynine today; I have always tried to be a good son; if I have not always succeeded, forgive me.’53 Much to the court’s amazement, Louis recovered. But the festering toxic sore on the body politic had now burst open. Violent antipathies within the Council and at court, involving both irreconcilable differences on policies and the struggle for power, could no longer be contained. While the Treaty of Cherasco was being renegotiated, Richelieu had to defend this policy against the Catholic champions on the Council, the Queen Mother and Marillac. War with the Catholic Emperor as well as Spain had seemed imminent; the dévots demanded a policy of peace, domestic reform and alliance with Spain against the Protestant powers. It was a policy that had power and logic; it was certainly not simply a policy of blind devotion to Catholicism although that feeling certainly underlay and informed the policy approach. The warnings issued by Marillac in respect of the economic and social damage to French society, the danger of revolts over tax, billeting, and recruitment was certainly prescient. For the Queen Mother’s faction, peace was needed to give time for reform of society and institutions. It was a policy promoted by the wellrespected councillor Cardinal Berulle who, unluckily for the opposition, died in October 1629. Councillor Marillac wrote to the King in July 1630: Everywhere in France is full of sedition, but the courts punish no one. The King has appointed special judges for these cases, but the Parliaments prevent the execution of the sentences so that, in consequence, they legitimate rebellion. I do not know what we should hope or fear in all this, given the frequency of the revolts, of which we have word of a new one almost every day.54 Such criticisms of Richelieu’s policy were rational but also disingenuous because the real aim was to align the nation with the Ultramontist forces of international counter-reformation, i.e. with the Habsburgs. For the dévots, Richelieu’s willingness to align with Protestant states in defiance of the papacy was an outrage. Richelieu and his acolytes were not untroubled by the religious implications of doing so. However, his adviser, Friar Joseph lamented, ‘For God’s sake let us avoid a religious war; let us treat our king’s conscience with the greatest caution, so that he may without scruple ally himself with the Protestants and break with the house of Habsburg.’55 The subtext to dévot complaints was that: ‘under Richelieu the country is disintegrating.’ In 1629 the Estates of Normandy made a typical complaint about ‘the great and excessive tailles demanded of us … excessive and onerous … and this in the name of a worthless group of officers … which, like caterpillars … gnaw on and ruin your people’.56 A few years later, 1633, the governor of

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130  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Guyenne who had put down a peasant revolt reported: ‘I can assure you that the misery [here] is so general in all areas and among all classes that unless there is immediate reduction it is inevitable that people will be driven to some dangerous course of action.’57 Given the large number of peasant revolts in the period and the chaotic fiscal system, the dévot arguments were strong, almost irrefutable. And indeed, for the same reasons, Richelieu and Louis, despite the risks entailed, had no intention of going to war if they could help it. But they would fight the war by proxy wherever there was a Habsburg enemy to support. The denouement of the political crisis in France was fast approaching as Louis’s convalescence progressed. The Queen Mother sensed that her clawing demonstrations of motherly love at his sickbed had finally won over the King to her side by extracting a promise that he would in due course dismiss Richelieu. Now was the time to strike with the King still weakened by illness and psychologically vulnerable from his recent brush with death. Now was the time to ask him to be a good son and support his mother: now was the time to demand fulfilment of his sickbed promises, the time to repay her for her ministrations during his illness. Now was time for Richelieu to die. The putsch was ready. Council member Marillac and Gaston, Duc d’Orleans, were set to pounce. She had to strike before the King returned to full health and vigour. And she intended to do it by a final brutal psychological ambush on the occasion of Louis’ visit to her on 10 November 1630 at the Palais de Luxembourg on Paris’s south bank. At stake were radical changes in France’s domestic, foreign and military policy. The fate of Europe hung in the balance. The Queen Mother prepared the ground by having the doors to her apartment bolted to lock in the King. She then commenced an impassioned assault on the neurotic psyche of her son, a neurosis that she herself had fostered. By turns claiming and demanding his love and loyalty to her as mother, while pouring out unrestrained hate-laden invective against the treachery of her former ‘creature’ the Cardinal. Richelieu’s spies and informers had already been alerted to the situation, so he slipped into the Royal apartments through a secret side door, which had been left unbolted by a maidservant in his pay. He knew that this was the final showdown; he had to risk all. Failure meant death. The Queen Mother was pouring out her bile against the Cardinal and demanding the fulfilment of ‘the promise’ but the King, having recovered his health somewhat, had already thought better of the matter. ‘The Queen Mother, surprised and angry at the proposition, burst out against her son, shed tears, and reproached him, neglecting nothing that might win her the victory in this battle.’58 Suddenly, with the rustle of stiff red silk, there were three in the room. The Queen, beside herself with rage at the red apparition that had glided into her room, exploded with rage in a tirade of insults thrown at the Cardinal. But, far from succeeding, she found that her son and judge was in collusion against her with her enemy, and was seemingly on his side. Cardinal

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The Emergence of France, the Edict, Wallenstein and the Mantuan War  131 Richelieu entered the room where they were together, to plead his cause in concert with the king. The Queen Mother, all in tears and provoked that he had come into that room against her will, called him a traitor.’59 All the bitterness of pent-up jealousy and hatred for her former ‘creature’ exploded from her like so much pus from a bursting abscess. It was the shrill cry for vengeance from a woman wronged, scorned, and overthrown in her son. Or was it about stymied ambition and loss of power? Or both? Richelieu took the reverse role. He was humble. He sank to his knees and begged the King for mercy and forgiveness for his faults. The shrieking Queen Mother demanded his head. In shock, Louis recoiled from both, left the room, retreated to his own quarters in the city, and locked himself away. Who knows what awful psychological terrors ripped through his fragile psyche in the hours of torment that followed? He had to choose. Either he must depose his mother again and throw her out again, or he must abandon the cardinal for whom he had developed a close working bond of trust and affection, whose works seemed to be restoring France both internally and on the international stage. Without the Cardinal, who would keep the Huguenots and the nobility in check? Who would see to the problem of Habsburg strangulation and continue the policies of his murdered father? Who would keep him safe against Gaston, his would-be usurper? In essence, he had a choice between this mother and his surrogate father, fused with the memory of his real father. At court the news of the showdown spread rapidly. The prevailing belief was that the Queen Mother had won. Courtiers rushed to congratulate the Queen and Marillac. The vying for favours, the nauseating stink of existential sycophancy and shifting allegiances, the distancing from former friends and allies, had begun. Richelieu believed himself doomed and was overcome by one of his regular nervous funks. As he considered flight from Paris, he received a message from Louis inviting him to an audience. Was he to be arrested and sentenced to death? Would the Queen Mother’s allies murder him? They were all duped. Instead of fleeing, Richelieu went to the interview with his monarch. The King confirmed the Cardinal in his position with reassurances as to his security. Typical of the courtiers’ reaction to this surprising development was Gaston’s. Having celebrated Richelieu’s demise, he quickly turned coat and denounced his mother, while a crestfallen nobleman in Marie de Medici’s entourage coined the words ‘day of the dupes’. Events moved quickly. It was time for a purge of the Queen Mother’s dévot faction. Marillac, placed under house arrest, was dismissed from the Council. His brother, the marshal heading the army in Italy, was put under arrest by his fellow generals who received a despatch from Paris as they sat down to dinner. With much embarrassment they handed him the letter; turning white with terror, he was promptly arrested. Sent back in chains while Richelieu

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132  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 instituted investigations, Marshal Marillac would be beheaded on charges of embezzlement after his trial in March 1632. Richelieu had failed to find any proof of treason, so embezzlement would do. Marshal de Bassompierre, victor over Savoy, was sent to prison where he remained for twelve years. After a decent interval, Marie de Medici was removed from the court for good, to distant Moulins, in February 1630. Soon after, she fled into exile in the Spanish lowlands; she continued to plot against the Richelieu regime in favour of her favourite son Gaston. She was to die in exile, surrounded by Richelieu’s spies, and never saw Louis again. However, the danger was by no means over and the political split was a constant source of regime instability. Soon after the ‘ day of the dupes’, Gaston entered Richelieu’s apartments with a posse of young noblemen; he subjected Richelieu to a tirade about the cruelty shown to his mother by the Cardinal. The hands of the noblemen gripped their swords waiting for a word of command to cut him down. Richelieu, courteous to a fault, helped Gaston to mount his horse when he departed. Gaston was defeated perhaps in his purpose by his customary cowardice, or perhaps by the lack of provocation due to the disarming obsequiousness of the Cardinal. Whatever the case, Richelieu had a lucky escape. Afterwards, the bodyguard attached to Richelieu was substantially increased as rumours of plots and assassination increased. The Cardinal had already been given his own regiment of musketeer guards (famously portrayed by Hollywood as evil bullies who were regularly skewered by the three musketeers of the King’s guard). Humiliated by his loss of nerve, Gaston would soon flee into exile and open rebellion at the court of Charles, Duke of Lorraine, where he issued a manifesto denouncing Richelieu as ‘an inhuman and perverted priest,’ traducing Richelieu’s absolutism and lack of respect for the law, posing as champion for ‘la liberte des juges’.60 Richelieu had won. With the Huguenot problem behind them, with the Ultramontist faction decisively defeated, the stage was set for a focused policy aimed at toppling the Habsburg domination of Europe. France and the Habsburgs were set on the road to Armageddon. Locked into a powerful alliance with the Dutch, the French now needed to find an ally to help them in this strategy; Richelieu and Louis also had to consider the timing for more direct intervention in the war which seemed imminent due to the overwhelming victory which the Emperor’s army had achieved in the Empire, something that Charles V could only have dreamed of. However, Richelieu’s decision for direct war would be postponed for several years because of the astonishing emergence of a new ally. Protestant hero Gustavus Adolphus entered the war to rescue the Protestants; Europe was agog. In London where newsbook sales had stagnated following so many Protestant defeats, circulation suddenly rocketed.61

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Chapter VI

The Dutch Front and Naval War The Dutch front

O

n the Dutch front, in the years 1621–32, stalemate was the main characteristic of the war as siege and counter-siege followed in succession. Breda was taken by Spinola in an epic operation of entrenchment manoeuvre by both sides; it became a grand tourist spectacle and school of warfare for generations of soldiers, including Turenne. Breda was endowed with a huge array of outer works, including ‘96 redoubts, 37 forts, 45 batteries’.1 Velasquez was commissioned to paint the surrender in 1630 and when complete it would grace the Escorial Palace: a hostage to fortune, the Dutch recaptured the place with consummate ease in October 1637. There were so many fortresses and rivers, dykes and canal defences that removing just one, even an important one, was not enough. By 1599 there were seventeen major fortress towns along the main battlefront with many subsidiary fortifications in addition. Some of those fortresses boasted dozens of subsidiary fortresses and powerful outworks. They included towns such as Deventer, Bergop-Zoom, Nijmegen, Breda and Maastricht. Deventer for example had eight bulwarks and ravelins which were developed over a period of fifty years. Most campaigning moved to the south-east of the Republic along the lower Rhine as it connects into the strategic Scheldt delta system. Strategic fortresses such as Erbreitstein and Shenkenshans were won and lost. Spinola the great Spanish captain noted the Dutch advantages after his successful and famous capture of Breda in 1626: ‘I have noticed….the fact that our [Dutch] enemies can easily wage war defensively but your majesty cannot. This is because the great advantages they enjoy with the rivers, so they can travel with their armies in two days to places which the army of your majesty can only reach in fifteen, and so have time to fortify themselves in whatever place they choose before Your majesty’s forces can arrive. Spinola’s strategic insight, after five years of indecisive campaigning, were already leading him and other members of the Flanders elite into political opposition to Olivarez’. Frederick Henry of Orange, the Stadtholder, secured a signal triumph when he surprised the Imperialists in 1629 by attacking the fortress town of s’Hertogenbosch on the right flank of the Dutch defensive line. An immense undertaking, the lines of encirclement were twenty kilometres long. To counteract

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The Dutch Front and Naval War  135 this, the Spanish, instead of launching costly frontal attacks on the heavilyfortified Dutch lines of circumvallation, developed an indirect relief strategy which tested Dutch resolve and resourcefulness to the limit. An army under de Bergh invaded the Dutch eastern flank. In the Dutch camp at s’Hertogenbosch the mood was gloomy: every soldier knew that their strivings in the trenches were about to come to nought, barring a miracle, because the siege would have to be raised to save the nation. On hearing the news, the Dutch soldiers ‘hung down their heads like bulrushes.’2 Amersfoort and Utrecht were threatened, but Frederick Henry in his finest moment as commander maintained the siege while rallying 132,000 Dutch militia to defend the fatherland. Frederick Henry resisted political pressure to abandon the siege to go to Utrecht’s relief, believing the garrison to be strong enough to hold out until he captured s’Hertogenbosch. Making up for his lack of flair with true grit, it was his finest moment as commander. The Spanish army advanced too slowly to retain the initiative. Fabian tactics denuded the countryside. Short of bread, Bergh’s position became untenable when Ernest Casimir’s commando raid by 2,500 Dutch troops, operating behind enemy lines, surprised and captured the Spaniards’ weakly defended and ill-prepared supply base at Wesel: 1,600 troops surrendered. English volunteer Hexham described the attack with gusto: downe goes the bridge the horse [cavalry] stood before the port enters, the trumpets sound tantara, they scowre the streets, and drawes up in bataile into the market place de coup en pied, with their pistols in their hands. The Spaniards fled the Towne to the Sconces, our foote [infantry] follows the horse, besets the wall, and possesses all the guards, breakes downe the bridge, which lay over the Rhyne.3 Frederick Henry of Orange, who took over as Stadtholder, launched the most significant Dutch assault of the war to date by attacking Maastricht in 1632. A siege of exceptional size and complexity, Frederick Henry’s army was a multinational effort with large numbers of English and Scots, perhaps 20 per cent of the total; they were delegated to take a significant part in the costly assaults on the city. Exceptionally, the Imperialists were called on to lend a hand in joining their Spanish partners in the attempted relief. Von Pappenheim, the ebullient Imperial commander, advanced to the rescue from his Westphalian bailiwick which he had made his own by brilliant energetic campaigning, using the benefits of interior lines to inflict a succession of stinging defeats on the German Protestant and Swedish army surrounding his Catholic-Imperialist enclave, campaigns reminiscent of Jackson’s campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. However, his assault on the Dutch lines of circumvallation was thrown back with heavy losses. Maastricht fell.

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136  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

Naval War

The ordinance setting up a system for privateering was issued in a printed Cedula in December 1621: it was inspired by Olivares’s understanding of economic warfare, and the need to attack the Dutch trading system, the source of Dutch economic and military power. Growing up in Seville, Olivares had a much sharper understanding of seapower and commerce than most Castilian nobility who were wedded to the primacy of the army and the tercio.  he English and the Dutch have made themselves masters of the sea and T of commerce, to the extent that they are able to jeer at all our power on land … his majesty must have a substantial fleet in the waters of Flanders … there exist only two appropriate ports, Dunkirk (with its barrier) and Ostend. Either would provide a safe anchorage … to use the fleet and fence in the rebels, tightening our stranglehold upon all the commerce which is their sustenance, until we can break it.29 At sea the Dutch merchant marine and fishing fleet was taking a terrible battering from the Dunkirk-based privateers and the Spanish fleet of Flanders. One of the most successful policies developed in the early years of the war, which was to have a major impact on the Dutch, was the establishment in Dunkirk of privateering squadrons of galleons sponsored by the Spanish Flanders government, which offered them financial incentives. These policies quickly had an impact. Dutch traffic between the Baltic and southern Europe was almost expunged, declining to only fifty-two sailings in 1621–27 from 1,005 in the previous six years, although shipping on ‘ flag of convenience’4 vessels continued. On one occasion in 1625, the Dunkirkers decimated the valuable herring fleet in the North Sea, destroying in a veritable massacre 150 fishing boats (herring busses) and twenty escorts, and capturing 1,400 sailors.5 So effective were the Dunkirkers that communications were cut between Amsterdam and London; Mead reported on 8 April that ‘of foreign news we hear nothing, the Dunkirkers stop all’.6,7 As the war developed, losses of the Dutch merchant marine from the strategically-placed Spanish warships amounted to the extraordinary figure of 2,577 vessels between 1627 and 1634. The attrition against the fishing fleet continued; in 1635 alone the Dutch had lost 124 herring busses with 975 fishermen taken prisoner. This was all a significant cost to the Dutch, both directly in lost ships and indirectly in the rising cost of protection by Dutch naval patrols, paid for by Dutch merchants, as well as the increased costs of shipboard defence including expensive cannon and their gun crews. Insurance premiums in Amsterdam rocketed. Olivares incentivised his fleets at Dunkirk. Special tax privileges were also given, including freedom from tax on profits and a tacit disavowal of the Crown prize money commission of 20 per cent. Olivares summed up his strategy ‘to use the fleet and fence in the rebels, tightening our stranglehold upon all the commerce which is their sustenance, until we can break it’.8 Famed nineteenthcentury naval theorist Mahan echoed his words: ‘to attack the commerce of

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The Dutch Front and Naval War  137 the enemy is therefore to cripple him.’9 Olivares’s policies were developed in the face of conservative opposition from powerful Castilian aristocrats such as Villafranca, and the faction of the Duke of Alba. Olivares won the debate; spending on the navy climbed 300 per cent in the next six years compared to an 85 per cent increase in other defence expenditure. Naval expenditure became the largest component in the Castilian Cortés tax budget. Nevertheless, expenditure was from a low base and much was required to compensate for the decline and stagnation of the navy in the years of the Lerma administration. However, by 1626 the Spanish King Philip could boast 130 vessels worldwide, including twenty-two in the Dunkirk squadron: no Spanish naval ship had been sunk or captured for five years and, according to Olivares, ‘it is certain that the war at sea has much advanced the reputation of Spain.’10 The more important fact was the devastating effect of Spanish naval and privateer forces on Dutch maritime trade with the Baltic, whereby the number of lasts of grain passing though ‘The Sound’ fell from 103,000 in 1621 to 30,000 in 1624 and 1625. From 1627 to 1634, the Walloon privateers and Spanish naval vessels, deploying fast frigates of 150–200 tons, captured 1,230 ships, mostly Dutch, and sank a further 119. Another 416 vessels were ransomed, 1,069 guns were captured; the whole had a value of 3,327,315 escudos. This was accomplished for the loss of seventy vessels to enemy action and thirty-one run aground, a 17:1 ratio that Admiral Dönitz would have been very happy with in the Second World War. U-boat action in the Second World War achieved a ratio of only 4:1.11 However, the cost of Spain’s massive naval build-up meant that naval spending represented 25 per cent of the national budget, sometimes more in years when a major armada needed to be sent to rescue Portugal’s Brasilian colony. The naval war was a battle of attrition, a subset of the wider international onslaught. However, the Dutch cash flow from war, including the increasingly cash rich VOC, (Dutch East India Conpmay) was still healthy, despite the losses. The importance of the Spanish naval strategy was reiterated by Olivares in a memorandum written in July 1628: ‘It is certain that to go on the defensive at sea would be the ruin of any state … for who can doubt that if we continue the work along the present lines, cutting our enemies’ links with their northern suppliers, their power will decline while that of Spain will increase?’ Despite a strong performance in North Sea naval actions against the Dutch merchant and fishing fleet, on 12/13 September 1631 the Spanish, under Franscisco Moncada, Duke d’Aytona, attempted to launch an amphibious attack behind the Dutch defence lines by infiltrating the waterways of Zeeland. Intending to establish a fortress to cut Zeeland off from Holland, the sixtystrong Spanish barge fleet, shepherded by thirty-five naval vessels, was cut off and annihilated in a misty early morning ambush in the narrows of the Slaak. Some 1,500 soldiers struggling to land on Thoren Island and escape the naval disaster were drowned or cut down by 2,000 Scots soldiers; 4,000 were taken prisoner; eighty vessels were lost. It was a signal Dutch victory which prevented the outflanking of the main Dutch fortress line.

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Chapter VII

Gustavus Invades Germany Enter Gustavus: Germany 1628–32

S

weden would enter the war with the expectation of an alliance and some subsidies accorded under the Treaty of Barwalde, which was signed in January 1631; the Swedish invasion was the third major seaborne invasion launched across the Baltic within ten years. Mainly landing at Stettin or along the coast of Pomerania, the invasion consisted of a fleet of 100 transport ships, twenty-nine naval vessels and dozens of other craft, including flat-bottomed vessels for low-draft waterways. A total of 15,000 troops was involved. This gave him about 20,000 troops in altogether in Germany, but if garrisons were excluded his available field army numbers were only about 12,000–15,000. After a slow and careful build-up of his coastal bases and his territorial control of the hinterlands of Stettin and Stralsund, following the invasion on 17 June 1630, Gustavus started to expand this occupied area in 1631 by using the Oder River line to capture Frankfort an Oder then to subdue and take over the Electorate of Brandenburg. All the time, magazines were established, towns garrisoned, taxes raised, allies drawn in, though not as many as hoped for. The hard core of his army were Swedish and Finnish infantry veterans with a high ratio of musketeers. After the defeat or neutralisation of various interveners including England, the Dutch, Denmark and Transylvania since 1618, as well as the revolt of various local paladin from north and southern Germany, it hardly seemed likely that little Sweden, with a population including Finland of just 1.5 million, would be able to field an army capable of sustaining a long war with the more numerous resources available to the Imperialists. However, the invasion, no doubt well-armed with good intelligence, was well timed because the main Imperial armies were absent. Stettin, at the head of the Oder river, provided an excellent line of communications into the heart of the Empire as it ran down through Lusatia, Silesia and Moravia adjacent to Bohemia and Austria itself. While the main Imperial army under Colloredo was distracted by the campaign in Italy against Mantua, where a good half of Ferdinand’s elite veteran troops would die of fever, Gustavus had invaded. The track record of Tilly in crushing interveners and the ruthlessness of Ferdinand in imposing the ban of Empire discouraged would-be princely adventurers. Only those with little to lose or facing extermination because they were Calvinists or radical Lutherans, such as the Saxe-Weimar or Hesse, joined Gustavus, along with a

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140  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 few Imperial cities whose fervently Protestant populations pushed their cities into the fight, such as Magdeburg, one of the great northern cities on a strategic Elbe river crossing. Defection of this river city would allow Gustavus a second axis of advance down through Brandenburg, Saxony, and central Bohemia. However political help was at hand, from the Emperor himself, whose radical and oppressive policies would virtually force moderate Lutheran states into the arms of the Swedish invader by the Edict of Restitution. Having got rid of his leading general and thereby collapsed the economic/logistical system which supported the Imperial army, at the same time as sending his main army south of the Alps to Mantua, Ferdinand had set the scene for the defection of his erstwhile moderate Protestant allies, notably Saxony. An alliance was duly formed. John George of Saxony, buffeted by pressure from below, with Imperial and Bavarian armies tramping and exacting monies across his territories with impunity, could no longer hold to the precarious bargain with Ferdinand. An ultimatum was issued by the Convention of Leipzig under which Saxony led moderate Lutheran and neutral states in demanding that Imperial Laws do not oppress German Freedom, leave Electors and estates with their authority, honours, dignity, privileges, immunities, and laws and justice, end the gruesome disorder, oppression and violence and restore a general, lasting, secure peace … the foreign potentates will also interfere in the affair and bring misery, ruin and destruction …  .1 (24 March 1631) Ferdinand had achieved by his crass mistakes the rare compact between the Lutherans and Calvinists. The Leipzig convention issued this memorandum: some whereof being Lutherans and Calvinists; first of all agree to have that distinction in names (which has cause so much schism and hatred heretofore) to be taken away; making a general decree, that both professions should from thenceforth be called by one name of EVANGELICALS. [18 March 1631 Leipzig.]. They committed to raising 56,000 troops. The war grew like a cancer across the face of Germany. Wallenstein’s astute predictions were being fully borne out; the Imperialists, even with a large army, were too weak to hold down an embittered Protestant populace; the Emperor needed to have trodden softly but, egged on by the Jesuits, he careered onwards. Even worse for the Imperialists was the propaganda effect across Europe of the sack of Magdeburg by the Imperial-Bavarian army on 17 May 1631, a tragedy of massive proportions, in which it was claimed 20,000 lost their lives according to Imperialist General Pappenehim, after Tilly had besieged the city which had become the first major Imperial city to declare for Sweden. The emotional reaction of Protestants to the sack was fanned by Swedish propaganda. It was graphically embellished in thousands of publications and pamphlets across the continent. Europe was stunned: Protestants screamed for revenge. Printing presses in Europe made good business from the graphic ‘red

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Gustavus Invades Germany  141 top’ style dramatisation of the gory events. In one of the great dramas of the war, the city had been stormed, sacked and burned to the ground in bacchanalian horror, random killing and rape and looting. Guericke, the city engineer observed that he ordered the ‘burned corpses and other dead from the alleys, the ramparts and other places loaded onto wagons and driven to the water of the Elbe … one often had to load up the pieces using a pitch fork.’2 Son of a town clerk, John Daniel Friese saw a maid also in the street who had been carrying meat in a basket; she had been shot and a dog stood nearby eating the meat … we saw many bodies in the streets, including women lying quite uncovered. They lay with their heads in a great barrel of beer, which stood full of water in the alley, into which they had been pushed and drowned, but half their bodies and their legs were hanging out. And a pastor noted that ‘many thousands … were abominably murdered or wretchedly executed … amid apprehensive screams and hideous shrieks’.3 One eyewitness described ‘saw so may bodies lying around before her eyes and heard drunken soldiers with big goblets in their hands crying out “cut down the rebellious scoundrel.”’ Rape was a right and a rite of passage for an alpha male soldier in the thirty years war; just another type of booty. According to a senior monk, Prior Brandauer, who resided in the city, ‘Soldiers brought the Magdeburg virgins on the back of their horses as booty into their quarters outside the city…’ Worse than just the destruction of a good logistics base, the sack was a major political disaster, as was well understood in Vienna; Magdeburg became a totem for revenge, a rallying point for the Protestant cause, something well recognised by the Imperialists. Imperial councillor Questenberg warned the Emperor that their enemies ‘may be thereby the more incensed and on its account fly into a great passion’. How true – Putin take note! Gustavus’s outnumbered army confronted the Bavarians at Werben on the Elb in August 1631 from strong earthwork ramparts; Tilly backed off after one costly attack. It was a small victory but it was widely trumpeted by Gustavus’s propaganda machine. On 11 September Gustavus signed an alliance with Saxony. Tilly followed Gustavus north towards Leipzig where Gustavus had drawn in reinforcements and joined his army to that of Saxon Elector John George.

Swedish economy, military-industrial complex – sinews of war, 1600–1648

The backbone of Sweden’s power was its economic success, in particular its ability to develop a strong export business in copper and iron ores as well as refined industrial products like brass and iron. Mineral exports were the ‘primitive capital accumulation’ process by which Sweden industrialised and afforded western technology and expertise, a process well described by Soviet

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142  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 economist Yevgeni Preobrazhensky in Nova Economika-Moscow, 1926 and promoted by his political ally Leon Trotsky. With exactly the same model of development later pioneered by the USSR, there followed machinery and technology importation to produce value-added production of manufactured goods such as cannon, swords and muskets which increased significantly. Sword needs were met by the Luftsa factory and the Soderhamn factory alone could deliver over 10,000 muskets to the Swedish army in 1638.4 Sweden was able to turn itself into a self-sufficient military-industrial state able to supply all its own military needs from gunpowder to swords and armour, snaphance muskets and wheellock pistols, although problems with the supply of slowburning match delayed the introduction of armour-piercing wide-bore muskets to the army: ‘The King’s Majesty,’ said Oxenstierna, ‘controls and steers mines, commerce, manufactures, and customs just as a steersman steers his ship.’5 It is the effectiveness of this organisation and wealth that explains how a backwater European minnow of about 1.8-million people, including Finland and Livonia, became a military superpower. Before the metal industry Sweden had merely been known for its large Baltic herring business, salted and fermented herring, surströmmer, exported to Germany. In 1630 Axel Oxenstierna wrote, ‘Copper is the noblest commodity which the Swedish crown produces and can boast of, wherein a great part of the crown’s welfare stands.’6 Gustavus also recognised the importance of the mining town of Falun as a bedrock of his ambitions. On one of his twelve visits to the mine he boasted, ‘what potentate is there who has a palace like that in which we now stand?’7 The mine was thus similar in its impact on Sweden as the silver mines of ancient Athens in the Peloponnesian War, or the coal of the Ruhr which led to Krupp and the military power of Germany. Production of copper, of an exceptional purity, rose from 1,250 to 1,900 tons per annum from 1620 to 1632 and stood at 3,000 tons per annum by 1650: this represented half of European production and a third of global production. Some of this product was turned into copper wire with 65 tons of the precious commodity being produced annually by the 400 workers on site in 1630. In a related business, brass foundries were established with one brass works at Norrköping boasting fifteen furnaces, producing plate goods and brass wire, the export of which brought in 246,000 Reichsthaler from 1630 to 1631. As with the whole of Swedish enterprise, the government encouraged the import of foreign expertise, technology and capital to help develop the complex and capital-intensive downstream industrial processes of the copper and iron industries which, by 1630, could export over 1,000 cannon a year as well as supplying the army. Sweden sought military self-sufficiency in arms production. Expert gunsmiths imported from Flanders included Anton Monier who arrived in 1617, while from Germany (Hesse) the Seigroth family emigrated in 1619 to join Walloon families already resident there. Capital and organisation were increasingly put in the hands of another Walloon, Louis de Geer, who became

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Gustavus Invades Germany  143 the leading Scandinavian industrialist of the early modern era. The net result of these developments was that armament self-sufficiency was achieved by 1629. Pure ore was especially valued because smelting technology was still crude.8 Pig and bar iron production rose strongly to 9,500 tons per annum by 1625, with the average weight exported doubling to 6,000 tons by 1625, from a previous average of 2,400 tons from 1613 to 1622. From zero in 1600, exports of iron bar product equalled ore exports by 1648,9 expanding from 6,650 metric tons per annum in 1620 to 17,300 in 1650 Gustavus and Oxenstierna decided to use their primary product windfall to develop naval and military capability, similar to policies advocated by Themistocles in ancient Athens, who persuaded the citizens to use the booming production of Laurium silver to build a 200-vessel trireme fleet to expand Athenian glory and prepare to stand up to the Persian threat. For Sweden it was a defensive reaction to the existential threats from Denmark and the Habsburgbacked Polish King Sigismund, whose deposition from the Swedish throne by Gustavus’s father informed his irredentist foreign policy. Gustavus and Oxenstierna understood the collateral benefits in terms of trade, status and empire. A further similarity was the importance for Sweden of foreign grain imports from Livonia: like ancient Athens, Vasa Sweden, or indeed post-Meiji revolution Japan of 1868–1945, Swedes decided that they needed a fleet and an empire for food security. The Swedes exploited their assets by arming themselves with a much greater number of cannon on the battlefield than other nations, developing tactics to match. Leaders in their field, the Swedes experimented with the technology, tactics, and organisation of artillery. The Swedes had the advantage over other nations in the use of standardised copper cannon with shorter barrels on the battlefield. Copper was lighter and fitted into the Swedish military dogma of attack, firepower and mobile warfare, the one factor having an iterative impact on the other. Innovations in design such as shorter barrels accompanied improvements in casting and smelting, in the quality of metals used leading to improved throwing/weight ratios. Better gun carriage design by the introduction of limbers, initiated by General Torstensson, would lead to the first battlefield use of mobile artillery. Calibres became standardised, while allin-one munition cartridges improved rates of fire and accuracy. The economic and industrial development was a major enabling factor in the military success of Sweden against the Habsburg alliance. The shipbuilding industry grew particularly strongly after 1620. As with manufacturing, production was privatised, but this policy was reversed for naval production after the Vasa catastrophe in 1628. Faulty mathematical calculations had produced a vessel which was top heavy. When a light gust arose on the maiden sailing, the ship sank close to the shore. Thereafter the industry was renationalised. Numbers of ships in the fleet grew from fifty to ninety between

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144  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 1616 and 1633 and tonnage size and armaments increased appreciably; by 1644 they were competitive with the powerful Danish fleet. The ships built included larger ones that were comparable to the best international standards, carrying up to seventy guns, including many with large calibre 24 pounders. Supporting industries for the production of ship chandler items, such as rope making, were also developed.

The Swedish army

The war machine supported a professional and disciplined army. Gustavus issued the Swedish army with strict and very detailed regulations in 1632, updating an already exacting code. It consisted of fifteen general articles and 150 detailed ones to be sworn under oath. Discipline entailed absolute obedience, punishing cowardice, laziness in the face of the enemy and desertion. There was no tolerance of pillage or arson, except under orders. Moral discipline was strictly enforced. Gustavus was an enthusiastic Lutheran dedicated to God’s service. As an example of the discipline, Articles 7, 53, 89, 91 and 99 demand respectively: religious observance, death for sleeping on guard duty, no whores in camp, death for setting villages on fire without orders, no pillaging. ‘If any unmarried woman be found, he that keeps her may have leave lawfully to marry her; or else be forced to put her away.’10 (Gustavus Adolphus 1621) Such provisions were copied by other Protestant armies, including those of Brunswick-Luneburg in 1636 and by Brandenburg. Drilled in morals, they were also highly drilled in rapid rates of fire by volley which, by corollary, led to the lowest pike ratios of any European army. More than any other commander of the era, Gustavus understood the concept of firepower, the maximising of which became his overriding military mantra. Development of ball and powder cartridges for cavalry pistols and muskets helped increase reloading speed and reliability.11 Some 40,000 Scots went to fight for the Scandinavian Protestant powers from 1626 to 1632 and 20,000 English.12 In fact, early diplomatic correspondence between James I and Sweden shows that the formalisation of recruiting links go back to 1616, but Scots had already been active in Russia during the Ingrian war. By 1630 there were 13,000 Scots in Gustavus’s army alone. They were regarded as elite infantry troops according to Monro: ‘In these wars, if a fort is to be stormed, or any desperate piece of service to be set upon, the Scottish have always had the honour and the danger to be the first men that are put upon such a business.’13 Hired as mercenaries, the Scots were not without moral purpose in their wars. Devout Protestants of the presbytery, they were strongly motivated by religion and, unlike German mercenaries, they did not change sides. They were also inspired by dynastic loyalty to the House of Stuart and the desire to restore James I’s daughter, Elizabeth of Palatine, wife of Frederick V, to her rightful patrimony. Renowned for their superb professionalism and fighting spirit, their formidable achievements in battle resulted primarily from bonds of friendship,

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Gustavus Invades Germany  145 kinship and clan loyalty. Scottish officers’ loyalty was never doubted, which is why even after the bulk of Scots returned to fight for the Covenanters and the English civil war, many stayed to form an officer cadre in Sweden’s German formations.

Battle of Breitenfeld 1631

When Gustavus turned to face Tilly and offer battle at Breitenfeld near Leipzig, on 17 December 1631, Saxony and Sweden were mustering 40,000 against 32,000 Bavarian and Imperial units. Coming up too late from the south were 15,000 troops from the Mantuan debacle under General Aldringen; encouraged by the flamboyant and brilliant General Pappenheim, Tilly was pushed into a fight he did not want. The armies lined up on a flat plain not far from Leipzig. From above it would have looked like the chequerboard of formations so common to engravings of the period. The Spanish-style tercios of Tilly’s army were represented by a forest of pikes and pennants forming a square; on the ‘sleeves’ musketeers milled around, loading and moving forwards to fire. Tilly’s army formed a single line of tercio blocks, each numbering about 1,000 troops in a 1:1 ratio of pikemen to musketeers. Sweden’s infantry deployed on a 1:2–1:3 ratio. The SwedishSaxon army was larger in number and deployed in thinner, smaller formations of six ranks in depth, pikemen in the centre and musketeers on the sleeves, formed in three lines. The Swedish-Saxon army’s line extended well beyond Tilly’s army’s frontage. Gustavus’s bedraggled looking veterans ‘looked out like kitchen servants with their uncleanly rags,’14 whereas the Saxons were dressed in smart new uniforms; ‘these Saxon gentry in their bravery did judge us and oures according to our outsides.’ Monro, an officer in the Mackay Regiment, mocked the Saxon army dandies: ‘comely creatures, well armed and well arraide, … whose officers did looke, as if they were going in their best apparel to be painted.’15 Unfortunately John George’s army was inexperienced, except for von Armin, the newly appointed commander. When the entire Saxony left wing of 15,000 prettily attired but untested troops fled upon the opening shots, the odds reversed in favour of the Imperial army, leaving Gustavus’s army facing far superior numbers pressing in on the Swedish army’s open flank. English chancer Sydenham Poyntz, later the colonel of the Northern horse in the English Parliamentary army, who was in the Saxon army at this time, comments dryly on the useless Saxons and their cowardly Elector, John George. Tilly, who certainly knew where the weak point in the enemy was: sent the best part of Infantry to charge home the Saxon Troopes who being young cavaliers and Gallants and who had never seene a bataille fought, and seeing themselves drop, and bullets fall so thicke, and their

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148  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 duke gonne, threw away their arms and fled, and most that way which the duke went …. 16 Gustavus faced a mass of hardened veterans who were about to smash into his left flank and rear. However, in a masterstroke of tactical leadership, the Swedish open flank was reinforced by flexible, speedy redeployment of the tactically mobile Swedish army units before the lumbering tercio could attack. Gustavus’s brilliant subordinates, notably General Horn, redeployed their reserve units rapidly, refusing the open flank before the enemy could charge in. Thereafter the disciplined deployment of firepower by ranks along with well-directed artillery fire under the generalship of Lennart Torstensson mowed down Tilly’s famous tercio whose disciplined mass offered a dense and unmissable target through which cannon balls or grapeshot cut bloody furrows in the great tercio blocks. The Swedish cavalry, reported Salvius, were mounted on small nags in comparison to the massive German chargers. ‘Our Swedish and Finnish nags looked puny next to their great German chargers.’17 Riding wild ponies of Mongolian stock from the north-eastern Baltic, standing just 11–14 hands high, they were contending with Freisians, Polish trans-Don ‘Turks’, or Lipizzaner hybrids of 15–17 hands.18 To equalise the contest, Gustavus innovated by interspersing musketeer units amongst his cavalry. Pappenehim’s cuirassiers discovered that their caracole tactics were useless; they were stopped dead by disciplined volleys from command units of musketeers. Monro described the action: ‘At a neere distance our musketiers meeting them with a salve; then our horsemen discharged their pistols, then charged through them with swords; and at their return the musketiers were ready again to give the second salve of musket among them.’19 Pappenheim fell wounded under a pile of bodies but eventually escaped the field, having survived the scavengers. Monro concluded sagely that the pistol-armed caricolers were no match for muskets, because of ‘the Musket balls carrying and piercing farther than the Pistolet’. 20 Firepower delivered with disciplined volleys had suddenly become the key factor on a European battlefield, in emulation of trends already seen in Japan. At Nagashino in 1575, Ieyasu’s musketeers protected by bamboo stakes had decimated the renowned Takeda cavalry. Pappenheim’s cuirassiers suffered a similar fate after seven unsuccessful charges; their ranks were severely diminished and their horses felled. In the centre, the Imperial-Bavarian tercio locked horns with steadfast veterans who did not run as most of their Protestant opponents had in the ten years of war since the battle of White Mountain. The Swedish army, wellarmed and highly-trained veterans from the Polish wars, or rugged Scottish highlanders, were also equipped with small field artillery for close support of infantry units. ‘[O]ur small ordnance [3-pounder light artillery] being twice discharged amongst them,’ reported Monro, ‘and before we stirred, we charged them with a salve of musket, which was repaid, and incontinent our Briggad

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Gustavus Invades Germany  149 advancing unto them with push of Pike, putting one of their battailes in disorder, fell on the execution, so that they were put to the route.’21 Firepower and tactics had destroyed Tilly’s magnificent legions. Nevertheless, the story of battle is not so simple, amidst the swirling gunsmoke and dust of combat. Control by officers sometimes depended on having a drummer boy left alive. ‘But the smoke being great, the dust being raised, we were as in a dark cloud, not seeing the half of our actions,’ complained Monro. ‘Whereupon, having a drummer by me, I caused him to beat the Scotch march, till it cleared up, which re-collected our friends unto us.’22 Not surprisingly, formations broke up, becoming tangled and confused in the hell of battle. At least the Scottish kilts were distinctive enough to be recognised by friends at close quarters. Battles are confusing and fearful actions, a cacophony of noise and orange flashes in the smoke, limbs being torn asunder by cannon balls and ghastly wounds carved upon flesh and bone. Once started, a battle would be all chaos and carnage. Friendship, habit and unit camaraderie would hold veteran units together in the crisis. Lieutenant Colonel Muschamp tells a similar story: First, giving fire unto three little field pieces that I had before me, I suffered not my muskettiers to give their volleyes till I came within pistol shot of the enemy, at which time I gave order to the first three ranks to discharge at once, and after then the other three: which doine we fell pell mell into their rankes, knocking them downe with the stocke of the musket and our swords.23 It was virtually a Cannae; the history of Germany was suddenly catapulted in an entirely different trajectory. Imperial-Bavarian casualties in dead, captured and injured were huge – circa 13,000 dead and wounded and 9,000 taken prisoner. There were also many desertions; additionally, most of the captured soldiers joined Gustavus’s army. At a stroke, northern and central Germany was liberated. The victory stunned Europe; even the bells of Moscow were rung on the orders of the Czar. After ten years of unbroken defeat the Protestant pulpits of Germany and Europe rang with joy. In London sales of newspapers boomed so much that maps and engravings were added to the extra print runs.24 Charles I knighted the messenger who first arrived with the news at court. Tilly retreated with Pappenheim back to Catholic strongholds in Westphalia to the north-west. Tilly was in a state of shock; ten years of victorious campaigning undone in the space of a few hours. His despatch to Vienna opened sadly by saying, ‘Ill fortune finally ruled more than good fortune.’25 A weak attempt to exculpate himself on the basis of his former victories was followed by an assessment of his remnants of an army and the poverty of their logistics: ‘All the days of my life I have never yet seen an army suddenly and totally deprived of all requisites, great and small … and I am utmost surprised that the poor soldiers have … stayed so long.’26 The Habsburg hold on Germany tottered; the balance

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150  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 of power had been decisively reversed. In the next months the Imperial cause and its ally would be brought to its knees and the southern strongholds of Protestantism would rise in revolt. Imperial councillor Questenburg in a frantic despatch to Wallenstein, summed up the battle and the black mood at a stunned court: the ‘entire army, horse and foot, was so to speak severed and slain … all in flight and … hard put to save itself … God punishes us … .’27 and further, ‘God punishes us … on account of our ingratitude.’

Gustavus’s march to the Rhine

Gustavus gained almost complete strategic space and freedom after his victory at Breitenfeld; he could choose any line of attack on the Emperor. How would he use the victory? Europe was agog. However, there are always constraints; winter was coming, so a full campaign season was not possible, he mistrusted his ally John George of Saxony, and he would inevitably leave behind his bases of supply near the coasts of north Germany. Further, Tilly had retreated with his tattered remnants to rebuild his army, drawing on garrisons and his supply bases in Catholic Westphalia. His reformed army would be linking up with Imperial reinforcements from General Aldringen and with forces raised by the Duke of Lorraine. As Gustavus advanced south those forces could operate in his rear, against his lines of supply and his vulnerable main allies in Saxony, Hesse and the Saxe-Weimar in Thuringia. Gustavus’s most likely routes of attack on Vienna, presumed by most to be the target were down the line of the Oder using Frankfurt am Main as a base, raising Silesia, then crossing Moravia to attack Vienna from the east side of the Danube. Alternatively, he could attack Prague through the Saxon border and then make for Vienna. Lastly, he could drop through Thuringia, then march via Protestant Nurnberg for Passau, from there to raise Protestant upper Austria before attacking Vienna. The problem with all of these options was that they would not necessarily end the war. Maximilian would lie on his flank and the Emperor could simply move his court. Spain still controlled the Valtellina and might send an army into Germany; in fact, Olivares would soon be planning to do just that. The Emperor could also re-activate Generalissimo Wallenstein’s army from Prague which sat behind Gustavus’s strategic left flank. Negotiations with Wallenstein started within days of the news of Breitenfeld reaching the Emperor at Vienna. Gustavus rejected all of these options. His objective was to secure the rich lands of the Rhine and Bavaria. He aimed to knock Maximilian out of the war. Marching into Saxe-Weimar territory in Thuringia he established a magazine and logistics base at Erfurt, not far from the major weapon producing centre at Suhl. However, he did not drop south as expected but carried on west through the heavily wooded wilderness of western Thuringia, emerging into the socalled ‘Priest’s alley’, a string of powerful independent bishoprics such as Fulda, home to the famous witch-hunting bishop, and Würzburg. The Swedish army

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Gustavus Invades Germany  151 captured Würzburg, then stormed the famous Marianburg fortress sitting above the Maine. Sydenham Poyntz describes the warrior King in action ‘with his sword in his hand and his sleeve naked up to the Elbow encouraging his souldiers, and at length tooke it in, and slew all therein, but with greate losse.’28 A glorious depiction but in truth the gates were rushed by a Finnish commando unit under the direction of General Torstensson. Gustavus and the army then stormed in. It was the first resistance experienced since the battle. The garrison was slaughtered as a warning to all. At this point, a cloud of doubt, fostered by weariness of long marching, settled over the army. When Tilly approached from the north with an army that was now bigger than Gustavus’s there was real gloom in the camp. However, Tilly did not risk battle; under orders from Maximilian he retreated to protect Bavaria where he went into winter quarters. The Duke of Lorraine split from Tilly and returned to defend Lorraine. Gustavus moved west along the Maine, took Hanau and wealthy Frankfurt then marched in late autumn sunshine through to the Rhine; a land of plenty, lush and green. He collected contributions in money and kind as he advanced. Mainz was just a strong economic base and staging post for his next assault which would be against Bavaria in the spring of 1632. Before his army could enjoy winter quarters there was more to do. Advancing into the Bergstrasse to the south of Mainz he proposed to cross the river and come at Mainz from the south having first captured Spanish garrisoned Oppenheim. Showing impetuosity again Gustavus went out on patrol and decided to cross the Rhine and reconnoitre the other side. As the Spanish had destroyed or removed most boats, he could only find a row boat with which to cross. It was a rash idea not least because it was pointless as being on foot he could hope to discover little when he reached the other side. When Spanish cavalry surprised his party, he was only just able to make a hasty retreat back to the boat. Nonetheless he would have enjoyed the bravado of the affair and being the first to cross the Rhine. No doubt he enjoyed a boisterous evening recounting the event to his brother officers at his camp table with many fully charged tankards of Rhenish wine. Having collected enough boats Colonel Brahe was sent over with 300 infantry, who acquitted themselves well to establish a bridgehead in the face of 14 squadrons of Spanish cavalry. Once established on the left bank, Gustavus corralled 2,000 Spanish troops into their strong earthwork fortress at Oppenheim, which dominated the Rhine. ‘During the night,’ complained Mounro, the Spaniards aimed cannon salvoes at the Swedish campfires with great accuracy such that ‘a bullet of thirty two poundweight shot right out betwixt Colonel Hepburnes shoulder and mine, going through the colonel’s coach; the next shot kill’d a Sergeant of mine by the fire, drinking a pipe of tobacco.’ The Spanish failed to break the Swedish lines after a vicious night-time sally. Scottish troops, again in the Vanguard, led a furious assault, which led to pleas for quarter from the Spaniards. The Swedes took 1,000 captives after the brief siege. Gustavus put many of the garrison to the sword, although nine companies of Italians asked

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152  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 for quarter from the Scots in the nick of time. Absorbed into the Swedish army, they deserted in the New Year. Meanwhile Saxe-Weimar had been sent south to capture Heidelberg, Frederick V’s capital. Other Spanish garrisons on the left bank were captured as well as towns running up to the Luxembourg border, where a Spanish probe was turned back. Bacharach and Aschaffenburg on the Rhine were stormed. After Oppenheim, Gustavus captured Spanish-garrisoned Mainz. Mainz would become the administrative headquarters for his Chancellor Oxenstierna. Gustavus would soon be constructing Gustavsborg fortress nestled on the north-eastern quadrant of the Main-Rhine confluence. It would be his main magazine in the west strategically placed to support campaigns in Westphalia, the Rhineland, Alsace, Bavaria central, south and south west Germany along the river axes of the Rhine and Main.

Richelieu’s vexation with his maverick ally

Richelieu was about to discover that he who pays the piper does not always call the tune, especially when the pay only represents a fraction of the costs. As Gustavus approached the Rhine there was a rising sense of panic in Paris. Victory at Breitenfeld had dramatically changed the balance of power in Germany and therefore in Europe, but Richelieu had wanted his ‘client’ to aim south at Vienna, not come west where a clash with Bavaria, his putative ally, would be assured. Based in Mainz, Gustavus’s aim could only be Bavaria, and this was a state with which Richelieu had long cultivated relations. Richelieu had hoped to exploit the Bavarians’ equivocal attitude to Spain’s presence in the Rhineland but with the rampant Swedish army in Mainz this policy was in ruins. Moreover, Gustavus’s advance on the Rhine and his occupation of garrisons on the left bank threatened France’s own ambitions to move its influence and borders eastwards to the great natural barrier. Angry and undiplomatic exchanges went back and forth from Mainz to Paris with Richelieu making veiled threats about supporting Maximilian and Gustavus responding in kind, even saying to Charnace, ‘Let your King [Louis] go where he will; but let him have a care not to cross the path of my armies, or he may look to rencontre with me.’29 (December 1631) Gustavus, not Richelieu, had done the fighting, so he would call the shots. Richelieu’s strategy of using proxies to fight the Habsburgs had been a resounding success, but the lack of direct control entailed risks. Prickly with a young nation’s pride, the Swedish duo knew that they had financial independence enough to resist Richelieu’s demands. France’s subsidy only accounted for about 20 per cent of Swedish war needs. Sweden would be the master of its own fate and destiny. But what was that to be? As the princes of Germany scurried to Mainz to seek favours, land and appointments at Gustavus’s new court in the winter of 1631–2, Europe and its news correspondents were agog with speculation as to what Gustavus’s aims and ambitions were.

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Gustavus Invades Germany  153 Richelieu had little choice in the end but to accept the fait accompli. However, he did exploit the situation by moving troops into Lorraine and seizing key positions on the Rhine, at Triers, Koblenz and Erbreitstein. A few months later he invaded Alsace. In these actions, French forces fought with Spanish troops, but still the full-scale war between the French and the Habsburgs did not break out; neither side was ready for it nor wanted it. Spain, already overstretched, accepted the extreme provocation of French troops capturing Spanish-held cities and using its proxy ally to storm others. The phoney war continued. The full French-Habsburg confrontation was delayed. Meanwhile in France Richelieu had to deal with an armed rebellion by the Duc de Montmorency and another Duchesse de Chevreuse-inspired conspiracy with yet another lover, Chateauneuf, one of the king’s councillors. Olivares, through the duchess and others, was involved in all such schemes.

Gustavus rampant

By the spring of 1632 Gustavus commanded around 150,000 troops across Germany; a starburst of Protestant revolt against the Emperor had transformed the political geography. But the edifice was fragile; he rode on a wave of momentum and bluff. Sweden was still a tiny nation state carrying a monumental weight. A critical path strategy is always in danger of the slightest upset bringing down the structure like a house of cards. Horn’s defeat at Bamberg might have presaged a collapse but Gustavus took back the initiative by striking directly at Bavaria. He warned, ‘We must not let the enemy gain any courage whatever against us.’30 In one of the most daring attacks of the war, Gustavus’s army, deployed in a double envelopment, defeated Tilly’s well-entrenched army along the riverbank at Lech; Tilly died, Maximilian fled and Gustavus’s army entered Bavaria where it rampaged freely. The great Protestant Imperial city of Augsburg was taken in and put under contribution. Bavaria was put to the sword and armies rampaged across the princedom, but Maximilian did not surrender. He retreated and even abandoned his capital at Munich to the Swedish horde. Only Ingolstadt with its modern fortress defences had held out: Gustavus bypassed the place, having made one failed attack on an outwork. Hagendorf informs us: ‘The residents of Ingolstadt then fired heavily on the Swedes with cannons, so that the king’s horse was shot out from underneath him. The city might have been taken by treachery, by means of count Farensbach, but he was caught and some days later would be judged by the sword at Regensburg.’31 After gutting Munich of money and stores, the Swedish army corps and commanders spread out across Germany in alliance with local rulers. In Westphalia, Baner’s efforts together with William of Hesse were stymied by the brilliant von Pappenheim operating on interior lines, but elsewhere the Duke of Württemberg re-conquered his patrimony in the southwest while General Horn conquered in the south and later in Alsace where he took the powerful fortress of Benfeld.

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D an

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Battle of Lech 1632 14th/15th April

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1 Cannonade - feint attack 14th April. 2 Night 14th-15th Engineers build pontoons

Swe dish Pon toon s Finns

3

linking island - then attack.

4 ry Artille Killing Zone

500m

Augsburg

Sa

River Lech

ar

Piccolom

3 Finnish regiment establishes bridgehead 7 a.m. 4 Bavarian - Imperialists counter attack, but driven off by cannon fire 10 a.m-2 p.m.

5 Saxe-Weimars cavalry ford river - attack Imperialist flank 2-4 p.m.

6 Cavalry piggyback infantry across river for new flank attack 3 p.m.

7 Crux of the battle - Tilly mortally wounded Aldringen concussed 4 p.m.

8 Bavarian retreat 4 p.m.

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Chapter VIII

Wallenstein Returns and the Battle of Lutzen The return of Wallenstein: Gustavus falls off the critical path

W

allenstein’s former enemies, who had so denigrated him in the corridors of power and made him the subject of so many poisonous missives to the Emperor, were now unctuously seeking his help. Maximilian, who had forced the sacking of the man he had so recently regarded as a despised parvenu, wrote to him in a tone of cloying sycophancy: I would entreat your honour not only to have the goodness to grant the bearer, von Toring, a friendly audience … the enemy grows daily stronger and is far superior to us in numbers. If your honour does not make speed and force a change, he will break through. He now lusts after the Danube and Austria. Your honour’s most well-disposed uncle.1

Maximilian even started addressing Wallenstein as the Duke of Mecklenburg, a title that he and the other jealous princes had refused to recognise at the Diet of Regensburg, just nine months previously. Ferdinand implored him to return, ‘I strive to repose confidence in the hope that Your Dilection, perceiving me amidst the present emergency, will not leave me empty handed.’2 Ferdinand’s Jesuit confessor, Lamormaini, joined in the shameless correspondence, writing a grovelling, dissembling and unctuous letter to the great Bohemian: ‘I hear that evil things have been whispered to your highness about me. I neither ask nor do I concern myself about that. I am a man of the Holy Church whom it behoves to attend more to the voice of god than the chatter of mankind…. in July and August when the state of affairs was otherwise, totally different from now, I was of the opinion that it was inadvisable to burden your highness again with this office. What sensible person can make of this a reproach to me?’ Eventually Wallenstein could not resist the call of duty, nor could he ignore the real threat of Gustavus to his personal interests. Ferdinand and his counsellors had been quick to react to the threat of Gustavus but negotiations took time and Wallenstein sulkily met the pleas of the Emperor and his courtiers with terms that were very stiff. The Spanish ambassador was outraged. At Gollersdorf eleven of Wallenstein’s demands were acceded to. He was to enjoy unfettered command over all of the Empire’s troops as well as plenipotentiary powers to negotiate and treat with the princes of the Empire. With his credit blown by the bankruptcy and suicide of his main financial backer, de Witte, and his logistics system badly disrupted, it took

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Wallenstein breaks camp to invade Saxony 21st Sept.

Swedes break camp to invade Bavaria 15th Sept.

Croat cavalry foraging raids.

Counter-attack defeated by Finnish cavalry.

Imperialist reinforcement and counter attacks.

Gustavus launches attacks against fortified Alte Veste 3rd September.

Wallenstein offers battle 2nd September.

Gustavus’s army moves to north of Alte Veste 1st/2nd September.

Initial Swedish disposition against Wallenstein 1st September.

Wallenstein’s laager built after Swedes are reinforced in July.

Wallenstein’s army approaches from Bohemia July 17th.

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Swedish laager at Nuremburg built in defence from June 28th 1632.

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Battle of Alte Veste 1st-3rd Sept 1632

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Wallenstein Returns and the Battle of Lutzen  157 some months before Wallenstein could recreate the formidable Imperial army of previous years; the starting capital was missing, so securing money for initial regimental formation and equipment was a slower process than previously. However, by early summer the fresh Imperial army rolled south and trapped Gustavus in strongly fortified Protestant Nuremberg; however, it was a trap because this drew in other Swedish units from around Germany so that soon Wallenstein was surrounded in his turn. Reacting to this, Wallenstein pulled his forces into a large defensive encampment called Alte Veste to the west of Nuremberg. Gustavus followed but a costly frontal attack on Alte Veste’s fortified hilltop defences was repelled with heavy losses, as well as the capture of his outstanding artillery general, Torstensson, who would remain in a dank prison for two years until his exchange. Wallenstein’s counterattack was also defeated by Finnish cavalry of the Smarland regiment. Monro had a lucky escape when forming up for the attack when a sharpshooter hit the buckle of his armour at the neck. Following the setback Gustavus found his large army outflanked by those three masters of seventeenth-century warfare: disease, desertion and hunger. With his army rapidly wasting away and his horses dying from lack of fodder, Gustavus pulled back to lush Bavaria to recuperate, draw in reserves and reap the abundant harvest. Gustavus had suffered his first reverse since landing in Germany; the Swedish campaign had been derailed from its critical path and he had been bested by Wallenstein in a campaign of tactical entrenchment and fortification that much resembled that of Caesar and Pompey at Dyrrhachium. Wallenstein’s army had also suffered; it was hardly in a better position. He, too, retreated on his reserves and supply lines farther north, but at the same time he developed his strategic masterstroke. Gustavus’s loss of prestige following the Alte Veste setback threatened the unravelling of the Protestant alliance; his greatest anxiety always was the reliability of John George, a reluctant rebel, who was ultimately an Imperial loyalist body and soul. When Wallenstein redirected his retreat to attack Leipzig, the Saxon capital, he pushed on Gustavus’s greatest fear and weakness; defenceless Leipzig was captured while John George with von Arnim’s Saxon army was fighting in Silesia and Bohemia. The Elector was unable to get back to cover his capital. Hypersensitive to his loss of prestige, as well as the threat to his communications and the loyalty of his main ally, Gustavus cut loose from his base in Bavaria and chased north ‘covering 650 klm in 17 days at the cost of 4,000 horses’.3 Like Wallenstein he realised what was at stake. Even with winter approaching at a time when armies would be thinking of winter quarters, Gustavus was eager, even desperate, to seek an opportunity to regain the initiative by bringing Wallenstein to battle in the open field.

Götterdämmerung

With his forces gathered at Naumburg, an opportunity appeared, despite the fact that he was only mustering 19,000 troops, while the forces available

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Before Lutzen, Swedish, Saxon and Imperial units in th

th

Saxony 14 -15 November 1631

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Attenburg

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19,000

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N

1 Having marched from Ulm in 2 weeks, Gustavus musters at Naumberg 12th-13th. 2 Wallenstein sends Pappenheim to capture Halle on way to Westphalia. (10-16 hours distract). 14th.

3 Gustavus decides on lightning strike having intercepted enemy letters, 14th. 4 Lunenburg Saxon cavalry requested to join Gustavus but von Armin countermands order 14th (10hrs).

5 Hatzfeld is ordered to Eilenberg to screen Lunenburgs cavalary 14th (10hrs). 6 Von Armin approaches Dresden from Silesian campaign but is 48 hours distant. 15th. 7 Contreras returns to Wallenstein but de Suys continues. 15th.

8 Gallas under orders to join Wallenstein approaches Chemnitz and Moritz Von Wald cavalry force 15th (30hrs).

9 Gustavus advances rapidly towards Lutzen 4:30 a.m 15th.

10 Isolani and his Croat regiment delayed at the Rippach Inn because of his amorous venture with a tavern “wench” so by chance discovers Gustavus’ advance at 12 p.m. Isolani and Colloredo block Swedish advance until 3 p.m.

11 Saxe-Weimar’s cavalry ford river and force Isolani retreat but too late for battle on 15th. 12 16th battle of Lutzen, fog delayed, begins 10 a.m. Gustavus killed.

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Wallenstein Returns and the Battle of Lutzen  159 to Wallenstein in Saxony far outnumbered the Swedish army. However, Wallenstein was complacent. He prepared to go into winter quarters and sent Pappenheim with a corps of cavalry and infantry to nearby Chemnitz, while other units adding up to 20,300 were also dispersed in the area within one day’s march of his base at Lutzen, some twenty kilometres from Leipzig. With such a preponderance on call (37,000 in total), Wallenstein could hardly have reckoned that the heavily outnumbered Gustavus, with breathtaking daring, would put his head into the lion’s mouth with an army of just 19,000. With deadly calculus, Gustavus estimated that a very rapid advance could take Wallenstein by surprise and outnumber him on the battlefield before his outlying units could be called up; such calculus would later, in the American Civil War, be succinctly described by brilliant cavalry Confederate General Nathan Bedford-Forrest, when giving accounts of his famous victory at Brice Crossroads, Mississipi, June 1948 as ‘The firstest with the mostest’. Wallenstein’s blood-stained order to Pappenheim was recovered after the battle; a curt note it included the imperative scrawl ‘cito, cito, citissime, cito’ (quick, quick, the fastest (way) and quick’.4 With the bravado and dash of a Napoleon, Gustavus’s army broke camp and advanced at high speed for Lutzen; Wallenstein, falling down on his scouting and intelligence, was completely unaware of this movement which was launched from Naumburg just fifty kilometres away. Having broken camp at 4.00 am, the Swedish army headed by Bernard of Saxe-Weimar’s troops was rapidly approaching Wallenstein’s encampment at Lutzen around midday on the 15th; in the absence of Imperial cavalry picquets it seemed that a surprise assault might be launched that evening. However, fate intervened when a Croat cavalry regiment was delayed in leaving their lunchbreak on the crossing at the Rippach river; their colonel, the Cypriot adventurer Colonel Isolani, Wallenstein’s close and loyal associate, was amorously delayed at the local gasthof zum Rippach by the attentions of a buxom barmaid. Suddenly the alarm sounded and Isolani’s dalliance was interrupted. He sent riders post-haste to warn Wallenstein, who immediately sent out orders calling in reinforcements from outlying units. The nearest was Pappenheim, to whom an urgent order was sent for immediate recall. A day’s march away, his cavalry might get to Lutzen by midday on the morrow if they marched through the night. Delayed by skirmishing with 500 Croats along the Rippach, it was too late for Gustavus to launch his attack that afternoon. Fate intervened again on the following day by shrouding the battlefield in early winter mist. Late in starting off, the Swedish army approached Lutzen from the south-west but swung around the marshes so as to come up from the south against the Imperial army, drawn up defensively behind the shallow ditches, which had been dug deeper, on the Leipzig road. Packing his right wing with his elite cavalry units he aimed to cut off the Imperial army from its line of retreat to Leipzig, and so began the battle. On the opposite side of the battlefield, Gustavus spied the great black mass of Piccolomini’s cap a pied cuirassiers on the left centre of the Imperialist line. Standing to the left

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Wallenstein Returns and the Battle of Lutzen  161 of them he would have noticed the multi-coloured array of Croat horsemen, showing much red in their cloaks, bonnets, doublets or pantaloons. ‘As for those fellowes [Croat light cavalry] I care not for them, but charge me those black fellowes soundly; for they are the men who will undoe us.’ 5 He was referring to Piccolomini’s fully-armoured cuirassiers, their armour painted black to prevent rusting. In a ferocious and confused battle fought in thick mist and gunsmoke, Gustavus rode deep into the battlefield to try to discern the flow of the battle. He was killed by a chance encounter with Imperial cuirassiers, sinister black apparitions who emerged suddenly through the mist and gunsmoke. In the melee he was pistol-shot at point blank range in the back which was a mortal wound as he only wore a buff surcoat, not armour, on account of painful previous wounds. He would be finished off by a thrust of a cruciform Croat rapier in the chest. It was his third and final piece of bad luck; it killed both him and his brilliantly conceived plan of attack which must otherwise have succeeded. In a battle of attrition into which Pappenheim eventually emerged, only to be killed in his turn, when a cannonball mangled his body, many thousands were slaughtered on a narrow front of only in a densely packed arena. Poyntz also recalled the charge of Piccolomini’s cuirassiers who were repelled eventually by General Knyphausen’s reserves at the ditch where ‘the foot received them [the Imperial cuirassiers] with such a volley of shot, that they were constrained to retire’.6 Only the extraordinary fighting courage of Saxe-Weimar on the left wing and the astute deployment of reserves by von Knyphausen, who commanded the Swedish second echelon, saved the day. Just as the Swedish council of war was deciding to fall back, news arrived that Wallenstein had forestalled them by retreating to Leipzig. With casualty rates of 70 per cent in many elite regiments on both sides, it was a bloody battle with about 30 per cent overall casualties. Piccolomini was hit with five shots and lived, but 200 of his regiment’s cuirassiers lay dead. Nearly 10,000 dead and dying lay on a piece of ground just 1,500 metres long and 200 metres deep. In some places bodies lay in mounds. The defensive ditch, which was pivotal to the battle, ‘was quickly filled up and levelled in that encounter with horse and man that lay dead therein’.7 A grievous blow to the Protestant cause, Protestant Europe grieved. By contrast, the Emperor, far from the blood and gore in opulent Vienna, congratulated his defeated general. ‘I felicitate myself and Your Dilection upon this most happy success on Sweden’s death. God be praised.’8 The carping and criticism came later, on account of his retreat, and most particularly his withdrawal again to winter quarters in Imperial lands at Imperial expense. There was great joy and celebration in Catholic areas over Gustavus’s death. At Regensburg the Jesuits put on a satirical play watched by a Bishop and in another public event Gustavus was described as a snake. Meanwhile in Protestant regions Gustavus was mourned and eulogised; a pamphlet published in Erfurt just a few days after the battle set the tone for the Gustavian legend in Protestant folklore; he laid down ‘his royal blood and his life for the Protestant

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162  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 electors and estates to preserve their religion and regain their liberty.’ 9 Giving ammunition to his enemies the results from the battle would act like a cancer in Wallenstein’s relationship with the Imperial Court. Gustavus’s brilliant campaign strategy was much like Napoleon’s at Ligny and Quatre Bras before Waterloo. Using rapid movement he had divided Wallenstein’s army from various Imperialist detached corps which together would have outnumbered the Swedish king by a factor of 2 or 3. Unlucky due to the mist and the countermanding of his orders to Luneburg-Brunswick by Saxon general von Arnim, Gustavus had failed to land a crushing victory but it was a signal victory nonetheless. Wallenstein’s explained his decision to retreat after the battle in the gathering darkness in a letter to Field Marshal Aldringen on the 17 November ‘The battle started at ten o’clock with such fury as no one has ever seen or heard….most of the officers are dead or wounded…around nightfall our men were so desperate that the officers could not contain the troops, so I decided on the recommendation of the captains to retreat…’.10 He indicated that he would regroup and attack again having gathered in Gallas and other units. His explanation was less than the whole truth because he was himself in a funk having been subject to pistol fire at close range, which caused him a slight wound. Fearful of the Swedish army making a juncture with elector John George’s fast-approaching Saxon-Swedish army returning from Silesia, he abandoned thoughts of counterattacking. So, by default, the Swedish army held the field and scored an important strategic victory by saving Saxony and the Protestant alliance, forcing Wallenstein’s retreat to the Imperial hereditary lands in for winter quarters and recapturing Leipzig. The political fallout from Wallenstein’s troops descending like a swarm of military locusts on Bohemia and the estates of the Emperor and senior courtiers, would lead to a major political crisis in the Imperial court in Vienna.

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Chapter IX

Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague Oxenstierna takes power and the fall of Wallenstein

T

he death of Gustavus brought Oxenstierna to power as regent for the child-Queen Christina. Despite the formidable ability of the chancellor, nothing could replace the kingly charisma of Gustavus, nor could Oxenstierna completely trust any one commander. The various commands were split amongst senior Swedish generals, such as Horn and Baner, and trusted German generals, Dodo von Knyphausen and Saxe-Weimar. SaxeWeimar whose sheer bravery and charisma had held together the Swedish army on the Lutzen battlefield, would command the main Swedish army. For Richelieu, Gustavus’s death was a mixed blessing; however, the maintenance of Swedish commitment to being his ‘proxy’ army in the unofficial war against the Habsburgs and the continuity offered by Oxenstierna may well have been viewed as the perfect outcome. Of most concern was whether leaderless Sweden would stay in the war. He was quickly assured on that point by Oxenstierna. Richelieu wrote to Louis on 15 December: it would seem that if the King of Sweden had postponed his death for six months Your Majesty’s position would have been more assured. However, if speedy action is taken to prevent the secession on the part of the [Protestant] princes, who might well split up as a result of this accident, I do not think that your Majesty need fear your enemies.1 Richelieu quickly prepared for 30,000 Reichsthaler in bribes to be readied for distribution by ambassador Charnace in Frankfurt. Wallenstein would soon be pressing John George in particular on the idea of a separate peace.2 In a sense, it was not just Gustavus who died that day. Ailing Wallenstein, who saw close comrades cut down around him and was almost killed himself from a flurry of pistol shots when the fighting reached him, had lost his nerve. In a report of the battle Colonel Diodati wrote, ‘His highness was struck in the left hip by a musket ball, but remained impervious to shot, which did not penetrate the flesh.  … Count Harrach his grand chamberlain close to him received a musket ball in the throat which passed out by the ear.’3 He never led his troops in battle again; despite commanding considerable forces he quit Leipzig

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164  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 upon the approach of the Saxon army and retreated to his bases in Bohemia. Wallenstein’s judgement and good fortune seemed to desert him; officers and men from certain cavalry units that fled were decimated as punishment. It included a popular young officer with a good record. Despite many pleas no mercy was shown: the ‘cowardly’ unit in question was unarmoured due to the still inadequate Imperial financial and logistical chain. As his health and humour declined, Wallenstein retreated into haughty isolation, surrounded by loyal Czech compatriots; after elation following Gustavus’s death, whispers as to Wallenstein’s retreat, anger that he was drawing contributions from Imperial lands again in the winter of 1632/3 rather than quartering on the enemy, and suspicions raised by his diplomatic correspondences with Saxony and France, served to alienate him further from the inner circle of the Emperor’s advisers. Wallenstein for his part was determined to use diplomacy to end the war, a conflict of which he was increasingly tired. He was sceptical of the possibility of outright victory. Peace and retirement to his estates was all he sought. He would seek to use his plenipotentiary powers to enforce policies aimed at a balanced and reasonable peace which, in his view, should already have been set in motion at the time of the Imperialist high-water mark in 1628. He had never had any truck with the gung-ho and uncompromising Jesuits or the courtiers who encouraged Ferdinand’s delusions. He had always been averse to the Emperor’s ultamontist enthusiasm and hubristic reaction to every victory. The malaise in his relations with the Emperor increased further through the winter and spring with disputes over the application of the Gollersdorf agreement and countermanded Imperial orders on troop movements. The release of the Czech rebel von Thurn, when his corps surrendered at Steinau in autumn 1632, drew great criticism and heightened suspicions. The capture of three key cities in Silesia was overlooked by his critics. Visits by senior courtiers, such as von Trauttmansdorff, failed to quell the growing sense of disquiet at Wallenstein’s desperate search for a formula to win over Saxony and end the war without further useless attrition. Following refusals to obey stupid orders by the Emperor, which resulted in a failed winter march against Nuremberg, then the countermanding of an Imperial order for troop dispositions around Passau, the tension between court and commander escalated seriously. Count von Trauttmansdorff wrote to the Bavarian envoy: This withdrawal is the most pernicious, the most perilous, the most heedless thing the duke has ever done. He will receive orders, stringent orders, to advance again. If he does, so much the better. If he does not obey, his Majesty will prove that he is master, the duke the servant … . Yes, indeed I am still the duke’s good friend, but …4 Wallenstein received the orders and did not obey them.

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   165 At the Imperial court, plots and paranoia superseded the whispers. When Wallenstein demanded and received an oath of personal loyalty from his officers at Prague, the so-called First Pilsner Reverse of 12 January 1634, panic set in at the Royal Council, panic that was inflamed by vicious and erroneous ‘informing’ from several of his leading commanders, including Generals Piccolomini and Aldringen. Paranoia now turned to murder; fearing that the oath of loyalty was the prelude to a coup d’etat, Ferdinand issued an Imperial writ for Wallenstein’s murder. Losing his grip on reality, only realising in extremis the peril he was in, Wallenstein soon discovered how fickle was the loyalty of his oath-bound subordinates. He was hunted down and betrayed in the city of Eger as he fled towards safety in Saxony. His Czech confederates were hacked down and shot at dinner, while he was horribly butchered in his own bedchamber by English and Irish mercenaries, who skewered him with a halberd. Wallenstein was only driven to escape to Saxon sanctuary at the end. He was always the loyal Imperial general. His towering talent and genius were not tempered by political unctuousness in the corridors of the Viennese court, and this was his downfall; but the fault also lay with Ferdinand. Their mutual failure to establish a personal bond was the origin of the falling out; excessive pride and an intolerance for fools and creatures of the court led Wallenstein into a trap set by his enemies. A brilliant man, one of the greatest of any age, he was pulled down by vicious mediocrity. Soon regretting his actions, Ferdinand quickly understood the injustice that had been done, that he had been panicked by courtiers and generals. He mused in his cups, ‘They painted him blacker than he was.’5 But, as Emperor, his remorse did not last long; a trumped-up legal inquiry vindicated his actions. Piccolomini’s reputation suffered from his treachery; not trusted, it would take some years before his undoubted talents were again given free rein. Soon Vienna would be following the exact same policies as Wallenstein had with regard to negotiations with Saxony.

Spanish reaction to the Swedish occupation of the Rhine valley

Following the collapse of the Habsburg position in Germany after Breitenfeld and the loss of so many garrisons along the upper and lower Rhine and Lake Konstanz, Olivares recognised that his strategic position was in danger of collapse. The Spanish Road was cut and if nothing were done the Habsburg Imperium would be finished, the Viennese Habsburgs knocked out of the war. Despite the desperate financial position of the Spanish monarchy something had to be done urgently both to open the Spanish Road and support the Austrian Habsburgs. As Olivares pointed out The King of France has entirely closed the Italy-Flanders route. France lies between Spain and Flanders, so that no help from Germany can reach either Flanders or Italy; none from Italy can reach Flanders, or Italy; none

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166  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 from Italy can reach Flanders and none can reach Spain from Flanders, or Flanders from Spain, except by way of the channel, bordered by French ports on one side and English ports on the other, and swarming with Dutch ships.6 The Spanish invasion was driven by a strategic imperative to secure communications with Flanders. In 1633 the third Duke of Feria with a fresh army of 20,000, named the Army of Alsace, was sent through the Valtellina Pass to restore the balance; Feria was ordered to clear the Spanish Road and Alsace. Descending from the Stelvio Pass and crossing the Inn, he relieved besieged Konstanz and Bregenz; he then traversed the Black Forest and took Breisach. The place was a veritable ‘Gibraltar’; the fortress controlled the Rhine and a crossing which took in a number of midstream islands. The central fortress sits atop a huge solitary rock that rears unnaturally from the flat plain between the Rhine and the string of Black Forest mountains, hiding in their folds Freiburg to the east. From Breisach, Feria moved south again to Rheinfelden, a walled town on the Swiss side of the Rhine facing the Black Forest. After mining the curtain walls, the city was stormed without quarter. One Spanish captain, Zinckh, fired by the adrenalin of battle, cut down the commander of the town Colonel Von Anlau, ‘Cousin, you are a villain, serving against your Emperor and your fatherland.’ 7 He impaled the poor man on his partisan (a type of halberd with point and blade carried by infantry officers). The Imperialist plan for 1634, Napoleonic in scale, was for a quadruple junction and concentration of forces. Firstly, Gallas and Aldringen’s Imperial army corps (previously lent to Bavaria by Wallenstein) with combined numbers of about 23,000 were to join together for the siege of Regensburg, defended by a 3,500-man garrison. Secondly, this army would join with a Bavarian corps of 7,500 men which itself had merged with a Spanish-led division of about 4,400 under Feria, the remains of his plague-infested command. Lastly, they were to concentrate after the taking of Regensburg with the Cardinal Infante’s army of 11,700 which was to cross through the Valtellina from Italy. The combined army would comprise nearly 47,000, including some 13,600 cavalry of whom about 3,600 were Croat light horsemen. However, by the final junction on 4 September the combined force had dwindled to some 32,000 because of normal wastage due to garrison needs, disease and desertion. The army of the Cardinal Infante, on loan for the fighting season, was on its way to reinforce Flanders where the Cardinal would take over the governorship of the province following the death of Isabella. Clearly, the objectives of the combined field army would need to be targets of opportunity; the army would only be able to combine for a short time for supply reasons. For the same reasons it would need to keep moving in a direction that remained within reach of the path to Flanders for winter billeting. The actions of the Spanish army thus

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   167 took on the characteristics of an opportunistic march-through. All the Swedish army had to do was avoid the combined Habsburg army until it split up. At most the Catholic army had available to it four months of active fighting before wintering, but the concentration of forces might do much in that time if they could corner and destroy the Swedish main army. Common sense would suggest that the Swedish-German army should avoid fighting the Spanish-Imperialists at a large numerical disadvantage. Feria had achieved much in his few months on the battlefield. However, despite his experience, he could do nothing about fever and desertion, or the necessary requirements of leaving garrisons in his conquests. Fever raged through his encampments, his army seeped away like water in sand; by the start of the campaign season in 1634, Feria himself was dead of the plague and only 4,000 of his 20,000 troops were available for combat. The Army of Alsace had ceased to exist and no effort had been expended on the province after which it was named. What was significant from a strategy point of view in Olivares’ calculations, as he moved units around his huge map-room, was his focus on the immediate strategic needs of Spain. Feria’s army was sent primarily to open up the Spanish Road in southern Germany; it never managed to operate in Alsace which was the threatened Imperial territory. In regard to Alsace, the real aim was to protect this province as a source of food and logistical support as well as lend a hand to beleaguered Franche-Comté, a Spanish territory abutting central France, which was cut off from direct Spanish aid as a result of the Savoyard alliance with Louis XIII’s regime. Franche-Comté would be the scene of horrific fighting and devastation as wave after wave of French armies swept over its territory in the second half of the war, when France sought to expunge this intruding Spanish threat so near to Dijon, Burgundy and the French capital. Although these two armies were indeed an important support to Vienna’s war effort, their focus was on interests that were strictly Spanish. The operational strategies of the two partners in the Habsburg dominion were therefore rarely aligned. Madrid aimed at the recovery of the Spanish Netherlands, while Vienna sought the defeat of the Swedes. The armies of Horn and Saxe-Weimar would eventually coalesce to meet this challenge as the joined-up Habsburg army picked off Protestant town after town as they travelled north together in harness. Abbot Maurius Friesenegger marked the decline of Feria’s army when witnessing the mustering of an Italian Regiment; ‘half-filled companies of blackened and jaundiced faces, starved bodies, half clothed or bedecked in rags and stolen women’s clothing. It was the face of hunger and famine.’8

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168  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

Journey to Nordlingen May 1634–Sept 1634

Regensburg, whose citizens were Protestants, had surrendered very quickly, being taken by Saxe-Weimar’s army on 14 November 1633 after a ten-day siege. It was the start of a particularly brutal phase in the war because in Catholic Bavaria the soldiers of Weimar’s under-resourced army were given full licence for cruelty and looting. A typical victim was prioress Klara Steigar at Eichstatt whose Augustine Priory was completely devastated and burnt down in early 1634.9 Bernhard’s corps, still in Franconia, had spent the year very unproductively since coming out of winter quarters in May 1634. Gallas, with the Imperial army that he had taken over from Wallenstein, moved directly to recapture Regensburg, the issue of so much political angst the previous year. Count Matteo Gallasso (Gallas) was an Italian from Trentino. His smart political manoeuvring and betrayal of Wallenstein had secured him command of Wallenstein’s army ahead of Piccolomini, the other great betrayer, because as the ‘messenger’ it was Piccolomini who had attracted the odium for his part in the affair. Gallas’s instructions were to go to the aid of Bavaria and retake Regensburg, captured by Saxe-Weimar in 1633, then to join with the new army of the Cardinal Infante (Philip IV’s brother) which was coming up from Italy on the Spanish Road. Possibly still nervous of the reliability of his generals, Ferdinand II sent his son and heir Ferdinand to take nominal joint command, a plan previously opposed by Wallenstein. In early 1634 Saxe-Weimar was forced to passively observe the loss of Regensburg, the scene of his triumph in 1633, not being powerful enough to contemplate a field battle against the Imperial-Bavarian army of 40,000. Despite a few skirmishes, as Saxe-Weimar circled Regensburg looking for an opportunity to disrupt the siege, he was forced to break contact, leaving Regensburg to its fate. With a fractured command, following the death of Gustavus, the Swedes had not been able to make a troop concentration to save Regensburg because Horn’s army was in the south. The city eventually capitulated on 26 July. Besides, Saxe-Weimar was focused on consolidating his personal holdings in Franconia which had been granted to him by Oxenstierna: so, he frittered away his time trying to capture Kronach and Forscheim. With the Swedish Protestant alliance now treading water in terms of new conquests, the division of spoils, especially the share-out of lands for quartering of troops became particularly important. Following the death of Gustavus, Sweden’s sway with its allies had somewhat weakened, so allies had to be accommodated with more tact. Sensing this, Wilhelm V of Hesse, in a letter to Oxenstierna of 17 May 1633, assertively set out his assessment of ‘who quarters where’, and the terms on which allies should divide up taxable territory. ‘As to whose quarters are where, this is an agreed assessment of how it now stands …  . Fieldmarshal Knyphausen, under your command, with the Swedish army has stopped and rested his army in two places in Lunenburg

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   169 and in lower Saxony … [but] Lands along the Weser and Westphalian evangelical and Catholic [and] neutral places, the Counties of Benheim, Lippe, Hoya … and above Hochst, [south of Frankfurt and on the border with dynastic rival, Lutheran, Hesse-Darmstadt] are under my control … apart from that my Landcommissar and the Landgravine occupy Fulda and the Duchy of Waldeck; the Swedish army should not make any other arrangements in these areas from the time of notification unless the places have fallen, … and we should be freely allowed to extract ‘contribution’.10 Previously, contribution had only been allowed at the grace of Gustavus, but now it was to be taken by right.

Another Spanish army crosses the Alps, 1634

While Saxe-Weimar’s reputation as a fighting hero of Protestantism was sinking, Horn’s was rising. Horn alone had exploited the fall of Wallenstein by capturing defecting garrisons in Swabia. Operating an independent command, Horn retook the places lost to Aldringen in 1633, in the area of Lake Konstanz, Biberach, Kempten, Überlingen and Memmingen being taken in short order between March and April 1634. 1633 had also seen Horn achieve a string of successes, including a victory in the field against Charles of Lorraine at Paffendorf in Alsace, as well as leading a brilliant campaign leading to the capture of the fortress of Benfeld. The Imperialists regarded him as the most dangerous threat because of his military talent. Saxe-Weimar, realising that his force was too small to be effective, agreed to join with Horn at ‘ friendly’ Protestant Augsburg on 12 July 1634. Then, with 22,000 troops in combination, they attacked at Landsberg on Lech and defeated a smaller covering force, the main result of which was the death of Aldringen, the able Imperial commander and Wallenstein’s former aide and betrayer. Bavaria was again ravaged by marauding Protestant armies. It was Horn’s successes in Alsace and in the upper Rhine area around Lake Konstanz, and the French success in taking Philipsburg and Koblenz, that stimulated the Spanish into action. The Swedes and the French had effectively blocked the Spanish Road and imperilled Spain’s strategic position vis-a-vis the Dutch, who had occupied the lower Rhine. Olivares in typical fashion decided on a major counter-blow which resulted in sending the Cardinal Infante with a large army through the Valtellina. The Imperialists had moved on from their success at Regensburg to join forces with the Spanish for the siege of Donauworth on 13 August: it was a Protestant town that had been captured by Gustavus in 1632. The place fell to the Imperialists on the 16th, while Horn was off trying to intercept the Spanish army in the south. He failed, but meanwhile Gallas had moved on to another Protestant town, Nordlingen. Following the junction with the Cardinal Infante’s army on 4 September, both Catholic armies set about the siege of Nordlingen, which the Imperialists had

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170  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 already commenced. An attack was launched on the same day but repelled with 500 casualties. It was lucky the assault failed; without it the battle of Nordlingen might never have been fought. Saxe-Weimar and Horn had meanwhile joined forces again. The fall of Regensburg had been a humiliation for Saxe-Weimar, who was increasingly identifying himself as the German Protestant champion. The Swedish army approached Nordlingen aiming at its relief; but the problem now was that the combined forces of Horn and Saxe-Weimar had fallen to 16,000. Imperial reinforcements from other outlying garrisons and units made this number up to 25,700 but the army after some losses to garrisons and normal wastage still counted 33,000, a preponderance of 22 per cent. The combined Imperial-Bavarian-Spanish army consisted of 15,000 Spanish, 8,500 Bavarians and 10,000 Imperialists supported by 2,000 Croat cavalry. Supplied with an unusually large number of guns, fifty-two field guns in total, plus 116 regimental pieces, the Habsburg-Bavarian army, for once, rivalled the artillery numbers deployed by the Swedes. In normal circumstances no smaller army would be prepared to accept such odds in open battle unless they were secure behind excellent defences or in a position of outstanding natural defence, or unless there was no other option except a disastrous retreat whilst in close contact with the enemy. That the Swedish army would decide to launch an offensive against well-entrenched and numerically superior forces made it one of the most astounding decisions of the war. But Saxe-Weimar had had a disappointing year. The glories of 1632 were fading fast for the ambitious soldier; Protestant allied cities had fallen under his watch; Nordlingen’s capture was only a matter of time. Hunger and lack of pay also afflicted his army. In consequence, morale declined and indiscipline increased. As a general you are only as good as your last victory, so Weimar was particularly sensitive with regard to Horn, whose successes at Benfeld 1631 and Paffenhofen 1633 had been lauded. By August 1634 the jealous, prickly, and quarrelsome Saxe-Weimar must have hungered for another dramatic triumph to recover and burnish his reputation as the Imperialists’ foremost opponent. In the Thirty Years War, success equated to booty and the ability to recruit. Olivares in typical fashion decided on a major counter-blow against Sweden by sending the Cardinal Infante with a large army through the Valtellina to clear the Swedish out of Germany, re-establish the Habsburg strategic position on the Rhine and reinforce the Spanish forces in the Low Countries. As Olivares pointed out, The King of France has entirely closed the Italy-Flanders route. France lies between Spain and Flanders, so that no help from Germany can reach either Flanders or Italy; none from Italy can reach Flanders, or Italy; none from Italy can reach Flanders and none can reach Spain from Flanders, or Flanders from Spain, except by way of the channel, bordered by French

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   171 ports on one side and English ports on the other, and swarming with Dutch ships. At most the Catholic army had available to it four months of active fighting before wintering, but the concentration of forces might do much in that time if they could corner and destroy the Swedish main army. Common sense would suggest that the Swedish-German army should avoid fighting the SpanishImperialists at a large numeric disadvantage. So, by August 1634, the jealous, prickly and quarrelsome Saxe-Weimar must have hungered for another dramatic triumph to recover and enhance his reputation. After Regensburg and Donauworth could his ego allow another Protestant bastion to fall?

Wheel of fortune; The battle of Nordlingen, 6 September 1634

Saxe-Weimar and Horn, lunching together in a coach, are said to have refused to believe the reports on the mass of the enemy. Nordlingen was dispensable; with the Spanish host likely to be just passing through it was better to simply let the enemy pass on, but Horn was persuaded. ‘We have lost Regensburg, the banks of the Danube are swarming with the enemy, the Rhine and the Main are threatened,’ lamented Saxe-Weimar, ‘and if we do nothing to save the beleaguered town of Nordlingen we shall become suspect in the eyes of the Protestant estates and this will end our renown.’11 SaxeWeimar’s youthful impetuosity and his prickly sense of honour underpinned his decision for battle: ‘I have promised help to the beleaguered town and I must keep my word as a prince.’12 The fact that the obvious next targets for the Imperialists would be Würzburg and Bamberg in his own territory of Franconia must also have encouraged him to fight. Whatever the reasoning, the decision to attack was deeply flawed on both the strategic and tactical levels. Moreover, the Swedish army, after months of marching and fighting, bereft of money and supplies, was not in prime condition. This was revealed in SaxeWeimar’s bitterly sarcastic letter to Oxenstierna on 17 April 1634. ‘Yesterday Marshal Horn rendezvoused with us at Gunzbourg. His army is in as bad shape as ours’ …we will give you the pleasure of conjuring up other armies, which could with your permission, confront the enemy?” [Emphasis added]’.13 Saxe-Weimar’s army was descending into the congenital indiscipline that was common to desperate and hungry armies on the move. Herbele described how Bernard’s Protestant army abused the Protestant villagers in the region of Ulm, as they advanced on the Imperialists at Nordlingen: They ‘plundered us completely of horses, cattle, bread, flour, salt, lard, cloth, linen, clothes and everything we possessed. They treated the inhabitants badly, shooting, stabbing, and beating a number of people to death.’14 Some houses were torched as they left. Even if Saxe-Weimar was the main proponent of the decision to attack, Horn was equally at fault for agreeing to do battle. He was quite aware of the

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redoubt / field work

E Albuch

D Heselberg

C Lachberg

B Ländle

A Himmelreich

W

S

N

E

11 Most of the Swedish Army is killed or captured 11 a.m-12 p.m.

1

10 From the high ground Imperialists crush retreating Swedes 11 a.m.

9 Imperialist/Spanish counter attacks against Saxe-Weimar 10 a.m.

8 Horn’s 15 attacks fail and decides to withdraw 10 a.m.

7 Saxe-Weimar cavalry attacks repulsed 9 a.m.

6 Supporting attack by Saxe-Weimar troops.

5 Spanish counterattacks retake Albuch.

4 Detonation of gunpowder wagon kills hundreds of Swedes.

3 Horn’s Swedish infantry storm fortified Albuch, Sept 6th 5-6 a.m.

5th/6th

2 Swedes clear the Lachberg & Heselberg at night 10 p.m-2 a.m

1 Approach of the Swedish army 5th; arrives in evening.

A

2 1

C

im

rhe

Ebe

11

B

ar

Weim

Saxe-

r Rive

Battle of Nordlingen 6th Sept 1634

10

7

Rive

r

D

8

Hor n

7

3

9

ats Cro

4

River

6

E

1 klm

lo co Pic

5

ni mi

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zane Leg ish n Spa

rain Lor

lasGal ialists er p Im

Siege Lines

Nordlingen

Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   173 dangers of giving battle. ‘The enemy is already superior to us. ….if we should be defeated, there is no new army to carry on the resistance.’15 It was the only time in the Thirty Years War, excepting Dassau Bridge, when a much smaller army, from choice, attacked a superior enemy holding good defensive positions. The Imperialists, knowing of the approach by the Protestant army, drew themselves up in a strong defensive position on a line of hills running south from Nordlingen with their front facing west. The southern end of the line had two particularly important heights called Allbruch and Shonfeld, which the Imperialists fortified. Experienced commanders Gallas and Piccolomini held the left of the line and Werth and Charles of Lorraine the right. The army was nominally under the command of the ‘Habsburg Royals’, Cardinal Infante and Ferdinand King of Hungary. The topography in the area of the battlefield is not easy to understand; it is riven by deep, narrow valleys and forests, and is clearly better suited to defence. The picturesque landscape is surprisingly steeply undulated in stark contrast to most battlefields, which are flat. The Allbruch height above the Renzen stream being particularly steep, it would obviously be difficult to dislodge an entrenched enemy from this flank. If the move were successful, the Imperial defence might be compromised and in danger of being rolled up on the flank from left to right. The part of the hill facing west was less prominent, but dominated the saddle between it and the Heselberg. Apart from the strategic deficiencies of Saxe-Weimar’s decision for the offensive, there were also the tactical ones. The approach to the battle was very awkward. The mass of Swedish-German troops and wagons needed to file along a single narrow track through the woods and valleys, then over a river with a single bridge crossing at Erdsheim, before debouching onto a narrow plain squashed between the wooded heights of the Lachsberg and Heselberg and the river. The Swedish army was set on an oblique attack to roll up the Imperial line. Things went well; the Imperialists were swept off the Heselburg ridge during the night of the 5th. There was little time for sleep because the artillery bombardment of the Allbruch began at 5.00 a.m. on the 6th: then Horn’s infantry stormed forward. They captured the Allbruch heights, but then a gunpowder wagon in the centre of the position blew up, killing hundreds of the victorious Protestants just as various Spanish reserve regiments counter-attacked. Thrown off the hill, Horn ordered repeated counter-attacks. Ever thinning lines of pikemen and musketeers advanced along the saddle or up the steep sides of the Allbruch against the entrenched enemy through a storm of musket and cannon fire. Fifteen times they advanced; fifteen times they were repelled with heavy casualties. Notable for their heroics were the Scottish regiments, including Monro’s Mackay’s Regiment. Saxe-Weimar’s attacks on other strongpoints of the Imperial line also failed. Sydenham Poyntz, the everyman of the war, was on hand to describe the action:

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174  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 but the enemy very resolutely approached and tooke a sconce in of ours, which lay hard under the hill which they had gotten of us, and played upon us with cannon of the hill & of the sconce which galled the Spanish army; but the Spaniard approached with his whole army and tooke the sconce and the hill againe, and put the enemy to retreate.16 Defeated in their battleplan, and outnumbered, the Swedish army was now in the desperate position of having to withdraw through the narrow bottleneck at Erdshiem just as the much larger Imperial army surged forward across the entire battlefront. Fresh Imperial cuirassiers, in overwhelming force, having dispersed Saxe-Weimar’s tired defenders, now dominated the heights above Erdsheim. They must have had a wonderful view. Below them at the narrow bridge was a terribly clogged bottleneck, a jumbled mass of confused soldiery, gun trains and wagons in tangled confusion and entirely lacking in military order. There could be only one result, catastrophic defeat, as thousands of Imperial cuirassiers swept down on the mob below. Poyntz goes on to describe the slaughter that developed as Saxe-Weimar’s troops were squeezed between the hills and river in the battle’s last phase. And at the bottome wherein they fought was but small and had more horse and men then they could well order there. … At length came Duke Weymars horse but here was no roome for them to employ … and there was such a general confusion among them that the Duke’s infantry which were in the bottome were all cut downe and themselves out of order lost their courage and fled.17 ‘Slaughtered for six miles’, Horn’s army was wiped out, and Bernard’s cavalry skedaddled from the field. Saxe-Weimar, wounded in the neck, escaped on a borrowed horse; 8,000 men were dead and a further 4,500 captured. High casualty levels were not just the result of battle; it seems that surrendering men were deliberately cut down: ‘the Spanish butchered everyone,’18 wrote Hagendorf bitterly. Lucky to survive the massacre, he had lost many friends. All the baggage, some 4,000 waggons, 1,200 horses and sixty-eight guns were captured. Along ‘withall we found such a number of ladies and commanders’ wives that I cannot count them …’ wrote Poyntz gleefully.19 The combined Imperial-BavarianSpanish army suffered just 3,500 casualties. Nordlingen, all hope of relief gone, surrendered immediately. Horn and many other senior officers were captured. Monro, who had become colonel of the Mackay Regiment was away recruiting in Scotland at the time. His regiment and livelihood were wiped out. With so little remaining it could not be reconstituted. The core of veterans was dead. Many of the captured men changed sides, including Hagendorf, who rejoined his old comrades in his fourth defection of the war. He was happily re-assigned as an officer to the Imperial regiment where he had previously served. ‘After the battle all those who had previously been in the Bavarian and Imperial armies,

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   175 but had at some point been captured, now returned to their old regiments.’20 Harried by Isolani’s Croat cavalry, Saxe-Weimar re-assembled the remnants of his men, as well as called-in garrisons, some 14,000, at Heilbronn. By the time he reached Frankfurt there were even fewer men left. He reported to Oxenstierna that ‘the great misfortune is so bad it could not be any worse.’21 The fortunes of war now entirely reversed the strategic balance in Germany. Hagendorf was the German everyman of the war. His manuscripts were only discovered in 1988 in the Berlin National Library archives. Born a Protestant, the son of a miller in the region of Magedburg at Zerbst in 1601, Hagendorf writes in colourful Rhenish style with southern grammar, probably  picked up from fighting in southern campaigns. He became a mercenary first with the Venetians in Italy and the Alps. Leading a picaresque life, he was married twice, siring many children, only one of whom survived the cold and wet life of camp followers. He had many ‘temporary’ wives. Abused and hardened by the war, no doubt he meted out abuse in his turn, shook down innocents for loot and exploited women. Following the sack of Landshut in 1634, Hagendorf boasted, ‘Here I got a pretty lass as my plunder … when we moved on I sent her back to Landshut again.’  Again at Pforzheim in 1635, this time with a Bavarian army, he ‘took a young girl out with me here too, but I let her go back in again’. Changing sides several times after being captured, he had a knack for being on the losing side; even in victory at the infamous sack of Magdeburg of 1631, he was shot in the gut during the storm and only survived thanks to the tender care of his first wife. His main memory was that he missed out on his share of the booty. Despite the objectively appalling life he led, and its many tragedies, it was tempered by the bonhomie and merry drinking bouts around blazing fires in encampments. His memoires are remarkable for their boundless optimism and disarming good humour. After the war he settled down in Gotze in Brandenburg, later becoming a town councillor and judge. With Horn captured, the remnants assembled at Frankfurt formed the rump of what was soon to become the personal property of Saxe-Weimar himself, an independent German Protestant army free from the political direction of Sweden. Though Oxenstierna did not yet know that, he must surely have been concerned. Rather than retreating north to the Swedish logistics bases to consolidate under the orders of Swedish General Baner, Saxe-Weimar turned west, taking the fateful decision to march to Alsace and the Rhine for ‘independent’ sustenance. Saxe-Weimar had decided to go his own way, removing himself from Swedish control and opening negotiations with Richelieu. The Imperialists quickly exploited the triumph to roll back the military gains made by Gustavus in 1631–2. Without an effective field army there was little point in towns and cities resisting large besieging armies because there was no hope of relief. Saxe-Weimar’s precious Franconia was immediately taken back as Piccolomini

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176  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 advanced. Nuremberg, Würzburg, Heilbronn with the surrounding Hohenlohe lands, and Stuttgart, all surrendered in short order. Soon the Swedes were pushed back to the coast. Sweinfurt fell and not the least of Sweden’s losses was their arms manufacturing centre at Suhl in Thuringia, which was devastated by fire.22 The Rhineland, including the Palatine, was once more overrun, the Spanish Road being restored by the surrender of the key fortresses of Philipsburg and Speyer. Charles of Lorraine and Werth were detached to assault French positions in Lorraine where General La Force’s French troops were forced to retreat. Mainz on the Rhine, Sweden’s administration centre, would soon come under pressure. Croat light cavalry under Colonel Isolani created panic by moving into Hesse, while other units went south and crushed the Protestant forces based in Württemberg. Bavarian General Werth hunted Bernard’s fleeing forces westwards. Isolated Swedish garrisons, such as the formidable Marienburg (above Würzburg) and Hanau, clung on for a while longer with the help of loyal Scottish garrisons but they were the last Swedish strongholds on the Main in middle Germany. On the diplomatic front the Emperor now had the chance to undo the political hold of the Swedes over the Protestant states, particularly the moderate Lutheran ones whose experience of Swedish rule had not endeared them to their ‘Scandinavian saviours’. Whilst the momentum of Breitenfeld and Lutzen had maintained the Protestant alliance, the loss of prestige at Nordlingen signalled a change. John George and George William’s natural conservative gravitation to political legitimacy and a ‘German solution’, led them speedily to think about switching sides again. The opportunity now presented itself for the Emperor to detach again moderate Protestant states. Politically inept as he often was, on this occasion the Emperor and his advisers seized the chance, following Wallenstein’s policies almost exactly. The League of Heilbronn and the Protestant alliance so diligently constructed by Oxenstierna was now shown to be a house of cards. Richelieu immediately understood the dire consequences of the disastrous battle which, in a memorandum sent to Louis XIII in September 1634, he summed up in a style which was unusually robust and direct: It is certain that if the Protestant party is entirely ruined the brunt of the power of the House of Austria will fall on France … the party [the Protestants] cannot subsist if it is not sustained by present and notable help and by greater hope of a powerful name – it being certain without such help, all their Imperial cities would disarm, Saxony would come to terms, and each one would think of his own affairs so that this great party would soon be a shadow of its former self.23 [Emphasis added] There is urgency in the tone. Richelieu’s memoranda to Louis were usually balanced but with a decided tilt. Normally, he offered choices even if they were

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   177 skewed, but not in this memorandum. He repeated the phrase ‘it is certain’ four times in the first four paragraphs of this blunt and short memorandum: It is certain moreover that even if France did not declare herself on this occasion, the House of Austria would be no less hostile to her, because it would conclude that she failed to do so out of imprudence, weakness or fear. It is certain that the worst thing that France can do is to conduct herself in such a manner that she would remain alone to bear the brunt of the Emperor a [emphasis added] Richelieu and Louis XIII had been considering direct entry into the war for a long time, even knowingly risking it as far back as 1626 and again during the second and third Italian invasions. A memo sent by Richelieu in 1632 was already considering as an option ‘to join with the king of Sweden to wage open war with the house if Austria …’24 [Emphasis added]. In 1632 he wrote to his ambassador in Madrid that Spain was ‘nowhere in a position to resist a concentrated power such as France over a long period and in the final analysis the outcome of a war must necessarily be calamitous for our Iberian neighbour’.25 For Richelieu, war was not only expected but necessary for the achievement of France’s priority strategic goal of national security and natural frontiers. Neither Richelieu nor Louis wanted to be seen as the aggressors, however, and even in 1635 they were concerned that it would be a war ‘which we will not be the first to begin’.26 It was both a desire not to offend the papacy by an attack on a fellow Catholic power, as well as a means of dampening dévot and pro-Spanish sentiment in the French nobility: after all, the nobility, including many dévots would have to fight the war. Richelieu needed to attract moderate dévot support. The only question about the anticipated war with the Habsburgs was how it would start, not if. There were serious domestic consequences for France as France was set on an accelerated war footing. ‘The situation changed abruptly in 1634. The government now sent intendants to most of the genéralités … in an effort to use them to oversee the financial administration, rather than simply as adjuncts to governors (or military commanders).’27 France was cranking up for war. Increasing the tax take and government cash flow was now an even greater priority. For the Protestant inhabitants of southern and western Germany the consequences of Nordlingen were dire, as the triumphant Catholics sought vengeance for former reverses and depredations. A Hessian pastor, Johann Mink, recorded: Anno 1634. This was an extremely dangerous and a grievous and very injurious year for all Evangelicals … soon thereafter [Nordlingen] the Imperialists followed and chased the Swedes over the Rhine.28

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178  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Villagers fled the rampaging Imperialists, and with them the CounterReformation returned.

Dutch campaigns 1633–4 and reactions to the Battle of Nordlingen

On the Dutch borderlands the war had reached stalemate; the campaigns of 1633 and 1634 achieved little. Besides, negotiations had been underway with Isabella in Brussels. Her death and the decision of Olivares to send a new army under the Cardinal Infante, followed by the disastrous battle of Nordlingen, changed the strategic balance and the intentions of the parties. Once again, the Dutch were facing an existential crisis. In the Republic many took the view that spending on an army should be cut. Costs were high and achievements small. They should remain on the defensive, it was argued, and concentrate on the vital naval war. Frederick Henry was keener on offensive war because, more than many of his compatriots, he wanted to ‘liberate’ Flanders. There had to be some tangible benefit from the war, and there was a need for an army. Writing in December 1633 he noted ‘One understands that a defensive war costs as much as an offensive one,’ argued the Stadtholder, ‘and that it [i.e. the former] is seriously prejudicial to the land since this cannot be conducted without substantial loss.’29 As tension between France and Spain increased, Frederick Henry, supported by the Pensionary of Holland, Adrian Pauw, increasingly placed his faith in an alliance with France. He believed that a combined army, or a pincer attack, would deliver the decisive victory that had so far eluded them. Pauw was the main power in the land because Holland paid the bulk of the financial contributions (64 per cent). The need for an alliance became essential after the crushing defeat over Sweden at Nordlingen. The Cardinal Infante was marching on Flanders with a reinforcement of 11,000 men, while the Duke of Moncada Aytona attacked Maastricht with 30,000. Maastricht was saved but it was clear, with renewed threats to the east following the collapse of Swedish power and the failure to make any headway since the capture of s’Hertogenbosch, that an alliance with France offered the key to survival. When the military alliance was eventually concluded in February 1635, Pauw expressed the hope of many; in writing to Count Floris de Culemborg, he enthused: God be praised that our aforesaid negotiations have ended happily … and the Treaty concluded of so great an affair as has not arisen in our life time, this might crown undertaking with and alongside their Mightinesses to enter the war against the king of Spain to save the oppressed provinces from the Spanish slavery.30 Not surprisingly, the entry of France into the war had emboldened the cautious Dutch into a more ambitious land war offensive. The formalisation and elevation of the status of the alliance would be one of the two cornerstones of

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   179 France’s anti-Habsburg troika with the Republic and Sweden that confronted the Habsburgs from 1635 until the end of the war. Given the small size of the Dutch population, a cautious approach to battle casualties made sense. However, after the French alliance the chance of victory began to seem real, thanks to subsidies from France, and the co-ordination of two armies’ attacks on Flanders. The French, Pauw thought, would do the fighting that the Dutch army lacked the manpower for. The French subsidy of a million guilders per annum did not add to resources but it did allow the Dutch to levy fewer taxes and trim their expenditure on the army: the phenomenon of substitution in foreign aid. Richelieu’s subsidy policy was well calibrated to the sensibilities of Dutch internal politics. However, Dutch hopes would soon be dashed.

Dutch war financing

Finance for the Dutch war was made available by the use of the bond market. National debt reached 95 million guilders by the end of the war as military expenditure (army and naval) rose to 20 million per annum. Land campaigns cost between 1.8 to 3 million guilders per annum in 1629–32, but declined substantially to 1 million per annum in the mid-1630s as French subsidies arrived (the substitution effect), before rising to an average of 1.66 million in the 1640s.31 This provided for a field army of about 20,000. However, some 40,000 troops in garrisons also had to be paid for. This meant that, assuming monies for fortification repair, approximately 25 to 33 per cent of military expenditure was on land war and the balance, about 70 per cent, on naval war including provision for up to 11,000 permanently employed sailors and their ships. Buyers of bonds ranged from rich merchants and corporations to ordinary middle-class families. Over 220,000 households are estimated to have been bondholders. As much as 3 million guilders in new bond investment needed to be found each year. ‘The fact that this was done at declining rates of interest testifies to the growing capital abundance in these decades.’32

The war of Smolensk and the Swedish loss of Prussian tolls, 1632–1635

Quite apart from the disaster at Nordlingen, one of the biggest blows to Swedish interests had nothing to do with events in Germany or matters under Oxenstierna’s immediate control. It happened in faraway Smolensk, the main city of White Russia. Gustavus had cleverly arranged the reinforcement of Russian military capacity prior to Russia’s war with Poland. Failing a peace treaty, the war was due to start up again in 1633. Pre-empting the Truce of Deulino which was meant to end in 1633, Smolensk was besieged by the Russian army on 28 October 1632, although the full complement of siege guns did not arrive until March 1633. Not a modern fortress but formidable nonetheless, Smolensk’s walls were 6,575 metres long, 8.5 to 12.8 metres high and 3 to 7.5 metres thick. There were thirty-eight towers, including nine gate towers, so the

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180  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 average distance between the towers was 158 metres, which meant that covering cross-fire could be given from two towers against assaults on the wall.33 The Russian army had only been half modernised; still the Streltsky and other feudal levy predominated and Cossack cavalry was no match for the Poles. Superior Polish cavalry was the decisive factor, with Moskorzowski recounting how a Russian prisoner had complained that ‘the Muscovites feared nothing more than … the hussars … saying that they could easily deal with other forces’.34 Polish cavalry destroyed the Russian army’s supply lines; soon the Russians found themselves besieged. They were forced to sue for peace in May 1634. Immediately thereafter King Wladyslaw IV made plans to join the Habsburgs and attack Sweden. In expectation of a Polish attack on their Baltic economic enclaves, Oxenstierna quickly deployed General Torstensson with 20,000 troops to the Prussian coast. The timing could not have been more unfortunate, given that the SwedishPolish truce was also due to run out. Negotiations, handled by the Rad in Stockholm with help from d’Avreux, resulted in the renewal of the Truce for sixteen years on 2 September 1634. However, Poland was able to exploit Sweden’s weakened military position: under the terms of the renewed truce, Prussian territory had to be relinquished, along with licences which were worth 600,000 Reichsthaler per annum. Oxenstierna, furious with the weaklings on the Rad, was distraught at the Treaty of Strumsdorf of September 1634. He wailed, ‘Sweden is not more than half the Kingdom it was last year.’35 In reality, the truce was made just in time because the disaster of Nordlingen was just a few weeks away. Although the Truce of Strumsdorf was a Polish diplomatic triumph, Wladyslaw was furious because he sought to achieve a better settlement or to continue the war to effect total defeat. However, he could not go against the Sejm, which was controlled by Poland’s oligarchic nobility. They desired to make peace as soon as possible to recover their grain trade. Despite Oxenstierna’s anger over the lost revenues which he believed had been thrown away in the negotiations, it is not clear that there was an alternative. In Prussian Poland, ‘We hold it by our finger tips.’36 A lucky result perhaps: Torstensson could be redeployed in Germany in time to destroy a Saxon corps near the Baltic coast.

Oxenstierna’s odyssey, and the end of the Heilbronn League, September 1634–May 1635

The destruction of the Swedish-German army at Nordlingen was to overturn the military balance of power within the Empire, but the more important effect was the political one. Oxenstierna’s creation of the Heilbronn League was meant to cement a permanent alliance structure, with burden sharing. However, Nordlingen knocked the final props from under Sweden’s authority and led to precipitous collapse.

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   181 Having lost their king in 1632 and their largest army in 1634, Sweden’s hegemony in Germany seemed to be over; most even doubted that their hold on northern and coastal Germany could survive. News of the defeat sent Heilbronn delegates fleeing from Frankfurt. Even before the cataclysm, the development of the League of Heilbronn had stalled due to united Protestant resistance to Sweden’s claims for territorial satisfactio (compensation) in Pomerania at the Frankfurt convention. Cut off and trapped in Mainz by the Imperialist advances through the Rhine valley to Frankfurt, these were desperate times for Oxenstierna. Writing to Baner in despair on 4 November 1634, he poured out a stream of self-pity, ‘Henceforward I will struggle no longer, but drift where the tide may take me…we are hated, envied and harassed.’37 Negotiations between Saxony and Vienna opened on 14 November at Pirna, just two and a half months after Nordlingen. The Emperor continued the policies of Wallenstein, but after Nordlingen he expected terms to be better. Nonetheless, he operated for the time being under wise counsel, so his terms were moderate enough to be tempting. Now with the whip hand, Ferdinand II, no longer in the grip of his Jesuit confessor Lamormaini, whose position at court was under attack from a multiplicity of sources, including the Queen’s new Capuchin confessor, took a more moderate political stance. An agreement called the Pirna note, negotiated with Saxony and Hesse-Darmstadt, the moderate Lutheran principality, ruled by John George’s brother in law, was already in place by 24 November after just ten days of negotiation. While Saxony and Brandenburg negotiated with the Emperor, a rump of the Heilbronn League, including Hesse, parleyed with France, who soon found themselves with the poisoned chalice of this fractious mob of princes. At Worms, they accepted a treaty with France in return for subsidies. Detached from Sweden, they were now subordinated to France whose military and political role was filling the vacuum. It seemed that Sweden was necessarily being marginalised. Oxenstierna could only escape isolated Mainz by fleeing through France. Richelieu toyed with the idea of kidnapping him, but thought better of it. They arranged to meet at Compiègne; it was perhaps the most remarkable meeting of the European war between two of the greatest statesmen of the age, the new breed of highly educated Machiavellians: masters of realpolitik. A cardinal and a Protestant theologian, not surprisingly, they disliked each other, each commenting acidly in private on the other’s negotiating style. For Richelieu, Oxenstierna was ‘un peu gothique et beaucoup finoise’ whereas, for the Swede, ‘the French manner of negotiating is very strange and depends much on finesse.’38 Not to be outdone in pomp, the Swedes arrived in cavalcade with 200 retainers and outriders in rich livery. Despite straitened circumstances, Oxenstierna would always try to bluff out a weak hand. Richelieu, knowing that he could not gain total control of Sweden, was aiming for second best: strong and closely co-ordinated working relations. In practice, co-operation would work well at

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182  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 the strategic level and sometimes at the tactical level as well, but orders as such would never be given or accepted. It is doubtful whether either party gained an advantage over the other by the treaty. It was probably the most carefully worded treaty in history, every word being pored over by lawyers and their wary masters. What it did do was bind the parties very closely. For all their mutual distrust, dislike and occasional spats, the alliance proved to be very strong and durable. French troops took over Heilbronn League positions at the fortress of Philippsburg on the Rhine, though this great coup did not have a lasting effect. In an unusual stratagem worthy of a poor Robin Hood movie, Imperial soldiers disguised as peasants overpowered the Philippsburg garrison in January 1635. From this base, the Imperialists linked up with Charles of Lorraine. They recaptured much of Lorraine and Alsace except the fortresses of Benfeld and Metz. The French were actively preparing to intervene; the Spanish were quick off the mark, readying for all-out war. Having secretly subsidised Louis XIII’s despicable brother Gaston d’Orleans to invade France with 6,000 troops in May 1634, in March 1635 the French suffered a further setback when the Catholic Elector of Trier, Sotern, a close ally, was seized and spirited off to Imperial captivity. It followed a coup arranged with the help of 1,200 Spanish troops sent from Luxembourg; this disaster was followed by the loss of Koblenz. The entire French position on the lower Rhine, overrun in the wake of Swedish victories after Breitenfeld, had disintegrated. The French, accustomed to hiding behind Swedish ‘shields’, were pitifully exposed by the sudden collapse of their ally. Militarily unprepared, short of veteran troops and officers, one of their leading generals, Count Guiche, complained that ‘the opening of the campaign and everything appeared difficult to the troops. And even the officers, who lived softly for too long; the cavalry was not used to pitching camp, and did it clumsily.’39 The French army would be left floundering by the hardened Spanish, Imperial and Bavarian veterans. Other soldiers caught out by the sudden Swedish collapse were the Scots, who would remain loyal to Sweden. Luckily Scots officers and troops held key commands. One of them was John Hepburn with 6,000 troops who moved to the Hanau region to join with Saxe-Weimar. Needing to escape from the defecting Gelf family, notably Duke George of Braunschweig-Lunenburg, English and Scottish forces detached themselves from erstwhile allies and marched to rendezvous at Osnabruck. Testament to their high regard and loyalty, Sweden had promoted eleven Scots to the rank of general by 1635; they were the loyal core of a Swedish army which had dwindled to just 26,000 men, including the Scots, down from 150,000, to protect the entirety of their remaining northern German territory. Nonetheless the Scots tried to use their position to renegotiate their employment terms and address their long-standing complaints, about ‘poor recompense’ after ‘their true and faithful service to the Crown of Sweden’.40

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   183

The Peace of Prague, 30 May 1635

Now, in 1634/35, the Emperor started to make the concessions that he should have made on Wallenstein’s advice in 1629 and 1633. Wallenstein had always properly understood that Saxony was the lynchpin of the Protestant states: most would follow where Saxony led. George William, the other Protestant Elector of Brandenburg, would certainly follow along with many of the moderate Lutherans, such as Hesse Darmstadt and possibly Brunswick Lunenburg. The Emperor, using John George as his mediator, tried to re-invent himself as the champion of German liberties and the traditional order. Wallenstein might be dead, but his intellectual ghost was winning the strategic debate at the Viennese court. Richelieu, in a memo to Louis XIII, had correctly assessed the likelihood of Saxon defection. The Peace of Prague with its ninety-four articles was a major diplomatic triumph for the Emperor: Germany had come together to establish a permanent settlement, or had it? As expected, the Emperor exploited John George’s vanity, conservatism, hatred of foreigners and Calvinists, to lead the moderate Lutheran states back to the fold. For Saxony, Ferdinand’s concessions meant a clear retreat from the Edict of Restitution with only face-saving measures left to paper over the Catholic political retreat. 1627 was established as the defining year for the settlement of ecclesiastical property disputes on the key and defining religious issue, which was the question of the successor ownership of former Catholic property in Protestant states: this addressed directly the disastrous political and economic damage caused by the Edict. Nevertheless, claims were to be held in abeyance for forty years, a time frame which no one really expected to be meaningful. The Edict was dead; under the Peace of Prague, Article 4, (30 May 1635) it was ‘agreed that those Electors and Imperial Estates who held these lands on 12 November 1627, new style, shall have complete and free control of the same for a period of forty years from the date of this concluded agreement’.41 Other significant concessions included the strengthening of Lutheran rights in the Reichskammergericht to prevent cases being transferred to the Reichshofrat which was a court under the control of the Emperor. Imperial courts with 50/50 Catholic/Protestant representation would settle disputes. Once again John George chiselled some more territory from the Emperor, gaining Magdeburg and having his possession of Lusatia confirmed. The Counter-Reformation zeal was softening a little, or was it a tactical retreat? John George, revelling once more in the leadership of Protestant Germany, set about being the Emperor’s agent of mediation with other moderate Lutheran principalities whose Heilbronn League disputes over money and Sweden’s claim on Pomerania had already poisoned the well of trust. Apart from the favourable deal secured at Prague he also won pardon and restoration for the Dukes of Mecklenburg, as well as the restoration of various fortresses to the moderate Lutherans, and the Guelphs of Brunswick, although the latter were

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184  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 fined 400,000 Reichsthaler under Article 32, to be repaid to Tilly’s heirs. In return for these concessions the Emperor secured agreement for the funding of a loyal Saxon/Protestant army including the defection of other moderate Lutheran states, Lunenburg, the Guelfs, William Saxe-Weimar of Thuringia and Brandenburg. It was a decisive shift in the political military balance, which would push the Swedes back to their starting enclave on the Baltic coast, shorn of even those few allies with whom they had started, and strategically cleaving them also from Hesse and France; even Calvinist and Protestant stalwart Hesse started to waver. It was also agreed at Prague that blame for the war lay fully on the shoulders of Frederick Palatine, ‘chief cause and Instigator of all evil’.42 (Article 31) On 30 May 1635 the Emperor concluded the Peace of Prague by which Saxony and Brandenburg changed sides and declared war on Sweden in alliance with the Emperor. Oxenstierna arrived back in north Germany by sea in June 1635 to face the consequences of this disastrous switch of sides by his erstwhile ally. John George also became the appointed mediator or interlocutor for discussions about peace with Sweden. The Elector was hardly a good choice for this role; believing himself to have the whip hand he brusquely dismissed out of hand Swedish attempts to negotiate, simply informing them that there would only be peace if they got out of Germany. John George hated foreigners and indeed this groundswell of ‘German’ opinion put a fair wind behind the Emperor’s peace strategy; for the most part the Protestant states had come back to the view that it was better to sup with the devil you knew. There would be neither securitato nor satisfactio. Even for a desperate Sweden and the peace faction in Stockholm this was hardly a tempting offer. More success in engaging in serious negotiation took place through the alternative mediation of Adolph Frederick of Mecklenburg, but although progress was made, the two problem issues of amnesty for their allies, especially William of Hesse and a pay-off for the Swedish army’s arrears, were insurmountable despite the moderate terms put forward in writing by Oxenstierna at Schonebeck in December 1635. Despite the Emperor’s apparent moderation, the war was to take on a sharper and more divisive tone. In a major mistake, Calvinism remained unrecognised, and while there was an amnesty under Article 54 of the Peace of Prague, it was made clear under Articles 57 and 58 that there would be no mercy for hardliners such as ‘Palatine, Hesse-Cassel, Württemberg, Hohenlohe, many Rhenish counts or Bohemian exiles’.43 They would all suffer forfeit and the ban of the Empire. Meanwhile, Richelieu was about to apply the bellows of diplomacy, subsidy, and direct military support to fire up those embers of resistance still glowing in the hearth of the Heilbronn League and on the northern shores of the Baltic. He would be helped by the Emperor who started to overreach himself yet again, in his insatiable quest for total victory. Despite widespread rejoicing over the Peace of Prague, its weaknesses were immediately obvious to educated observers. Volkmar Happe, a minor

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Wallenstein’s fall, Oxenstierna and the Peace of Prague   185 Thuringian official, was like many, ‘more dismayed than delighted that only a separate peace with the electorate of Saxony had been concluded. It is therefore to be feared that thereby much more and greater warfare may result’; a most prescient observation.44

Spanish policy and the progress of the Imperial armies, 1634–5

The last thing that Ferdinand needed was more complexity, but with the rising tension between Spain and France, tantamount to undeclared war, the chances of the Empire avoiding an official Franco-Habsburg conflict were slim. A European-wide military build-up was underway. In a new Treaty with Spain at Ebersdorf in February 1635, Spanish subsidies to Vienna were renewed. Spain was allowed to recruit 8,000 German Imperial troops and 5,000 light cavalry in preparation for the coming war with France. Another 9,000 troops were recruited to cross the Alps to reinforce the Spanish army in Italy. Polish troops, fresh from the Smolensk war, were given permission to cross Germany to join the Spanish and Gallas’s Imperial army on the Rhine. Another participant in the victory at Nordlingen was Charles of Lorraine who had taken advantage of the strategic space created by the battle to liberate much of his Duchy, aided by 6,000 Imperial reinforcements. Far from heralding a general peace, the Peace of Prague after fifteen years of war simply set up the pieces for the next round of an extended European-wide contest, but this time the focus would shift to the Franco-Habsburg conflict, what is referred to misleadingly as the ‘French’ stage of the Thirty Years War. Misleading because Sweden’s role was by no means over and the Dutch played a more active part. The Habsburg Imperium was on the line; more tightly bound than ever, by taking on France directly they were upping their stakes in the roulette of war. The new ruler in the Spanish Netherlands, the Cardinal Infante, had passed triumphantly on to Brussels. After Nordlingen, Olivares was quick to put pressure on the Emperor to incorporate and join his military capability to Spain. Imperialists under Piccolomini made a most telling intervention by taking the key fortress of Shenkenshans on the Rhine, which threatened Dutch communications. In the aftermath of Nordlingen, therefore, a pattern had emerged similar to that following the Danish defeat in 1629. Imperial troops were sent in all directions in support of Spanish operations; unwilling he may have been, but Ferdinand was dragged once again by Olivares’s pressure into the wider European war. The Emperor decided to deploy his troops in support of Spain while giving the lead to Saxony and Brandenburg to finish off the Swedes. In fact, they would both be sent reeling in surprise counter-attacks. The reality was that the drunken Saxon leader had no martial virtues or leadership capacity whatsoever. As a fish stinks from the head, this malaise spread to a disinterested Saxon ruling class or society at large, who were at no time involved in the decision-making on war through the normal operation of the Diet, which had not met since 1618.

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Chapter X

France Declares War and the Dutch Alliance Richelieu sends a herald to Brussels, 5 April 1635

I

n one of the last great acts of medieval pageantry and chivalry, Richelieu sent a herald and a trumpeter to Brussels to declare war on the Spanish. Jehan de Daubas, the herald, was dressed in a medieval tabard emblazoned with traditional French livery, as if he were attending some medieval jousting tournament. His bonnet sported lots of feathers. Prancing on horseback around the main square in Brussels, he waited in vain to deliver his declaration to the Cardinal Infante: refused permission, he simply pinned it to a border post on his retreat. It was the last time that medieval manners graced European declarations of war. This farcical cameo event was symbolic of the inflection point in European history that is the Thirty Years War, straddling as it does the medieval world and modern Europe. Even the excuse for the war was an arcane footnote in context of the wider issues: Since you have failed to release the Archbishop of Trier, Elector of The Holy Roman Empire, who had placed himself under his protection [Louis XIII] … since contrary to the dignity of the empire and the law of the nations you are holding prisoner a sovereign prince with whom you are not at war … . His majesty declares that he is resolved to avenge this offence by force of arms, for it is the concern of all the princes of Christendom.1

As a casus belli it had the advantage of allowing moderate French dévots a good excuse for supporting the war. The official date of the declaration was 5 April. Without direct French intervention to support the rump of its alliance in Germany and to save the Swedes, the Habsburgs would overrun the whole of Germany, knock Sweden out of the war, then bring their resources to bear against both France and the Dutch. France had been in a proxy war for some ten years, keeping the Habsburgs at bay in Germany, and in Italy, but now was the time to act. Richelieu reflected on a note written to Louis XIII in his political testament: It is an action of singular wisdom to have kept all the forces of the enemies of your state occupied for ten years by the armies of your allies, using your treasury not your weapons, then, your allies could no longer survive on their own, it was an act of courage and wisdom to enter into open war.2

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France Declares War and the Dutch Alliance 187 Richelieu calculated that France would win. He knew that war with Spain would be long and attritional, but he was also aware of Spain’s economic and manpower deficiencies: ‘It is certain that the Spanish are superior to us in stamina … but on the other hand this land [Spain] is barren and in parts almost denuded kingdom so short is it of manpower.’3 Richelieu was sure that France could overmatch Spain in money, men and logistical power, especially in alliance with the Dutch and Sweden. It was a ‘Verdun’ strategy but, unlike 1916, the French party was fresh, and her opponent was economically and militarily degraded after ten years of war. Richelieu had made a logical calculation.

Pre-emptive onslaught, Battle of Avin May 1635

From spies in the French court, the Spanish were aware that France was likely to enter the war officially but did not know how exactly. Knowing that war was inevitable, Olivares prepared his own counterblast. The justification for an all-out pre-emptive strike was already in mind in 1634: ‘Richelieu has offered nothing in satisfaction of our complaints since his method of negotiation is to constantly lie and deceive. To my mind whatever agreement we will make with the French while the Cardinal remains in their government will never be observed.’4 Olivares developed grandiose plans for massive invasions of France from all points of the compass with 80,000 men, including a seaborne assault on the French naval base at Marseille, invasions from the east and attacks from Navarre and Catalonia. Writing in January 1635, Olivares enthused, ‘There is no possibility the blow can misfire … but everything must begin at once.’5 As it turned out, the Spanish would not be ready; resources were simply too constrained. Nor was the situation helped when a storm at Minorca wrecked eleven ships of Spain’s Mediterranean fleet. It put an end to any idea of an amphibious attack on Marseille. For all the puff, it was Richelieu who declared first; was ready first. The Duc de Rohan started to move into Switzerland with a small army; the plan was that he would then move south against Milan. The other arm of the pincer was the Franco-Savoyard army of Duke Victor Amadeus combined with Marshal de Crequi’s army: 16,700 allied troops would advance into Milanese territory from their forward base at Casale, so cutting the Spanish Road at a third point. Simultaneously a third prong of the attack was launched on Milan by the extremely fat young Duke Odeado Farnese di Parma6 who broke his alliance with Spain and invaded with 4,500 men. Like Mussolini when he attacked France in 1940, he was seduced by the idea of risk-free martial glory; like Mussolini he would be sadly disappointed with this stroke of opportunism. Parma had indeed been provoked by the depredations of Spanish troops on his borderland in 1634 when he ‘made a serious complaint to the governor of Milan, regarding the violence of the Spanish soldiers who have plundered and burnt many villages belonging to Parma’.7 Parma’s outing was smashed by Spanish

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188  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 veterans just after it crossed the border; the province would be overrun and only two fortresses, Piacenza and Parma, held out until peace returned several years later. With beginner’s luck, a French army advancing near Liège trapped a Spanish army that was two times outnumbered on a bend in the river at Avin in May 1635. With 4,000 dead, the Spanish were utterly destroyed despite Spanish cannon fire using grapeshot which was particularly effective according to French officer Pusegur: ‘Our infantry always advancing, came very close to their entrenchments. They fired two shots of cannon charged with grapeshot, with which they killed thirty or forty men of the battalion; and wounded as many.’8 In Franche Comté over the border from Dijon, Richelieu loyalist Cardinal de Vallette, known to his troops as ‘the Cardinal’s valet,’9 led a small army into the Spanish territory, so beginning a cruel history for that region. Henri Campion, a young ensign in the Normandie Regiment, noted the problems of logistics on muddy roads and remarked on the shortage of supplies on both sides in the rather underpopulated and barren hill regions. Pursuit of Lorraine’s army was being hampered and risked defeat if attacked because, according to Campion, ‘the baggage train marched between the rear guard and the advance guard, causing a great snarl-up due to the soft wet ground’. The Imperialists retreated in some disorder; minor engagements were won and lost. Campion’s regiment was surprised and besieged in their quarters by the Duke of Lorraine. They surrendered the town of Luneville and marched free under the rules of war. The Duke had grown stronger as he retreated out of Franche Comté to his logistics base in Lorraine. On the march there Lorraine’s deputy, Werth, launched an ambush against a French detachment of 500 which had been sent ahead to secure a château. Despite barricading themselves into a village they were cut to pieces; many were made prisoner. Passing the next day, Henri de Campion ‘witnessed the bodies entangled one on top of the other’. Near Nancy, de Valette was reinforced by some 5,000 fresh troops, including 1,500 cavalry, 2,000 dragoons and several regiments of infantry. The Spanish had decided at the outset of the war that their strategy for Flanders would be to go on the defensive against France and attack the Dutch. As J. Israel points out, ‘Territory taken from the Dutch could be absorbed into the King’s territory whereas anything captured from the French would simply be handed back under the eventual peace.’10 Spain’s other strategy, which would remain a constant throughout the war, would be to stir up rebellion in France. Out of a total of 8,433.000 escudos committed to the war budget in 1635, 44 per cent was committed to Flanders, while 14 per cent of the budget was allocated to the French king’s own brother, the rebellious Gaston, Duke of Orleans.

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France Declares War and the Dutch Alliance 189

Fault lines: Franco–Dutch campaign, summer 1635

After trouncing the Spanish at Arvin, the French army marched to meet up with Frederick Henry’s Dutch army of 20,000. Numbering about 50,000 troops, the objective of this vast host was to invade and overwhelm the defences of the Spanish Netherlands which were anticipated to number just 15,000 to 19,000 plus 10,000 militia. Confidence in a short and decisive campaign to capture Brussels was running high. As a Dutch administrator reported optimistically back to The Hague, ‘three years or less would achieve the effect … properly concerted our designs together.’11 Before the army left, 350,000 pounds of bread were prepared and 200,000 pounds of two-year-old bread rusks were brought out of storage. There was food for about ten days of campaigning. However, to counter this, 12,000 of the Emperor’s troops under Piccolomini would be made available to support his Spanish cousin. That would take time, so when the Franco-Dutch host moved on the city of Tienen en route to Brussels, the Cardinal Infante prudently traded space for time, left a garrison, but withdrew from the city by falling back on Louvain. As the rules of war had seemingly been broken, following two summonses to Tienen’s garrison issued on 10 and 11 June, the besiegers broke in, plundering and raping for three days. The controversy as to what actually happened, involving question of protocol and war law, were hotly debated. Obviously, something had been lost in translation because the surrender had not been communicated to the French troops; confusion similar to that in Magdeburg was to have similar dreadful consequences. For the citizens and soldiery of Tienen the finer points of war law were lost amid the carnival of slaughter, where the French army, in particular, ran amok. Hundreds of citizens and soldiers were cut down in the streets. The Dutch army posted guards on the women, children, civilians and soldiers who sought sanctuary in the largest church. But rampant French soldiery brushed aside the Dutch guards posted at the doors, much like latter-day ineffectual Dutch UN Blue Helmets at Srebrenica in 1995. Writing to S.G. Heylissen on 10 June 1635 Frederick Henry described how French troops ‘forced past the sentries, shot dead the soldiers among them, took out of church and carried off those who were found therein’.12 One shocked Dutch officer wrote afterwards, ‘I cannot tell you how horrified I was to see one of the poor nuns running about in panic with a knife buried in her head. She cried out between the tears ‘‘messieurs save my life, I beg you!”’13 Besides the human tragedy, worse was to come when fire broke out and destroyed the whole city, including the precious stores of food and munitions. Like Tilly at Magdeburg, Frederick Henry and his French allies were left with a smouldering pile of rubble rather than a logistics base. Given the finger pointing and the excesses of the French, it is not surprising that the mood of harmonious allied confidence began to disintegrate. De La Rochefoucauld, on campaign in the French army, blamed the Dutch for the sack of Tienen,

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190  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 but it is much more likely that payless and under-provisioned French troops caused the mayhem.14 As the Franco-Dutch army advanced on Louvain, once again the Cardinal Infante traded space for time, but on this occasion he left a larger garrison of 3,000. Transporting the huge amount of provisions required for the Franco-Dutch multitude of 50,000, and doing so in a timely way, was extremely difficult; with Tienen destroyed, their base at Maastricht was too distant. Not surprisingly, there was a supply breakdown ‘because the [wagons with] bread crates are arriving very slowly due to the unsuitability of the roads,’15 complained Frederick Henry. It was the typical problem for armies in that era. Rumours were flying as to the imminent arrival of Piccolomini’s Imperial army and the advance of the Spanish army. In fact, Piccolomini’s main body was still a week’s march away, but in typical aggressive fashion the Italian general led a cavalry flying column of 4,000 troopers that deployed rapidly in aid of their ally. The siege of Louvain was raised and the allied army split up. Frederick Henry had no intention of allowing a rapacious French mob to infest his wealthy home provinces; Frederick Henry’s reasoning was clear from his correspondence with on 12 July, ‘thereby to spare the provinces and to keep them at arm’s length, as well as on the occasion to be closer to the town of Maastricht, Roemonde and Venlo’.16 Apart from the inevitable damage that would be done, the ‘democratic and constitutional’ nature of Dutch politics meant that such a move would have been politically disastrous as well as ultra vires without the permission of the Estates. The joint invasion of the southern Netherlands, though logical, was a brief ambitious strategic interlude not to be repeated. Pauw, the Pensionary of Holland, who had supported the invasion, would soon lose his position of power. Nine thousand human dregs from the French army, devastated by desertion, famine and sickness, staggered over the French border in October 1635. The logistical inadequacies were yet another political barb to be used against Richelieu by aristocratic opposition. Meanwhile the Dutch army was energised by Piccolomini’s shock capture of Shenkenshans fortress in a surprise commando attack by 500 elite Spanish troops. Olivares declared, with his usual political spin, that its capture was more important to Spain than the capture of Paris. The surrounding province of Meierij was captured, as well as neighbouring Cleves, which opened up a strategic danger for the Republic on its weak eastern flank: ‘the enemy has the side towards Cleves free so that he can bring on as many fresh soldiers and necessities as he wants’, Frederick Henry writing on 29 July warned the Estates General.17 Furious, disaffected French officers flooded home with stories of hunger and incompetence in military administration, the lack of supplies and cannon; de La Rochefoucaud was typical of many in this regard. Their defeatism would lend renewed vigour to the dévot opposition.

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France Declares War and the Dutch Alliance 191

The Rhineland

Cardinal de La Valette’s army linked up with Weimar. Together they captured Zweibrucken and Bingen. With Gallas diverted by the taking of Frankfurt and the siege of Hanau in the Main valley, the Franco-Weimarian concentration of 19,000 troops (12,000 French and 7,000 German) allowed Saxe-Weimar to relieve Mainz on 24 July 1635. De La Valette took the Rhineland fortress of Kreuznach. However, with France short of funds, Weimar’s troop numbers were dropping. The pendulum of war swung back to Gallas who eased Saxe-Weimar’s forces out of the Gustavsburg fort opposite Mainz. Mainz fell to the Imperialists in December, along with Mannheim, and Frankenthal. The remnants of the French-Weimarian army, just 5,000, retreated to Strasburg for winter quarters. As Gallas advanced, de La Valette’s French army fell apart on the retreat through hostile Lorraine where no supplies or grain could be purchased or even stolen from the hostile populace. The French controlled Nancy, but it was like the American hold on Saigon in the Vietnam War, because the Duke of Lorraine moved freely around Lorraine with his small army, with support and supplies drawn from his loyal subjects. ‘The Governor of Nancy frankly admitted that anyone stepping outside the walls of Nancy ran a considerable risk of being captured.’18 It was Maoist style military strategy. The French were drowning in a sea of Lohringian hostility, exacerbated by their own atrocities. French troops may have been able to contest the day in some towns, but Charles of Lorraine ruled in the countryside and at night. In Spain, Olivares, like his nemesis Richelieu, was feeling the pressures of office. Straining every drop of energy and effort to muster the forces for an allout attack on France, he lived under constant tension and stress, which made him ill and very depressed. Writing to the King on 14 June 1635, even before news arrived of the Spanish army’s destruction at Avin, he complained: I have the feeling I am going to lose my life … in the task of making all ready I am so unwell that my head cannot bear the flame of a candle or the light of a window … and if there is not enough strength let us die summoning it for it is far better to die than fall under the sway of heretics.19

Rohan’s Swiss campaign, the Valtellina, 1635

Richelieu’s record in choosing commanders was mediocre to say the least, so the choice of turning former rebel Huguenot the duc de Rohan into a French general was unusually inspired. France’s Swiss allies, including the Grisons (Grey Leagues) were Protestants like de Rohan, and similarly adept at operating in mountains in small and irregular units. In March 1635 de Rohan arrived at Chur with just 4,000 infantry and 400 cavalry. Colonel Jenatsch, the John Brown of the Alps, a psychopathic axe murderer and pastor, provided two Swiss regiments.

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192  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 The campaign started with an attack made by Swiss troops traversing the high Alps in deep snow in March, then launching a surprise attack on Bormio at the head of the Valtellina where it guards the Stelvio Pass. De Rohan then positioned his forces at Livigno and Bormio as sentinels on the Spanish Road to guard the high Alpine passes of the Spleugen and Stelvio at the northern end of the valley on the border with the Austrian Tyrol and at Chiavenna perched above the central part of the valley. Outnumbered by Spanish and Imperial troops, de Rohan garrisoned the pivotal town of Tirano, which lies on the elbow of the L-shaped, verdant valley, with hillsides planted with vineyards. It lay at the intersection of the Spanish Road between Milan and the Inn river. From this position, de Rohan could use interior lines to attack Spanish or Imperial forces advancing from either side of the valley. It was precisely a pincer movement from the Tyrol and Italy that was planned by the two forces: 10,000 Imperial troops invading from the north, and the Spanish army intending to annihilate de Rohan’s force from the south. In a sequence reminiscent of Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley campaign, de Rohan conducted a brilliant series of manoeuvres in the Valtellina, scoring five successive victories over the Imperialists by rushing backwards and forwards to deal with successive threats to his front and rear. Apart from his success at Bormio at the start of the campaign, his victories included Livogno on 27 June, Mazzo-Tirano on 2 July and Morbegano on 10 November. To avoid being crushed between the Imperialists and Spanish or prevent their junction, de Rohan exploited his interior lines in the narrow valley from his central position at Tirano. As the Imperialists marched south along Valtellina, de Rohan raced back across the high Alps via La Rosa on the Via Bernina. He descended into the valley from Campocologno ahead of the Imperial army to pick up reinforcements in Tirano, in order to confront the Imperialists on the Adda river at Mazzo. Having discovered that the Imperial army was mostly drunk on the store of wines found in the valley, de Rohan decided to strike on 2 July. ‘To-morrow we march to pluck the cock,’ boasted the Imperial commander before discovering that it would be he who would lose his plumes. In another battle, at the western end of the valley, on 10 November, it took three hours of fierce street fighting in Morbegno for de Rohan to clear the town: 800 Spanish soldiers were killed. By the year’s end, de Rohan’s brilliant use of interior lines had delivered the entire strategic valley into French hands; with negligable expenditure and intelligent use of troops de Rohan had achieved a key strategic goal within a few months. Meanwhile massive expenditures and many tens of thousands of troops on the other fronts had achieved nothing.

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Chapter XI

Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Defects and the Swedish Army Mutiny Recruiting Saxe-Weimar, 1635

I

n the months following the Peace of Prague there would be a three-way tussle to win over uncommitted German regiments with Sweden, Saxony and the Imperialists all vying to attract them. On one occasion four cavalry regiments, which had defected to the Lunenburgs, were inveigled into returning to Swedish service by General Leslie, whose ‘army of the Weser’ grew to about 10,000. From his Westphalian base, he marched south and relieved his fellow Scots in Hanau which was tightly besieged. Storming fourteen redoubt forts in the lines of circumvallation, his troops then massacred 500 Imperialists in the last remaining enemy fort. However, with France entering the war in earnest, the main competitor for German regiments would be Richelieu, who strongly believed in the efficacy of veteran troops and commanders. He had already snagged John Hepburn into his army, promoting him to marshal; unfortunately, he would fall to a sniper’s bullet at the siege of Saverne. But Richelieu had even greater ambitions. Regardless of their alliance, he would soon be entering negotiations to take over Sweden’s main field army. If Richelieu could secure the services of Saxe-Weimar it would be a major triumph, given his shortage of veterans by which he set so much store. ‘If we fail to gain Bernhard we shall lose the whole of Germany,’1 intoned Father Joseph with typical hyperbole. In a scheme transacted by Richelieu and Father Joseph, on 27 October 1635 at St Germain-en-Laye, Saxe-Weimar signed what in effect was both an alliance as well as a contract for employment of his army. Its stipulated provision of 12,000 troops and 6,000 cavalry was in return for 4 million livres per annum and 200,000 livres personal payment per annum, to be reduced to 150,000 livres in the event of peace. Under the terms, Saxe-Weimar was bound into the French alliance because he could not make a separate peace with the Emperor without France’s permission. If the complement fell below 18,000 the money would be reduced pro-rata.2 David Parrott notes that ‘France could never exert more than a tenuous claim on the loyalty; an extraordinary charismatic leader, the army was dedicated to Saxe-Weimar personally.’3 The ‘ Weimarian army’ was not a French army at Richelieu’s beck and call. Whoever paid the piper did not automatically call the operational tune: it was a matter of permanent negotiation. Oxenstierna and Sweden were furious at the

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194  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 defection of ‘their creation’ from Swedish control. The spat did not destroy the alliance, but the matter rankled deeply. In the early phase of the war up to 1635, the main geographic/strategic difficulty was the inability of the Imperialists/Habsburgs, despite their overwhelming military dominance from 1620 to 1631 and again from 1634 to 1636 to project their land-based military strengths against a succession of foreign enemies, and vice versa. Intervening states could always fall back on their sea- or river- or dyke-protected bases in Holland, England, Denmark and Sweden. As Wallenstein had recognised early on, complete victory was impossible, owing to the Habsburgs’ lack of maritime power, and this not only in the Baltic. The first point to note is that the war was Europe-wide, so the geographic setting was immense and varied, involving all types of terrain, as well as the sweep of oceans and complex collections of islands. The capitals of the contestants were distant each from each other, and the roads were frequently poor; armies’ logistics were placed under huge strain, and their manpower seeped away as they advanced, while the retreating armies grew stronger as they fell back on their supplies and reinforcements. Compounding these difficulties, each side had to overcome multiple natural barriers even to invade the central heartland of each other’s territory. Despite the difficulties, the Franco-Swedish alliance enjoyed an easier prospect than the Habsburg alliance because the latter had no great maritime or riverine barriers. As we have already seen, Richelieu’s strategy was to use a central geographical position to intercept the thread of Habsburg communications, which were strung out in a thousand-mile arc around France’s borders. Richelieu aimed to use France’s interior lines to maximum effect by pushing out at weak points in the Spanish communication system. The concept of interior lines is a simple one: it refers to the ability of a military power to shift its resources easily from a central point along shorter routes, with better access to supply, or the ability quickly and efficiently to concentrate forces for offensive action. However, France’s central position between Habsburg Vienna and Habsburg Spain was not as telling as might be supposed, because France itself was a huge country, with very poor road communications, lacking a convenient central logistical base. In practice, it was impossible for France to exploit with full effect its geographical centrality, its interior lines. In fact, Spain with its multi-polar strategic supply hubs in Flanders, on the Rhine, Franche-Comté and Milan was in many ways better placed. An analogy with France’s situation can be found in the US Civil War in which the Confederates were unable, except in one instance (the Chickamauga campaign), to exploit the benefit of interior lines because both geography and poor communications prevented the rapid interior movement and supply of armies. Part of the strategic initiative advantage enjoyed by Sweden was the logistical power implicit in naval operations; 100 lasts of flour and 3,000 lasts of fodder, for example, required transport in 600 wagons; only nine ships were needed for the same task.4 So long as Gustavus held command of the sea, his geographic position

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Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Defects and the Swedish Army Mutiny   195 was far superior to the Imperialists’ because his logistical foothold was secure against an Imperialist attack. Apart from holding the strategic initiative, logistical advantages in holding coastal bases in Germany (and Poland and Livonia before that) were further enhanced by the fact that sea transport was up to twenty times cheaper than land transport, and faster.5 Holding the coast, the Swedes were able to supply their armies along all three of Germany’s main rivers, the Weser, the Elbe and the Oder, the latter two leading directly into Habsburg heartlands. After capturing Mainz, Gustavus also established control of the Rhine and Main confluence turning it into a major logistic base. If France could capture the key bastions and crossing points on the Rhine, at Breisach, Philippsburg, and Rheinfelden, then it would be able to take the strategic initiative against Bavaria and Vienna from secure logistical bases, just as their initiative could always be maintained in Italy, thanks to the possession of the Pinerolo fortress in Savoy on the watershed of the Maritime alps.

The ‘Gunpowder Convention’ and the French alliance, August 1635– February 1636

In August 1635 Oxenstierna, arriving in Magdeburg to deal with complaints by the army, was held prisoner by his mutinous soldiers as ransom for unpaid wages. The revolt was ultimately controlled and supported by the German officers. Oxenstierna escaped with the help of Baner, the new Swedish commander, and the mutiny was quelled, if only because there was no other potential paymaster. The matter was settled at the ‘Gunpowder Convention’ in August 1635 where Oxenstierna addressed the officers in person and explained the ‘dire situation following the Peace of Prague that has divided the evangelical states’.6 Under the terms of the agreement, Oxenstierna would consult with the officers before peace was made. In the preliminary negotiations with the officers on 30 July 1635, the soldiers in their turn ‘agree immediately to remain united until death and not to separate unless both the soldiery and the Swedish Crown obtained satisfaction. He [Oxenstierna] promised them he would not negotiate or agree to anything without the knowledge and consent of the senior officers.’7 Oxenstierna told them that they could collect their backpay in Sweden if unsatisfied.8 Eventually, there was a common understanding that the only way to recover the sizeable backpayment was to carry on fighting for Sweden, and win. Between September 1635 and June 1636 when he returned, Oxenstierna swung at anchor in his much reduced world between Stralsund and Wismar, moaning, ‘I sit here with empty hands and write home and ride around the watch like any other commander or captain.’9 He also had to fend off domestic political pressures for peace and attempts to usurp his political position. Some on the Rad questioned the war. One Rad member, Gyllenhielm, a member of the Skytte faction and opponent of Oxenstierna, asked rhetorically, ‘What good does it do us to acquire lands and spend money on it and so ruin ourselves at home?’10 Between September and October 1635, the Rad debated the key issues

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196  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 of war and peace. Negotiation for a settlement was very much on their minds. On 17 September, the Rad’s minutes record a ‘discussion as to what is to be written to the chancellor and whether it would not be advisable to pull out of Germany by degrees, … . If he can get any territory, that would be best; if not to take satisfaction in money … to extricate himself from the German business.’11 On 9 October the Rad came to a breathtakingly cynical conclusion about the problem: Count Per Brahe pointed out that ‘If we win a victory, we must exploit it; if we are beaten, then that disposes of the soldiers’ arrears, and we can defend the strong places on the coast with the survivors.’12 As Saxony prepared to invade Swedish-held Pomerania, the Rad was close to panic, worried by unrest among the Swedish peasantry and fearing the worst as to the loyalty of their German troops, especially after several regimental defections. The Rad decided to open negotiations with the Emperor to try to extricate Sweden from the war: ‘Let us content ourselves with whatever terms we can get for the resources of the country are not adequate to the maintenance of great armies.’13 Oxenstierna was made of sterner stuff. He held the line. Negotiations with the Emperor were opened but simultaneously parleys continued with the French for a treaty alliance. Gambling on a show of force prior to an anticipated truce, he had shipped over a 20,000-strong ‘surge’ of troops from Sweden to Prussia. Never wavering in his desperate concern for Sweden’s security, Oxenstierna always believed that ‘Pomerania and the Baltic coast are like an outwork of the Swedish crown; our security against the emperor depends on them.’14 After the Peace of Prague, the Saxon army started to move north against the Swedes in October 1635. They also advanced against Magdeburg, which had been promised to them by the Emperor. But, in his retreat, Baner ambushed the pursuing Saxon army under Baudissin, who suffered a major defeat, losing 5,000 of 7,000 troops as they were swept back into the Elbe. Nonetheless Baner, outnumbered still, and in hostile political territory, was forced to continue the retreat along sandy tracks through the sparsely populated pine forests around Schwerin to take cover behind the Pomeranian lakes to the north of Berlin. The outnumbered Swedes were in danger of being pressed into the sea but succour was at hand. Following the Truce of Strumsdorf, Oxenstierna ordered the transfer of 10,000 Swedish troops from the Polish to the German front. They were commanded by the distinguished artilleryman, General Torstensson. Saxon General Marrazino’s corps was surprised and destroyed in Pomerania by the sudden appearance of a Swedish army from the Polish-Prussian front. This timely reinforcement in late October 1635 tipped back the balance, allowing Baner to launch a counter-offensive. John George pulled back to his Brandenburg ally at Berlin, giving up his gains at Werben and Magdeburg. Sweden had a sizeable field army again and the aggressive Marshal Baner would roll the dice of battle once more. When, in March 1632, the Rad discussed war aims, the members argued ‘when thus the Protestants can balance

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Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Defects and the Swedish Army Mutiny   197 the Catholics it is to be presumed that the end of the war has been attained’.15 No doubt that would have led to peace if the Emperor had any intention of keeping a balance; he did not, and nor did his son who was soon to take over. The French treaty had still not been ratified by Sweden in August 1636, while possible peace settlements were being proposed to the Emperor. ‘It seems most advisable,’ noted the Rad in a resolution of 1 August 1636, ‘to defer ratification as long as we can on one pretext or another.’16 The terms being looked for by Oxenstierna included some ports on the Pomeranian coast and Ruggen Island, as well as cash, 6 million Reichsthaler to pay off their troops, although they would settle for 3 million. Restitution of the German liberties, religious freedoms and constitution was still a vital aim. The Rad gave a nod to the previous war aims of revered Gustavus but concluded bitterly, ‘most of them [the German Princes] have left the League of Heilbronn and (which is worse) attached themselves to the enemy … for these and other reasons we do not consider it reasonable or advisable that we should in the last resort persist in the war for the sake of others.’17 Oxenstierna on his return had quickly re-established his credentials as the sole and indisputable war leader; faced with a crisis and in the light of day his intellect, his work rate, his organisational skills, willingness to accept responsibility and sheer force of personality could not be contested even by the opposition faction in a situation where the inefficiencies and administrative chaos abounded. There were reforms in the army too; abuses and corruption were stamped on. An army bulletin of April 1637 announced that ‘the War College shall strike off lists of inefficient officers’. Oxenstierna informed Baner in a letter written in October 1636 that he would appoint commissioners rather like the intendants in Richelieu’s army or commissars in the Red Army to ‘watch over the interests of the country’18 both financial and political.19 Oxenstierna’s new-found energy and confidence would underpin the nation’s counter-attack in Germany which would be led by Baner’s army in the north-east, based on Stettin and Stralsund, and General Leslie’s army of the Weser in the north-west, whose logistics trail went back to Hamburg.

Saxon disillusion and decline, 1635–6

Having defected to the Imperialists after Nordlingen, John George had hopes of an easy victory over the demoralised Swedes and their politically wavering German regiments. However, after a failed offensive in late 1635, Saxon disillusionment quickly set in. After the Peace of Prague, only a few officers and regiments defected from Sweden. William of Weimar, Bernhard’s feeble older brother, with four complete regiments, was one of the notable defectors. A typical example was the failure of the Mecklenburg Regiment to follow its colonel in changing sides; only eighty troopers joined him, this despite the support of the dukes of Mecklenburg for the Peace of Prague. Colonel Bismarck

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198  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 from Brandenburg also refused to defect despite orders from his Elector. Knyphausen came out of retirement and rushed up to the Swedish colours with 15,000 loyal German troops. Saxon polity was weak. Drunkard John George had never really developed a strong Saxon identity with popular backing; the Diet was moribund. Saxony was already saddled with a 7 million Reichsthaler debt by 1628; this amount quadrupled subsequently. After the Peace of Prague, the usual arrogance of Ferdinand re-asserted itself along with the triumphant march of his armies, which exposed John George as being a ‘collaborator’ rather than a genuine peacemaker. John George soon realised that he had been gulled when the Emperor exploited the Peace to extend the Counter-Reformation against the spirit of the Prague agreements, with legal interpretations that were not expected by the dim Elector. In March 1636 John George wrote a letter of complaint: For weapons are now being wielded against my fellow religionists, Loyal to Your Imperial Majesty who trusted the words of the published Peace agreement [Prague] … . And yet their churches were taken from them, the Roman Catholic religion was imposed, reconciliation was kept from them day after day, unbearable quartering of troops and exorbitant forced contributions.20 Underlying the letter is the fear that the war would go on and on because the attitude of the Emperor was not in earnest: Habsburg policies were fanning the flames of resistance. Hesse was an outstanding example. The Emperor overplayed his hand again, unwittingly helping Richelieu to maintain a German involvement in the anti-Habsburg alliance. The French focused their subsidy and support on the Calvinist Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel, who had the backing of a very loyal and professional army, which successfully went to the relief of Hanau on the Maine in 1636. There were soon complaints about decline in discipline and performance of the Saxon army. Baudissin, a diligent drinking companion of the Elector, was promoted to the generalship of the army, which became infected by the general slovenliness of its political-military leadership. Not surprisingly, desertions, dereliction of duty, and other ill-discipline became rife, taking their cue from their leaders. Officers would often go carousing with the Elector, in order to ingratiate themselves with his highness. At a typical lunch, according to Vitzthum, ‘[John George] His Highness took his midday meal with his Lieutenant-General and got very drunk, as did all the other officers.’21

The Hessian ‘long march’ 1636 and relations with the Dutch and French

After the Peace of Prague, hounding to destruction the last recusants became the Imperial-Bavarian army’s priority. An army under Götz was sent to crush the Hessians, the last significant holdout. But William V’s Calvinist determination

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Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Defects and the Swedish Army Mutiny   199 was different to the Lutheran appeasers. As Calvinists, they were both more organised and committed ideologically, and they were also fighting for their existence. While Lutherans were barely tolerated in the new Imperial system, the Calvinists enjoyed no rights at all: they had to fight. By the autumn of 1636 the Imperialists had assembled enough troops to crush Hessian power. New Emperor Ferdinand III put Wilhelm under the Imperial ban and ordered his lands to be sequestered. Imperial troops poured into the principality. Sir James Turner, a Scots captain whose regiment was attached to the Hessischer army, described with poignancy the epic retreat in 1636 following the Imperial invasion. Götz had orders to terrorise the Hessians into submission and Turner with his own eyes saw three towns set aflame as they retreated before the overwhelming Imperial host. Landgrave William did not surrender, but decided to take his family, his people, his army and his state into exile in a move akin to Mao’s long march. As Calvinists, the people expected no mercy from General Götz, notorious ‘Butcher of Pasewalk’ (Pomerania 1631). So they fled. ‘[A] mournful sight it was to see the whole people follow us, and, recounted Turner, old and young left their houses by the losses of them and their goods to save their lives. Aged men and many above four score, most lame or blind, supported by their sonnes, daughters, grandchildren, who themselves carried their little ones on their backs, was a ruthfull object of pitie to any tender hearted Christian.22 Turner was a Scots mercenary son of a minister who graduated with an MA from Glasgow University; he would go on to have wide experience of the wars with Gustavus, Hesse and Brunswick before returning to join the Covenanters, after which he joined the Royalist cause, fighting for Charles II and being captured by Cromwell’s army at the battle of Worcester in 1649. In Germany he learned the cynical ways of survival, enjoying some luck in recovering from the plague; however, he was not without compassion for those caught in the misery of war. Bishop of Salisbury and philosopher Gilbert Burnet said that ‘he was a learned man, but had been always in armies’ and described him as ‘naturally fierce, but was mad when he was drunk, and that was very often’. A well-read man of letters who published Pallas Armata, a treatise on classics, he was knighted at the Restoration. As a ruthless professional, Götz needed little encouragement from Vienna to punish the Hessian heretics; his men torched and laid waste to seventeen towns and 300 villages.23 Moving northwards, the Imperialists ‘pousd [pursued] us with some haste to Westphalia’ and on the way harassed the Hessians by sending out Imperial garrisons from Catholic enclaves in Westphalia to ambush them as they passed. On one occasion when musketeers from a local garrison fired at them from behind hedges, the Landgrave William ordered ‘Sir Edward Bret and me [Turner], with each of us fiftie musketeers to beate them in: which

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200  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 we did with great losse to them, and three or four of our oune men’.24 There was no safe resting place in Westphalia, so Wilhelm eventually settled his army and his people at windswept East Frisia on the North Sea, safely under the wing of the Dutch Republic, ally and co-religionist, whence they received finance, arms and sustenance. Provision for subsidies for food, and money for troops had been arranged by the Dutch Republic with the Calvinist East Frisian estates.25 Aid was meant to be as indirect as possible in order to keep a low profile, the reason being that the Dutch did not want to provoke Vienna. Tweaking the tiger’s tail might lead to an all-out attack and the Dutch did not want a war on two fronts, being especially sensitive about the less well-guarded eastern front. At various times the Dutch Republic acted as a haven for Protestant armies, either directly or in its East Frisian zone of influence, including Mansfeld’s army in 1622–3, the remnant army of Christian of Halberstadt in 1625, and the Hessian army in 1636–40. Why was the Republic a haven and why did Imperial and Bavarian armies refrain from hot pursuit? The Emperor had the equal and opposite problem. No doubt he would be happy to crush the most powerful Calvinist state in Europe (a policy that had been backed by Wallenstein), but he did not want his threats against the Republic to provoke that immensely rich state to offer further aid to his enemies. While the Dutch may have been intimidated by Imperial military power, the Imperialists were intimidated by Dutch economic and military power. Boxed in by the need to repay his key Spanish ally, Ferdinand only allowed his troops to ‘join in’ various campaigns against the Dutch. However, Imperial armies made important direct contributions to three major offensives against Dutch territory, against Wesel in 1629, Maastricht in 1631 and in the relief of Louvain in 1635. In 1636 Imperial soldiers played a major role in attacking the Dutch Republic’s ally by invading France. Having burned his boats, and facing a desperate situation, in October 1636, Wilhelm V of Hesse signed a Treaty with Richelieu, which tied the Hessians to France by promising that there could be no separate peace with Vienna. Religious toleration for Catholics in occupied lands was another of Richelieu’s standard terms. Richelieu promised 200,000 Reichsthaler per annum in return for the provision of 10,000 troops. Weighed down by stress and exhausted by the trek into exile, William V died of fever the following year, but the reins of power were taken up by the equally obdurate, fervent, and capable Landgravine Amelia. Ferdinand had made a great mistake to alienate Hesse which was becoming an important military power.

Imperial-Bavarian financing of war 1618–1648

Much of the talk about peace and negotiations stemmed from one simple fact. All sides were either bankrupt, running out of money, or living on huge amounts of expensive credit. Money and arrears dominated the discussions in the Swedish Rad. Wallenstein had run out of money and credit; this was an

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Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Defects and the Swedish Army Mutiny   201 added reason for his efforts for peace. Money-conscious Maximilian of Bavaria noted in a memorandum written in 1637: ‘Matters have reached a crisis. The Catholic Electors, Princes, and Estates together with their lands and people, have been largely exhausted and have lost the means to continue the war. The Imperialists and Austrians have shoved the burden of the war onto others.’26 Imperial tax revenues had remained flat over the period of the war despite the vastly increased special taxes, fines and land confiscations. Revenue ran well behind costs. At 5.4 million Reichsthaler in 1618, the sum collected had declined to 5.3 in the mid-thirties, but expenditure in 1638 was 7.4 million Reichsthaler for just eight months, excluding artillery and transport. Borrowing made up the shortfall. Total revenues raised for the Imperialists in 1618–1640 would reach the staggering sum of 117,000,000 Reichsthaler; Spanish and papal subsidies only accounted for 1.45 per cent and 0.85 per cent respectively of budget revenues. Privately financed regiments, as part of an ‘entrepreneur military’ system, were also used by the Austrian Habsburgs; this was the Wallenstein system. Ferdinand commanded a polyglot mercenary army of thirty-two regiments: Habsburg subjects owned only four. Germans owned seventeen and foreigners controlled fifteen, of which five were Italian. Bavarian expenditure from 1619 to 1634, presented in immaculate accounts from the highly-organised Bavarian Elector, was 46,611,364 Reichsthaler. Maximilian’s parsimoniousness was reflected by a rigorous audit and control process operated by specially appointed commissioners whose functions combined those of auditors, political commissars and chiefs of staff; Wallenstein, with typical detestation of interference from central bureaucrats and politicos, described the system with withering contempt: ‘Herr Tilly is a slave to the Bavarian commissioners … the good old chap will gain a martyr’s crown for the patience he has to show these varmints.’27 The effects of war, occupation and devastation of the tax base following Gustavus’s invasion is reflected in the next phase of war in 1635 to 1648 when expenditure and corresponding ability to put troops into the field collapsed to 12,775,466 Reichsthaler; Bavarian ability to wage war was reduced to less than half compared to the early phase of the war. Typical of the trend was the fall in revenue in the lower Palatine, where revenue in 1648 had dropped to just 17 per cent of the level in 1623.28 Not surprisingly, this meant that the average number of Bavarian troops in the second half of the war fell to 20,000 from 30,000.29 This was the combined effect of reduced tax rates as well as the inability to fund expenditure from ‘contributions’ from lands under occupation. It is a stark reminder of the multiplier effect of winning or losing battles and occupying enemy territory. Despite rigorous Bavarian financial control, Elector Maximilian complained: ‘It is many millions short even if you know that the Bavarian army was often in surplus for many months. Especially in the last ten years of the war whoever gave you quarter is only providing a third of the amount, as per Danbour’s estimate.’30

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Chapter XII

French Economic and Military Mobilisation The French economy and war finance, 1618–1648

T

he absence of reliable figures for the early modern French economy suggests a society which was neither particularly well-regulated nor administered, nor especially industrialised. This stands in marked contrast to the Dutch Republic, Sweden or England. The reason is simple. The French economy, with a population of 20 million, 80 per cent of whom lived in the countryside, was relatively backward; the country had failed to develop during the long period of civil war in the sixteenth century when, for obvious reasons, investment was constrained. Only a few cities had significant numbers of industrial workers, notably Amiens, Beauvais, Rouen, Lyon and Nimes. There were very few statistics and there were very few points at which statistics could be taken because foreign trade was not well documented or controlled, unlike the Dutch Republic. The statistics we have are largely rough estimates. The lack of statistics is itself evidence of an undeveloped economy. Backwardness persisted despite belated attempts at economic dirigisme in the French mercantilist tradition that continues to the present day. French economic policy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was driven by the national and autarchic economic ideas of Antoine de Montchrestien; Braudel claims that he is the ‘father’ of political economy. Successive rulers tried to drag up French industrial capability, which was patently behind that of neighbouring places like Germany, Flanders and Italy. Louis XI ‘the Prudent’ (1461–1483) took a detailed interest in the French economy, in trade, markets, communicationspostal service and in regulations. He established a silk-loom works in Tours. When the religious wars ceased around 1600, Henri IV and Sully, following dirigiste policies, set up forty out of the forty-seven manufacturing enterprises in France.1 Richelieu continued the tradition with his remit as minister of marine by investment in naval arsenals and shipbuilding capacity. However, all this did little to close the gap with the rest of Europe after such a long hiatus. Despite the existence of a merchant class in some cities, France’s lack of an entrepreneur ethic was recognised by contemporaries. Richelieu even passed an ordinance in 1627 which allowed nobles to engage in maritime trade without losing social rank. Entrepreneurial culture, transport infrastructure and financial systems were sadly deficient. People with money became ‘rentiers’, often the Parlementaire lawyers extracting huge returns from financing the Government war debt.

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  203 The economy was overwhelmingly agricultural with most peasants living at or near subsistence level. Only 15 per cent of people lived in towns, the rest living in hamlets or small villages;2 the amounts of agricultural surplus available to turn into cash were small. Where there are statistics, they are to be found in the tax take from the economy, and from statistics compiled in respect of the army on which the monies raised were largely spent. The appalling state of the roads made it difficult for the countryside to trade with the town and vice versa, because of the costs, the time and the perishability of agricultural products. Parochialism, bad communications and the sheer size of the country prevented coherent or modern economic development. Such problems are familiar to modern development economists. They leave countries in a self-defeating economic hole with no possibility to climb out. Only government investment could have generated economic opportunities by investment in corduroy roads or canals. However, given that surplus funds were being entirely devoted to the army and to interest payments of one sort or another, there was nothing left for vitally important aspects of economic development. Travel from Toulouse to Paris, for example, took fifteen days. There was significant low-level industrialisation, or rather ‘artisanal’ expansion, but it served local agricultural society, was of a fairly basic character, and did not achieve the efficiency of scale or quality that would be normal in Holland, for example; nor were there the clusters of competitive excellence to stimulate interchange of ideas and technology as well as providing a proximate market, another common problem in twenty-first-century developing countries. ‘Cluster’ encouragement is a key component of modern development strategies, as demonstrated by Professor Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University. Vincent Maillot notes: ‘Until 1750, both economic life and the administration of the Ancien Regime lagged as a consequence of this dispersion, of the insufficient linkages, and the divisions that prevailed locally and nationally.’3 With so little cash circulating in regional economies, demand pull from large conurbations was lacking, so industry remained at a local and artisanal level, without international or even national reach. Unlike the Dutch, the Swedes, the English or the Poles, there was no identifiable source of foreign trade income from a staple cashgenerating industry handing large taxable surpluses to the Crown. Nor were there well developed financial markets in early modern France to efficiently manage financial surpluses and deficits, or provide low-cost working capital or long-term funding for government, all in contrast to the Dutch Republic. The reality was the staggering increase in the demands of war leading to a tripling of the tax take from French society from 1635–1650, with the highest per capita tax takes in Europe. This led to an awful squeeze on the living standard of the already poor French peasants who were the main target of exactions. Most of the ‘primitive’ capital accumulation went not into the productive industrial capacity of the country, but into current expenditure and debt service costs; the capital produced by the exploitation of peasants went

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204  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 to totally unproductive current expenditure, not into growth-producing capital stock. Armaments had to be imported from Holland because of paucity and technical-entrepreneurial backwardness, and the lack of funds to invest in a capital-intensive arms industry. France only reaped a small part of the benefits of military expenditure increases. With limited domestic industrial capacity, French armies were always poorly supplied with artillery, a shortcoming which could be costly on the battlefield. After grain, mostly grown at subsistence level, wine was the next most important product. Prices were volatile, usually not high enough to make transport to cash markets worthwhile, due to low quality. Without the demand pull of nearby markets, France’s agriculture remained moribund and feudal because the cost of transport over huge distances along rutted muddy roads was prohibitive. Where there was effective riverine communication, for example on the Soane and the Rhone that connected Burgundy to Marseille, the feudal fractures in the French polity meant that there were about fifty toll and customs points en route.4 Cities such as Paris, Lyon, Nantes and Marseille did develop some industry to a higher level, while shipbuilding at some major coastal ports was important. There were the textile towns: Rouen, Dijon and Amiens saw development in these industries, but they were not huge cash-producing export businesses. France was very far from any sort of tipping point in terms of self-sustaining and rapid industrialisation or urbanisation. A possible exception was Lyon (with a population of 80,000) where there were 200 masters of silk looms operating by the mid-1650s, an entrepreneur class who made up 14 per cent of tax payers in the city.5 But this industry of velvet or taffeta makers, dyers and spinners served mainly the idle rich. Trade flows between south-east France and Italy were historically the most significant for the French economy. A further reason for a stronger trading economy in Lyon and south-eastern France was access to Italian finance, notably from Italian émigrés such as the Buonvisi family, who ran an international banking empire based on bills of exchange and letters of credit.6 Nothing represented the inadequacy of industry better than the paucity of arms, military and munitions production, metal industries or mining; most military equipment had to be imported and the shortage of cannon was chronic, even at the start of the war. After the Spanish invasion of France in 1636, de La Rochefoucauld commented acidly that: it was clear that the Spaniards had taken Capelle, Catelet, and Corbie without resistance; that the other places of the frontiers were neither better nor better fortified, that the troops were weak and badly disciplined, that they lacked powders and artillery, that the enemy had entered Picardy, and could march in Paris.7

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  205 However, Lyon’s manufacturing culture seems to have been able to adapt, albeit slowly. In the course of the war, it seems that some arms-manufacturing capability was established at Lyon because in 1653 Mazarin ordered Colbert to buy 4,000 muskets and 2,000 wheellock pistols from manufacturers there8 for use in the south, because they would not be able to compete with the Dutch in the north owing to high transport costs by barge and wagon compared to shipborne cargoes. There were even raids on fortress guns by the central authorities during the war to try to prise them from the grip of the local magnates who were withholding them. Condé had only six field guns at Rocroi and at Allerheim: his lack of guns contributed to failure in frontal attacks at Freiburg in 1644 and Allerheim in 1645. In 1638 Harcourt’s army in Italy deployed just five field guns. This compares to the Swedish army which deployed sixty-eight guns at Nordlingen. Many were small regimental guns but there would still have been twenty to twenty-five field guns in an average army. A typical example of the French dependency on imports for manufactured products for the war effort was a relatively small order for 4,000 muskets and 2,000 breast and back plates in 1632, which Louis XIII placed with a contractor, Puysegur, who placed the orders in Liège and Utrecht, before having them shipped to Rouen via Amsterdam for quality proofing. Placed before the outbreak of fullscale war, it shows that French industry was unable to deal even with small orders.9 The French economy was increasingly crippled by high taxes; the taille direct taxation tripled from the mid 1620s and 1648.10 Indirect taxes on commodities at least doubled from the 1620s to 1648. Revenues from the trade in ‘offices’, mainly tax farming, tripled between 1620 and 1640. As for the predominant agricultural sector, wheat prices flattened, tending to fall between the 1620s and 1640, doubling in the early 1640s and collapsing again in the mid 1640s before rising again to 1648. This volatility in price meant that the tax take was unstable and efforts to maintain constant to rising government revenue during times of bad harvests led to peasant uprisings; they just could not pay, so rioting and revolts were the only options left. France’s central bureaucracy and tax-raising system was utterly unreformed and consisted of a hotchpotch of different tax regimes reflecting the medieval medley of lands that became attached to the French crown. There were six sorts of domain in France, each with different legal status and governmental structure.11 They had different tax regimes, either land taxes, compoix et cadastres (registered land), in certain parts of the south, or tax collected in semi-independent states such as Brittany, Corsica and Artois, or so-called pays d’election, which were overseen by intendancies and/or parlements. In addition to that there were vast aristocratic or monastic latifundia, which paid no tax at all and enjoyed a separate legal system such as that of the Vicomte de Turenne, north of Cahors in the Generalite de Montauban. When France went to war officially in 1635, Richelieu and the treasury in Paris rapidly exploited the situation by deploying intendants and treasury commissioners

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206  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 to impose increased financial controls and tax value revisions. With a war to finance on five or six fronts, they had little choice. An example of the fiscal squeeze to pay for the war was the sharp increase in revaluations of compoix et cadastre tax assessments on registered property in the areas of the south where this was applicable, such as the Languedoc. From 1635 property valuation revisions for tax purposes increased by 100 per cent, with some areas, such as the Tarn and Gard, seeing the number of upward revisions increasing up to 400 per cent from the decades 1620–30 to 1630–50.12 Obviously, the purpose of tax value revisions was to increase the revenue, which expanded threefold. Increased taxation was directly reflected in army numbers: there were seventy-two regiments in 1633 and 174 by 1636.13 Oppressive tax rises led to social tension and peasant revolts, which increased significantly thereafter, both in the Languedoc and throughout France. Popular revolts in Aquitaine exploded by over 1,000 per cent from the previous period, numbering 282 from 1635 to 1660, while in Provence revolts increased by over 300 per cent to 156 from 1635 to 1660.14 Reflecting the dire condition of the economy and society, royal debts increased by 1,200 per cent from 1605 to 1648. They flattened after the end of the European War; they fell sharply after peace with Spain in 1660. The introduction of intendants (government commissioners/trouble-shooters) from 1634 was a desperate attempt to increase the tax yield and reduce corruption, but the main purpose was to improve cash flow because collection of direct taxes took such a long time. Sent to generalities to supervise tax collection,15 they had no direct executive powers, although their status and reporting function to central government gave them some clout. Additionally, there was a timing problem, with revenue arriving after the harvest in the autumn rather than at the beginning of the fighting year in the spring. This meant that future tax revenue was parlayed for cash advances at huge discounts in favour of the tax entrepreneurs. Shortages of cash would often lead to military immobility when large military contractors refused to deliver on credit. Centralised direction of military operations, including logistics, failed the military machine both because of inadequate finance as well as institutional lack of organisational capacity. Only a decentralised military entrepreneur system could function in early modern Europe by devolving decision-making to an appropriate level and encouraging the investment of private capital in the sustenance of individual regiments, involving basic working capital requirements. As Charles Tilly points out, ‘the relationships among capitalist activity, monetization, available credit, and ease of warmaking made a major difference to the states of Europe; they gave states that had ready access to capitalists signal advantages in moving quickly to a war footing.’16 In respect of war financing France had much the most costly and wasteful system of any of the warring parties. Finally, there was a problem of debt finance. State revenues came from an arcane and archaic tax system, top heavy with tax farmers, and from special

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  207 measures such as the Paullette tax on office-holders. Overlapping taxation authorities and legal jurisdictions competed for the same limited pot of taxable money. The costs of raising the money increased sharply due to the sale of offices; the office holders had to be compensated and government debt and its service climbed steeply as a percentage of government revenue. When the dévot faction argued that France needed peace and reform, not war, they certainly had a point. Apart from the tax farming increase, the horrifying figure is the increase in ‘extraordinary revenue’ which consisted of loans and special taxes, including the gabelle indirect tax on good loans. In 1635 extraordinary revenue had increased nearly three times since 1633; this reflected the cost of gearing up for a formal war on many fronts.17 The figures show that France was not able to properly finance war on five fronts, plus a navy, and amply supports Parrott’s views on the inadequate foundations of the French army. Unlike the Dutch system, there was no efficient way to recycle financial surpluses to productive use. There was a pernicious ‘crowding out’ of investment for productive or trading purposes. Investors entered contracts for such tax farming licences with the government. Between 1593 and 1653, 2,278 such tax treaties were concluded. An example of the incentives to invest like this rather than in productive enterprise is the case of a traite made with Philippe Janoud in 1635, who bought sixty-three tribunal positions for a cost of 115,000 livres. When retired these contracts delivered a net profit of 153,400 livres. ‘Included in this operation were official positions as judge-magistrate which raised 6,000 livres for the government but delivered a return [to the investor] of 25,000 livres.’18 With these levels of return, why bother with the hard graft of productive investment, or the risks of trade with faraway places and the hazards of the sea? Crude financial management at the national level added to the crippling structural problems in the French army and economy at large, so that military efficiency was substantially impaired.

Social stress

The chronic drain on the country led to repeated peasant rebellions particularly when no adjustment in tax demand was made for poor harvests by insensitive tax officials and rent farmers, in response to the frequently sharp regional variations in harvest yield: ‘Income receipts [were] closely tied to the rhythms of the fields.’19 Regions had previously been dominated politically and economically by paternalist aristocratic elites who could mediate by adjusting taxation and collection regimes in the knowledge of, and in response to, local variations in the harvest. Given that agricultural yields might vary considerably depending on the vagaries of weather, while tax demands, both direct and indirect, increased dramatically, it is not surprising that peasant revolts broke out: ‘many years, however, were far worse than average; yields could vary enormously, from

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208  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 perhaps 50 per cent of average in a bad year to 150 per cent in a good one.’20 Moreover, as Geoffrey Parker has pointed out, falls in harvest yield had a nongeometric impact on grain prices; a 30 per cent fall in a region would raise prices by 100 per cent.21 Theoretically, a bad regional harvest could be ironed out by imports from other areas, but the chronic state of French roads and size of the country meant that this was not a practical or cost-effective proposition in many cases. Potential tax yields were variable but tax demands to finance the army were constant or increasing. Food security was always on edge; tax demands made little or no allowance for people’s ability to pay: an intendant pointed out in an unusually candid report to the government, ‘If one allows the export of grain [from an area of scarcity], all the people will run to attack the grain merchants. Once they are exhilarated by having got something for nothing, they will undoubtedly form bands.’22 One particularly unpopular indirect 23 tax was the salt tax; given that it was a staple that made seventeenth-century food palatable, the increase in this regressive tax was onerous on the poor; a muid of salt rose from 600 to 1,000 livres by 1640. Tax oppression and the withdrawal of ancient tax privileges led to major urban revolts at Dijon and Aix in 1629 and 1630.24 One of the reasons for the constant aristocratic revolts and opposition in council during Richelieu’s rule was a genuine desire of regional aristocracies to alleviate the economic conditions for peasants; this feeling ran alongside resentment at their loss of status and power to the professional technocrats, notably tax officials, lawyers and intendants, aligned to an increasingly centralised state. Many of the areas of unrest were in the places where troops mustered, or where winter quarter provision was likely to stretch the local economy to the limit by sucking up resources and raising regional prices for food in particular. A detailed Royal Ordinance of 1638, with eighty-two articles, applying to the Languedoc, recognising the difficulties in the areas where troops were both mustered and wintered reflected the government’s response to the crisis, ‘so that people cannot only supply them [the soldiers] with sustenance without being excessively burdened, but can also cultivate the land in complete freedom and still meet their obligations to pay the regular taxes.’25 The plenipotentiary powers of local commanders or intendants often led to the imposition of arbitrary extra demands on the localities, such as several districts of the Languedoc when a French expeditionary force was shipped from there to Barcelona in 1643. 26 The Languedoc suffered more than its fair share of peasant revolts, especially when the main army moved south in 1640. In the eyes of local peasants, most of whom would not have travelled beyond a radius of twenty kilometres in their lives, a foreigner could be someone with a different French dialect from a neighbouring province or district. Henri de Campion on his way to the front in 1636 found his passage threatened: ‘We were alerted to the advance of a mass of armed peasants from Bu who were

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  209 coming our way to chase us away from the hamlet where they had their farms and vineyards.’ After a tense stand-off, the peasants stood down in the face of the determined soldiery; quarters in the area were established. 27

War on the home front

When the finance and supply system broke down, as it did regularly, troops took matters into their own hands. For example, in April 1638 when the army left winter quarters, their commander, de Bassompierre, described how they ‘forced the towns where they found themselves to provide for their upkeep, and they came with impunity to plunder the region and create much disorder’. 28 Significantly, after 1645, there were few peasant revolts in the countryside (as opposed to the Fronde which started in Paris 1648), because success of French arms meant that French troops were being quartered at enemy expense. Mazarin was perfectly aware of the dangers implicit in quartering hungry soldiery on families; ‘Three days billeting,’ lectured Mazarin, ‘with the accustomed licentiousness of the soldiers, is harder for a man to bear than a whole year’s taille and other taxes.’29 Seventeen of twenty-five major rebellions in 1628–1645 involved rebellions in border or coast states. Supressing rebellion required a considerable allocation of military resources in men and capable commanders. De Gassion, the experienced Huguenot commander, who would later distinguish himself at Rocroi, led 10,000 regular troops to crush Normandy’s nu-pieds in 1638. As the royal army under Marshal de La Valette approached La Sauvetat, 3,000 armed peasants fell back into the walled town. When the town was stormed, what followed was ‘a bloody butchery because they refused the quarter offered to them and defended themselves with an obstinate rage, street by street, from shed to shed, in the church and in the houses.’30 About 800 royal soldiers died and up to 1,500 Croquants.

French army and military efficiency 1635

France had the capacity to organise one army and one campaign, but the capacity of the French state simply broke down when there were up to five different fronts and campaigns at any one time. The net result was that French forces depleted at the astonishing rate of 20 per cent per month, more than double the rate of other armies; a large part of the reason for this must be put down to logistical inefficiency based on the centralisation of military supply and the refusal of the state to put the army on a decentralised entrepreneur footing. This led to whole armies being cut off from funds, for example, Rohan’s army in Switzerland, Turenne’s army in Germany or Harcourt’s in Italy. On occasions Turenne had to provide emergency funding from his own pocket, while Richelieu did the same to fund Rohan at one point in 1636. Added to which, there were budget overruns and corruption. The net effect was that budgeted military expenditure for 140,000 troops notionally would only in practice raise 80,000 troops at the start of the campaign year, with muster

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210  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 numbers fraud being widespread. Sometimes whole campaigns would collapse because the money simply ran out. Intendants, centrally appointed commissioners, were part of the ad hoc system. As with their civilian counterparts, military intendants did not possess executive powers. They enjoyed only limited powers of persuasion plus the threat of negative reports back to Paris. General Turenne’s views about his senior intendant, François Cazet de Vautorte, and intendants in general were neatly summarised: ‘an intendant is as odious to the people as to military men … they live as though in a conquered country.’31 Far from being a symbol of a modern central state the intendants were mainly a desperately improvised effort to patch up a failing medieval system. Famine was common; de Bussy-Rabutin witnessed this in the 1637 Mauberge campaign32 but it was not unusual; sometimes it was caused by sheer inefficiency, sometimes by lack of government resources, but at other times convoys were ambushed by the enemy, as in de Bussy-Rabutin’s example. Living off the land was only possible for a short time and, even then, only if the countryside was wealthy in produce. As in other armies, sickness was another hazard of war: according to Comte du Plessis who recounted the fate of Schomberg’s army in 1630, ‘Regiments were strongly diminished by plague which had lasted through the campaign and had near destroyed them.’33 Many units could expect to halve in size within a few months or even weeks of operation, due to hunger, malnourishment and consequent openness to infections. Whole armies melted away like butter in hot sun. Despite efficient-sounding ordinances such as the one issued in January 1629, which regulated the provisioning of soldiers and their relationship to the French local authorities, as ever the soldiers took matters into their own hands. The cynical contemporary diarist and part-time officer de La Rochefoucault writes with laconic wit of some French regiments on the march in France: ‘Their first exploit under arms, they profaned and pillaged the churches of Traize and Saint Denis du Perrier, without sparing the bells. Luçon spared itself from their claws with 500 ecu and eighteen couples of oxen, which had to be given to pull their cannon.’34 Supply contractors, just a few of whom monopolised the business as if they were latter-day Russian cronies, would only supply on a cash basis because cash inflows to the state were so unreliable. Typical of the problems of excessive centralisation of supply contracts to crony contractors close to the tresorier was the case of Sabathier, who took on major munitions supply contracts as well as financing the state in unstable and incestuous schemes to the tune of nine million livres by 1640.35 Formerly a state responsibility, a contract was awarded in 1636 to a group of private contractors for 200,000 pounds of saltpetre at 80,000 livres per annum.36 Complaints abounded about performance of such centralised contracts.

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  211

France: Recruitment and officers and the changing role of Europe’s nobility

Richelieu opined that ‘It is near impossible to successfully enter wars with French alone. Foreigners are absolutely necessary to maintain the army corps, and although the French cavalry fights well, we cannot do without the foreign cavalry.’37 Having kept out of the wars, French troops had less experience than their adversaries. Despite the various military conflicts over the previous decade, Richelieu also had doubts as to the expertise of his troops in siege warfare: as he informed his Dutch allies: ‘we are not so accustomed to large sieges as the Dutch. If we fail in our first siege, I fear that we shall lose time and worse still, undermine the ardour of our troops and the reputation of royal arms.’38 The French army, even when operating in France, contained many foreigners. Richelieu believed that a 50 per cent foreign component was optimal and this wish was undoubtedly driven in part by difficulties in recruitment, particularly due to a shortage of highly-prized veterans: in practice only 20 per cent of Louis XIII’s army was foreign. Political unreliability of army commanders was a constant cause of paranoia in Paris; Louis XIII and Richelieu were keen to pair off reliable and unreliable commanders wherever possible. Richelieu’s creatures would be paired with unreliable aristocrats such as Chatillon, Gaston, Montmorency, Maurillac and Bouillon. Richelieu aimed to keep the aristocracy occupied with war while guarding against the danger that they would turn their armies on his regime in alliance with the Spanish. A medieval tradition, the role of high command was reserved for the higher nobility, for example, Harcourt, Turenne, or Condé. In many ways, the history of Europe in the early modern and modern world up to 1945 was about the need to provide a raison d’etre for the noble warrior elite, many of whom emerged in penury from the feudal period. Service to newly emerging state structures became the route to steady income or even riches. The Prince de Condé was an example of this upper echelon; he did well for himself out of the war, along with his more famous son, the ‘Great’ Condé. Possessing no more than 10,000 livres at the start of the war, Prince de Condé (father of the duc d’Enghien), who was mediocre in military talent and, in the ironic words of Madame de Motville, ‘unlucky in war’39 had amassed property worth a million livres per annum in income. Louis XIII needed to be occupied and he loved to play at soldiers. It was simply easier and cheaper to manage a royal progress nearer to home on the Artois front, within easy reach of Paris. However, the presence of the king would unbalance overall military provision and strategy itself, because resources had to be concentrated on his part of the campaign first, to the detriment of all other fronts under the centralised funds budget-cap system. Money had to be lavished on his tented pavilions, his attendants, and the abundant supply of fine foods and wines. In essence, war was still a medieval summertime amusement for the French court. Although the allure of Flanders was obvious, it was a

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212  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 slow attritional strategy because it favoured the defence and would absorb resources disproportionate to possible gains. It was a very slow and painful way to win a war. An indirect strategy of knocking out the Viennese Habsburg first would have better served French interests and offered better chances of a short victorious war. A focus on Germany would also have made better use of France’s preponderance in resources, even if inadequate, as well as its alliance with Sweden, a far more effective land power than the Dutch. Eventually the major French breakthrough in the war was achieved on the German front. French foot soldiers wore distinctive and eccentric garb: culottes that were often decorated or frilled at the bottom, with plentiful ribbons, feathers and plumes and wide-brimmed hats tilted up at the back of the head like a Mexican sombrero. Tactically, the French were very similar to other European armies. However, they seem to have clung to higher pike ratios. The 3:1 musket/pike ratio was offered as a possibility by the standard French text on military theory, Les principes de l’art militaire, by Jean de Billon; but French army regulations still stipulated 1:1 in the 1640s although the ratio probably increased in favour of muskets. French cavalry was deployed in deeper formations than others, eight ranks instead of four. One French quirk, if not a totally new innovation, was the regular use of enfants perdus (skirmishers), that Napoleon would later develop.

State development and ‘absolutism’

Making war in early medieval, renaissance and early modern Europe was the natural, primary, and predominant activity of political entities, be they dynastic Kingly states, or proto-nation states. As political scientist Charles Tilly explains, ‘Warmaking and statemaking reinforced each other, indeed remained practically indistinguishable until states began to form secure, recognised boundaries around contiguous territories.’40 Additionally, as war became more sophisticated, based on mass production, primary resources and technology, there was the extra push of economic advantage that reinforced the modernisation of state management. The primary power urge, the desire to win wars, led to accelerated modernisation, the two being mutually reinforcing. As a result, both the state and associated capitalist structures developed symbiotically.

French nobility, constitutional crisis, role in warfare, and modern military state 1629–1632

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the French state through the early modern period including the religious wars of the sixteenth century and the Thirty Years War period was the continual posturing and rebelliousness of the nobility. Altogether they represented an estimated 1 to 2 per cent of the 20 million population, meaning 200,000 to 400,000 people in around 40,000 families, of whom about half (men) were raised on red meat, chivalric fantasies and an overinflated sense of honour. At least 50 per cent of them were poor or very poor.41 War for them might bring opportunity and reward, like the

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  213 character of d’Artagnan in Dumas’s novel. The number is so vast that the French revolution 150 years later seems like a natural purging of the excess; there is still no shortage. Many, perhaps most, utterly resented the rule of the Cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin. While policy reasons were involved, such as the disagreements as to foreign policy, or the complaints of the dévot faction, or Huguenot faction, the real reasons went deeper. French aristocracy, particularly the nobles du sang believed that they were a race apart from ordinary Frenchmen, being divinely inspired to rule in partnership with the king.42 They suffered from unbridled self-importance. ‘Only nobles were truly free.’43 The high nobility regarded themselves as relatives of the king; they shared, through this sacred blood, his right to rule. Louis XIII himself referred to the concept of sacred blood. Richelieu’s statist system and the law should not apply to them, nor taxes. Whereas the nobles du sang enjoyed immunity, the nobles d’epée and the nobles du robe did not. Richelieu’s policy of executing the last categorys entirely new; previously they would expect to be punished, perhaps by exile or banishment from court, or simply forgiven. Only Gaston, the serial intriguer and rebel, and other nobles du sang would be spared. In essence, the continuous revolt of the dévots, the importants and the grandee aristocracy was a rebellion against the modern absolutist state as it moved away from feudal concepts of government. Their resentment of the new breed of technocrat nobles de robe was embodied by the duc de Chatillon who always insultingly addressed Richelieu as monsieur instead of Monseigneur.44 When, as commander at Arras in 1640, he was given orders for continuation of the campaign, he retorted with an ‘insolent’ refusal of orders from defence secretary de Noyers.45 Military efficiency was badly compromised by selfimportant nobility and concomitant ill discipline.There was no ‘typical’ dévot or rebel. Some moderate dévots were loyal, some not; some shifted. This festering sore in French society was fertile ground for Olivares’s plots. Richelieu was also aware of the ‘state building’ value in war, and the sacrifices that were required for France’s road to victory. War would have to take priority: the Cardinal wrote to Louis on 13 April 1635, ‘It will be necessary to forget the repose, economy, and reforms within the Kingdom.’46 This choice set the tone for the terrible suffering of the French peasantry over the next thirty years as the French state tried to cope with modern warfare run alongside a hopelessly antiquated state. In a war of attrition against the Habsburgs, who would last the longest before general collapse set in?

Richelieu’s regime of terror

Richelieu’s spy network was very wide and all encompassing; his system of terror was subtle and unpredictable to its victims. He did much of the inquisitor work himself, but Noyers, Chavigny and Mazarin played supporting roles; all of the torture was left to nameless brutes in the dungeons. Sometimes he just issued threats; sometimes that was combined

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214  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 with the promises of rewards for good behaviour or for turning against the opposition and informing. Richelieu’s manner was always unctuously polite, which must have been most sinister for the recipients; behind the politeness was the power to torture, to kill, to kidnap or punish arbitrarily and without trial. ‘He spoke to me with great civility,’ remembered de La Rochefoucauld, exaggerating nevertheless the greatness of my fault, and what could be the consequences of it, if I did not repair it by the confession of all that I knew: and as I seemed to him more reserved he became bitter, and told me rather abruptly that I had only to go to the Bastille. Later on ‘he even wished to attach me to his interests,’ [i.e. become an informer].47 Another victim of Richelieu’s glacial courtesy was the tragic de Thou, the friend and go-between to the Spanish and other conspirators who tried to organise a coup d’etat. During the interrogation, Richelieu toyed with the young man as if he were a fly caught in a spider’s web. The fellow was doomed, as was Cinq Mars. Entering the prisoner’s cell, the Cardinal with his usual cynical humour, wrapped in deferential politeness, apologised: ‘Monsieur, I pray you may excuse me for having put you the trouble of coming here [the château de Tarascon].’ Richelieu probed with rapier-thrust questions; questions to which he knew the true answers already. He was a natural cross-examining barrister, a master inquisitor. Cardinal: ‘Did you write to Rome and Spain?’ De Thou: ‘Yes, on the command of the King.’ (An unlikely interpretation of events.) Cardinal: ‘Are you the secretary of state?’48 De Thou was duly executed and quartered. We do not know exactly who succumbed to his ‘offers’ but they would have been many. He used money, advancement and fear to turn enemies into spies and supporters. A case in point is that of de la Riviere, equerry to Gaston, who was a party in the Cinq Mars plot against the king, but somehow survived; did he become a turncoat? Why was de la Riviere spared but de Thou not? We know that he was ‘made an offer of pardon without even the obligation of making a full statement of truth’.49 The Cardinal already had the truth; a full confession from Gaston who admitted that he was in the pay of Spain to the tune of 10 million ecus per month. It was suggested to Gaston that he should take a holiday in Venice; the expenses of the trip would have to be paid for from the King of Spain’s pension. De la Riviere would go with him, probably as Richelieu’s spy, to guard against Spanish plots and their agent the Duchesse de Chevreuse. Richelieu had spies in every centre of opposition, including the households of Anne of Austria and Marie de Medici; the discovery of plots such as the Chalais one came through informants.

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  215 Over the years there was an accumulation of prisoners; de La Rochefoucauld describes his eight-day stay in the Bastille: ‘This short time that I spent there represented to me more vividly than anything I had seen until then the frightful image of the Cardinal’s rule.  I saw … an infinite number of people of all conditions and of all sexes, unhappy and persecuted by a long and cruel prison.’50

Invasion of France: the year of ‘Corbie’, 1636

Another army, commanded by Prince Condé supported by Richelieu’s cousin, the head of artillery, was ordered to attack Spanish Franche-Comté, a forested region including the Jura mountains, running from the east of Dijon to the Swiss border. Dôle, the capital of Spanish-owned Franche-Comté was besieged for three months. Set amongst undulating hills and ravines, the town, which lies just fifty kilometres south-east of Dijon, posed a threat to Paris and central France. An isolated dynastic holding, and difficult to reinforce or supply from Spain, Franche-Comté looked like an easy target for the French to pick off. A considerable force of 10,500 men duly attacked the city of Dôle on 27 May 1636. However, Dôle was defended with tenacity by a French-speaking populace imbued with the fierce parochialism of the feudal age: according to Richelieu ‘the courage of the comtais was redoubled by the natural hate which they harboured for the French.’51 Bastion-mounted cannon aimed by expert artilleryman Capuchin friar Eustache destroyed the approach of galleries which the French tried to drive across the ditch. The problem of experience was telling, as one officer admitted on reflection some years later: the French did not have the experience which they acquired afterwards. It was enough for a man to have served in Holland to be listened to as a great oracle. The kind of officer who was then acclaimed as a great general would now be hardly fit to command a company.52 1636 was to be the year of the Spanish counter-attack, supported by substantial Imperial units commanded by Prince Tomascino of Carignano, Gallas, Piccolomini and Werth; this was the fruit of Olivares’s successful diplomatic effort in securing the support of the Emperor for a joint enterprise against France. An army of 25,000, half of it cavalry, attacked across the border of Flanders, capturing La Capelle and a string of towns in Flanders. Corbie, a major fortress close to Amiens was invested on 7 August and surrendered just a week later. Hagendorf was there as an Imperial cavalryman; he describes an incident during the siege of Corbie: ‘We then went to Corbie, a mighty fortress on the river [which we besieged] … The 16th of August they gave up, we rode out after booty, I as well, getting as close as ten hours from Paris. We could see it lying there like a forest.’53 The French government panicked as Von Werth’s Imperial troopers captured Compiègne and reached Pontoise, thirty-four kilometres away from the capital, while patrols, including Hagendorf, reached the outskirts of Paris. Werth

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216  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 commanded this independent column of 5,000 troopers plus 2,000 Croats and Polish Cossacks. Acting as raiders, they spread rumours and mayhem all around. Piccolomini with another column forced a crossing of the Oise river. Meanwhile Henri de Campion, an impoverished young lieutenant in the Normandy Regiment, was marching in de La Valette’s force which linked with Saxe-Weimar in Lorraine. He arrived at the siege of Saverne, in the heavily contested dukedom of Lorraine, in early July 1636. He was with Viscount Turenne, the young, up-and-coming French commander. ‘Saxe-Weimar who was bored by inaction captured a fort overlooking Saverne, and the next day he aimed his cannon at the town below; because the walls were weak a breach was soon made.’54 A well-placed musket ball lost Richelieu his Maréchal de Camp, a Scot, Sir John Hepburn, by whose recruitment he had set so much store. Going forward on horseback to reconnoitre the breach he was shot by a sniper; he died slowly, lamenting his distant Highland home. The siege proved to be one of the most bitterly contested of the war, involving more house to house street fighting than other sieges where the defence would collapse upon a breach being successfully stormed. The advance through the town was painstaking. Heavily defended to the last cobble, with successive barricades thrown across the alleyways, 2,000 men were lost in the taking of this medium-sized town. In one counter-attack alone, 500 men from one French regiment were lost to a fierce sally by the defenders. Count Gramont recalled: ‘From the top of the wall it rained an infinite number of grenades and musket shots, all the officers and a majority of the soldiers were killed or wounded, we had to abandon our gains.’ Turenne suffered a broken hand from a musket shot, and Saxe-Weimar had a finger shot off. Eventually the defenders surrendered with full honours of war. It had been a unique form of defence with only three other examples of its type in the course of the war (Casale in 1629–30, Magdeburg 1631 and Prague in 1648). A thousand marched out to join Gallas, ‘the best men and the most brilliant defence that I have ever witnessed,’55 lauded de Campion. A testament to fierce parochialism, enhanced with bitterness from the ruination and rape of their homeland, they were Lohringians, French-speaking but fighting fanatically for their duke, for Lorraine, for their neighbours and families. Richelieu reacted vigorously to Gallas’s and Piccolomini’s threat to the city. Prompted by the cardinal, the king issued a medieval-style call to arms for his nobles, a sort of levée en masse which raised 20,000 volunteers within a few days. A patriotic plea, it was similar in tone to the frenetic mobilisation of reserves at the ‘miracle of the Marne’ three hundred years later in 1914, or the call to arms at Valmy in 1792 by the Revolutionary Assembly. Early modern France, which for the most part had barely if at all emerged from feudalism in 1636, had a weak sense of national identity, but there was clearly a sense of primitive patriotism and defiance of the invader; perhaps the call tapped that seam of sentiment which Joan of Arc had so well exploited. One of the invaders, Hagendorf, noted the fierce reaction to the invasion:

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  217 the 4th July [1636] we came to the French border and moved over to a castle. Within were seven peasants who resisted an entire army. So, we set fire to the castle and burned it up, along with the peasants … . [We] were commanded to go to a village … . The peasants in the churchyard there resisted so forcefully that we could achieve nothing without cannons. Thus, we went back for there were one thousand peasants in there.56 Gallas’s Imperial-Spanish army had to be rescued from a pursuing French army by the combined forces of Werth, von Gronsfeld and the Duke of Lorraine, who joined on 18 October at a defensive entrenchment at Rambervillers, on the edge of Lorraine, which, according to Hagendorf, ‘lay along an entire mile of path on a beautiful mountain a quarter-mile from the enemy. We had 32 entrenchments. … There were in total 136 large and small cannon there. The troops numbered 60,000.’57 After a stand-off, both armies disengaged. At the end of the campaign year, the Spanish-Imperial army split up again, racked by hunger in retreat. Any chance of a concentration in preparation for further invasions in 1637 had been scotched by Saxe-Weimar and bad news from Wittstock. The withdrawal to Flanders through Picardy was dictated by the fear engendered by Baner’s great triumph at Wittstock on 4 October, which restored Swedish prestige and power in north-east Germany. The Imperial venture into France was over; from here on they would have to return to prop up their Saxon ally. Fear of a resurgent Sweden was to have a major impact on new troop dispositions for the upcoming campaigning year; 1636 was the postNordlingen high-water mark of Habsburg military fortunes. In a contemporary account of the Imperialist campaign in 1636, Fritsch tells how an invasion which began so well turned into a nightmare at the end; they were trapped at Metz without supplies, ‘right into the autumn, until it froze bitterly hard and many thousand soldiers and horses perished and died …. when we couldn’t hold any longer because of hunger we marched out of Lorraine again.’58 During Gallas’s retreat through Alsace 12,000 men were lost. However, there was one consolation success: in holding off the French army Gallas had secured enough time to force the surrender of Saxe-Weimar’s remaining 1,000man garrison in Mainz after a long siege that had begun in 1635. Bavarian and Imperial troops also picked off key strongholds in the Rhine valley including Mannheim, Heidelberg and Frankfurt. The Normandie Regiment was called back to winter in Auxerre near Paris. Henri de Campion could go to Paris and spend time with his mother and brother, who were linked to the dévot opposition. He fell in love with a certain Madame de la Fontaine, while finding time to have a duel over ‘a very trivial matter’; he was wounded in the hand and arm but he sliced his opponent’s face above the eye, upon which a cessation was called and honour satisfied. Campion reflected that before and after this sort of affair he ‘developed an aversion for these false points of honour.’59 Other officers spent the winter season at court where they advanced

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218  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 their careers by judicious lobbying of the senior commanders who gathered there. In the winter season, Campion was unable to go to court because it was expensive. Impecunious and disinherited by his father’s will, which left everything to his brother, he was an inexperienced card player who, during the long dull days of campaigning, lost all his money at the drum table. His lack of promotion after long hard service would by degrees turn to political anger. On another front, in Piedmont, French Marshal de Crequi and Victor Amadeus of Savoy crossed the Ticino river with their 16,700-man army. Confronting the Spaniards from strongly-entrenched defensive positions, the French managed to fend off the tercios of General Luganes. The highly regarded Spanish General Gambacorta was shot down when the Savoyard cavalry counter-attacked. A fifteen-hour battle, on 22 June, Tornavento was one of the few large-scale fights of the war in Italy; casualties were about even at 5,500 in total.60 The Spanish withdrew, but the Franco-Savoyard army was too battered to go on. The Spanish were stretched by the need to deal with de Rohan in the Valtellina, as well as defeat the invasion by Oduardo Farneese di Parma’s 5000-man army.

Rohan’s Swiss campaign and the Valtellina: 1636

Due to the hue and cry over the invasion of France, in Switzerland the French force under de Rohan was overlooked, despite his stunning successes. All resources were diverted to the defence of Paris. No funds or reinforcements were available for Rohan who, having advanced as far as Lecco, poised just sixty kilometres from Milan at the southern tip of Lake Como, was then forced to retreat to Sondrio, the main town in the western part of valley. His troops were tired and hungry in retreat, and reduced by plague. At the same time his relations with the Grisons [the Grey Leagues] began to deteriorate due to the build-up of back pay. More fundamentally, the Swiss began to suspect France’s strategic aims and motivations, fearing that one tyrant would be replaced by another. Instead of a renewed offensive to exploit the French victory at Tornovento in June, the rest of 1636 was spent in politicking rather than fighting. Negotiations with de Rohan as to the terms of a new treaty between the Grisons and France became fraught, especially as Richelieu dragged out the talks for over a year. Eventually, de Rohan managed to obtain their signatures to an agreement accepting a French-led alliance. But this only papered over the cracks. In their Alpine fastnesses, a Swiss secret cabal called the Kettenbund (the Chain League) was created with the aim of expelling all foreigners, including the French.61 Jenatsch joined the conspirators, rallied the Valtellina population and coalesced with the Grisons to form a united front; with several other leaders he travelled to Austria where he set about negotiating a treaty with the Habsburgs. De Rohan caught wind of the intrigue but was powerless to act, not least because he became dangerously ill. While he was confined to his sickbed, the political situation fell apart. In an effort to regain the initiative, but too

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French Economic and Military Mobilisation  219 weak to walk, he had himself carried in a sedan chair over the mountains to Chur to meet with military representatives of the cantons. A new treaty was being negotiated with the Grisons, but Richelieu refused to ratify it; he haggled endlessly over the terms, and still no money arrived. De Bouillon, the French envoy in Switzerland wrote to Richelieu, ‘This misfortune that has occurred in the Valtellina … is so great that I do not know whether it will be possible to effect a remedy … God knows whether the Swiss will revolt over their back pay…this evil has come about through lack of money.’62 On 18 March 1637 the Swiss troops in the army revolted against the French, who were now in an impossibly weak position. De Rohan was effectively a hostage. Casualties had reduced French forces to a small rump; reinforcement was not expected. Spain retained its traditional rights of passage for its troops in return for paying the Swiss a large sum of money, and giving them sovereignty over the valley. Richelieu’s offer of a similarly benign treaty and a large down payment of cash arrived just a few days too late. De Rohan and his soldiers were ‘accompanied’ to the border by Jenatsch’s troops; there was great fanfare and celebration both for the new Habsburg treaty and in genuine gratitude for the services of de Rohan, who remained a hero to the local people. Despite his ousting they raised a panegyric to ‘his memory’ which ‘would be perennial among them; though they raised a monument to him on every peak in the whole canton they could never do him adequate honour for the services he had rendered.’63 However, de Rohan’s captain, Lecque, refused the hand of Jenatsch saying bitterly ‘I cannot trust the hand of a traitor.’64 The French for their efforts were left empty-handed while Spain could still maintain their ‘Spanish Road’. The Treaty of 1639 formally ratified the deal made by Jenatsch and his compatriots. A strategic gambit so brilliantly begun had ended in humiliation. Jenatsch’s treachery and murderous past would catch up with him some years later at a festival in Chur when a bear-costumed assassin slew him with an axe. In Italy, the war dragged on across Piedmont and Parma. Marshal de Crequi and Amadeus of Savoy achieved a decisive victory at Mombaldone on 8 September 1637; however, the Duke of Palma was exiting the war; French garrisons were expelled from Parma and Spanish troops retreated across the frontier as part of a peace deal.65 Soon the political landscape was to change again following Victor-Amadeus’s death in October of 1637 following banquet celebrations after the battle: Crequi died soon after. Amadeus’s son, Prince Tomascino, supported by his cardinal brother, would soon return from fighting with the Spanish in Flanders to lead a Spanish-backed revolt against his aunt, the Regent Christina, sister of Louis XIII. Having seemed to be on top in 1637, by the end of 1638 the French position had all but crumbled as Tomascino captured town after town. All three French prongs against Spain’s lines of communication on the Spanish Road and northern Italy had been undone. Italy had become a military and political disaster, a quagmire in which the desperately underfunded French state would have to sink yet more treasure and troops to attempt the rescue of Christina’s pro-French Savoyard regime from Habsburg takeover.

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The liberation from the Dutch of Portuguese Brazil 1625. Note the background picture depicting Philip IV with a portrait of Olivares standing alongside. It is a propaganda piece proclaiming Philip IV of Spain as the saviour thus emphasizing the triumph of the union of crowns under the Spanish king. Juan Bautista Maino, Museo del Prado.

Contemporary picture by Pieter Snayer of fully armoured cuirassiers (known as ‘lobsters’ in the English civil war). Note the use of pistols which were generally used in a melee at ‘point blank’ range. The sword was used for cutting down broken formations of fleeing infantry. Cuirassiers’ armour was usually painted black to prevent rusting. As the war progressed armies adopted the Swedish cavalry model with just a breast plate and open faced helmet. ‘watch out for those black fellows’ remarked Gustavus of Piccolomini’s cuirassier regiment before Lutzen.

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The famed and feared winged hussars with their long lances had had an unbroken run of success against the Swedish army but to counter them Gustavus developed disciplined infantry tactics including salvo firing by ranks. Swedish cavalry formations were interspersed with musketeer units, a tactic successfully introduced at the snow bound battle of Walhof, east of Riga 1626 and later used by Gustavus to counter better mounted Imperialist cavalry at Breitenfeld 1631.

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A Spanish tercio which was a forest of pikes in up to 30 ranks with musketeers armed with matchlocks forming ‘sleaves’ at the side in a 1:1 ratio increasing to 2:1 during the war. This block formation proved unwieldy and vulnerable to Swedish artillery fire at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1632 but such tactics lasted until the disaster at Spanish defeat at Rocroi in 1643. Gustavus’s formations were shallower with just 6 ranks and a matchlock-pike ratio of up to 3:1.

Breitenfeld 1631. Prints of Thirty Years War battles offer a chequer board display of unit formations with blocks of pikes (tercio) and cavalry; however, the thick smoke of gunpowder and the chaos of battle would often break up these neat formations so that in the ‘fog of war’ troops would rally to the regimental flag or the beat of a drum. Tilly’s veterans in their dense tercio blocks, with pikes in the centre and musketeers on the ‘sleaves’ were mown down in thousands when confronted by Gustavus’s superior Swedish firepower.

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The siege and rape of Magdeburg 1631 was one of the great defining catastrophes of the Thirty Years War. After the Imperialist-Bavarian army stormed the city street fighting gave way to looting and rape on an epic scale; the city was burnt to the ground and it is estimated that up to 30,000 may have perished. General Tilly lost what he hoped to be an important logistics hub and Gustavus gained an invaluable propaganda aid for his call to arms in Protestant Germany.

The picture demonstrates the procedure for priming with fine powder from a powder horn the firing pan of a matchlock musket with a lighted match-cord at the ready. Cheap to produce and firing a round large calibre bullet with a crude trigger action, this weapon was heavy; it required a rest. Experience troops could reload within a minute. Pouches dangling on bandoliers carried pre weighed amounts of coarse powder which was rammed down the barrel followed by the bullet.

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Wheellock firing mechanisms, based on clock-technology were complex and expensive to make and were mainly used for cavalry pistols or for the muskets of those guarding the powder wagons in the artillery train, because the lighted match-cord used for matchlock mechanisms risked catastrophic explosions. Swedish troops also used the ‘snaphance’ flintlock-like firing mechanism with a lighter musket which did not require a rest, but Gustavus preferred the simplicity and hitting power of the matchlock for taking down heavy cavalry.

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In 1636 General Baner’s daring pincer attack on the Imperialist-Saxon army resulted in a decisive victory at Wittstock 1636, which was the turning point in Sweden’s military recovery from the defeat at Nordlingen in 1634. The print shows the main arena of battle as the Swedish army attacks up the steep incline of the Scharfenburg heights to fix the Imperialist-Saxon army in position while launching a masked attack on their defenceless right flank and rear. At the bottom of the slope a mass grave containing many Scottish soldiers of General Leslie’s division has recently been excavated.

Pillaging houses and murder of civilians from the acclaimed ‘Miseries of War’ series; contemporary print by Jaques Callot, a citizen of the Duchy of Luxembourg. The most famous artist of the Thirty Years war, he did much to popularize the ‘Gothic’ image of the war. Grimmelshausen writes of such events in his semi-autobiographical novel Simplicissimus.

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Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s chief minister 1624–4, adopted balance of power principles and: ‘ushered in the age of Machiavellian realism in interstate relations: … the doctrine of raison d’état grew into the guiding principle of European diplomacy.’ (Henry Kissinger)

Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister 1642–1661: to Louis XIII and regent Anne of Austria. A worldly Italian born lawyer and diplomat, He fought the war to a successful conclusion and negotiated the Treaties of Westphalia.

Axel Oxenstierna, a great statesman of the Thirty Years War he was the only one to be in office throughout the entire conflict and the only person quoted in Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf ’. He ruled Sweden during Queen Christina’s minority.

Count Olivares in 1635. Machiavellian in character, he was a modern ruler and commander in chief with a broad geopolitical understanding of war. Chief minister 1621-42 to Philip IV, he was deposed after revolutions in Iberia.

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The Dutch fleet blockaded the Spanish armada under the lee of the English coast before defeating them decisively at the battle of the Downs 21 October 1639 which resulted in the Spanish Netherlands being cut off from reinforcements after the ‘Spanish Road’ was blocked following the capture of Rheinfelden and Breisach by Bernhard von Saxe-Weimar in 1638. Naval activity was an unsung and decisive element of the Thirty Years War both in Europe and globally. One broadside armament in one ship (22 heavy guns) deployed more cannon firepower than that of an army of 20–30,000 men.

The naval battle of the Slaak 1631 was the last major effort of the Spanish offensive to against Dutch. On a moonlit night a Spanish barge fleet led by Fransisco de Moncada, Marquess of Aitona was attempting to set up a strategic base in the delta of the Scheldt to outflank the Dutch line of defences, when it was ambushed wiped out by the Dutch fleet. Many were drowned, but thousands of Spanish troops were killed or captured by Scottish and English mercenaries as they struggled ashore.

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Chapter XIII

Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse The Dutch Front and the English Channel, 1636

T

he Dutch army might have been expected to take advantage of the fact that the Imperial and Spanish army was engaged in France, or to mount relief attacks. In fact, the Stadtholder was mired in budgetary and political disputes with the states of Holland, where the less hawkish Arminian faction had taken control; so, after the recapture of Shenkenshans, the fortress gateway to the lower Rhine, in April 1636, no further campaigning was undertaken. Meanwhile, the Spanish exploited their informal ‘neutrality’ compact with Charles I (1634) by shipping into Dunkirk 4,000 soldiers in thirty-eight English-flagged ships in the course of 1636.

Baner’s masterpiece: Swedish recovery

In Germany Magdeburg was besieged by the Saxon-Imperial army at the start of May. But when it fell on 13 August 1636 Richelieu was bitterly disappointed in his ally for its feeble defence. What were French subsidies for but to fight? Richelieu was bitingly critical of Baner: ‘This is all because of Baner’s new marriage,’ he snarled, ‘He had been celebrating so much it seems he was no longer able to think clearly.’1 Through 1635 to 1636, the Swedish position in northern Germany was in disarray; not only in Poland was Sweden ‘hanging on by their finger tips’. In 1635 Baner could muster only 26,000 troops in the main army, 11,000 of whom were in garrison. There were only 3,000 reliable Swedes and Finnish troops, while the rest were German recruits or Scottish veterans. German nationalist propaganda, launched by Saxony on behalf of the Imperialists, had the effect of securing the defection of four regiments from Wilhelm of Weimar’s small force of 4,000, while the loyalty of the rest of the army remained suspect; even the Calvinist Hessians had signed a truce with the Emperor pending negotiations. Facing defeat, Oxenstierna was in the grip of despair; writing a letter to the Rad on 29 March 1636 he complained bitterly: I should be glad to get away from this place, not only with my life, but even at the expense of it; I am envied and persecuted by friend and foe; … my judgement and resourcefulness are deserting me … I can’t be of any use here; but if I leave, everything will collapse, and all the blame be put on me.2

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Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse   221 Though despairing privately, Oxenstierna took a grip, organised his forces in three corps, Leslie on the Weser, Wrangel on the Oder and Baner with the main Royal Army on the Elbe. The Saxons, fronting for the Habsburgs, opened peace negotiations with Oxenstierna but these stalled over the huge salary arrears required for the Swedish army, estimated at 8 million Reichsthaler. On this point Swedish hands were tied by the so-called ‘Gunpowder Convention’ of August 1635 where the Swedes promised the rebellious army not to make peace without their prior permission. 1635 had demonstrated the military incapacity of Saxony and Brandenburg, even in the face of a Swedish army both rebellious and in disarray, so the following year the Emperor decided, not before time, that the Saxons needed stiffening with veteran Imperial troops and a new commander, Melchior Graf von Gleichen und Hatzfeldt. In the spring of 1636 Field Marshal Leslie moved down, in another arm of the pincer, into Westphalia and then Hesse. Here his army’s presence steadied the local political situation where William V had been and then Amelia had been on the brink of backing the Peace of Prague. Apart from feeding himself on the enemy’s turf, Leslie relieved Osnabruck, captured Minden from the Lunenburg turncoats and collected reinforcements by capturing 200 enemy troops at Petershagen Castle. He also secured the defection of four Lunenburg cavalry regiments, then marched south with a reinvigorated Hesse to take control of contributions in nineteen fortified places. In relieving strategically important Hanau on the Main, Leslie took many prisoners and slaughtered others; 500 were massacred in one redoubt alone. As Baner’s army shadowed the Imperial army along the Elbe he was reinforced from the west by Leslie’s army of 5,000 from Westphalia. Baner’s army also collected 3,800 soldiers sent down by Wrangel from garrisons in Pomerania;3 roughly one third of his army was made up of Swedes, Scots and Germans; cavalry was just over half of the total. Slipping past the Imperial army, which included John George’s Saxons, Baner’s offensive was aimed at the enemy’s supplies and lines of communication. He retook Werben and Havelburg, capturing all of Hatzfeldt’s supplies upon overrunning a detachment of Imperial cavalry. Turning north-west, he cut off the allied army (Imperial and Saxon) moving south-east to link up with Kitzling’s corps. Both armies comprised about 19,000 troops. Outside the pretty little walled market town of Wittstock, which sits on a plateau above the Prussian plain that leads to Berlin, Hartzfeld deployed his army. It was a seemingly strong defensive position. At the edge of the plateau, to the south of the little town, he fortified his central front with earthworks and wagons manned by infantry. Dense forest covered the right wing, while marsh protected the centre. On the east side of the plateau, the left was secure on the steep hill flanked by a small river, the Dosse. Cavalry was held back in

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222  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 reserve out on the wings. It was a formidable defensive position, so Hartzfeld can hardly have expected anyone but an aggressive Swedish general to attack it. Although the Imperialists were placed between the Swedes and their lines of communication, Baner might have manoeuvred further to the Imperial right to recover his communications and line of retreat if he needed. Instead, he chose battle. To approach the Imperial position, Baner had to cross the Dosse from the south-east. Once again it was a risky choice, because any retreat would need to thread through a narrow passage between river and forest, then over a river by a single bridge. If beaten, Baner’s retreat would be compromised by the bottleneck, as at Nordlingen. Field Marshal Baner split his army into four roughly equal divisions. Scots General King commanded the left with General Stalhandske with eighteen squadrons of cavalry, about 3,600 troopers. In the centre Baner posted General Leslie with 4,342 troops, mostly infantry but backed by five squadrons of cavalry, about 1,000. On the right, he placed himself with seventeen squadrons of cavalry, about 3,500 troopers, supported by 700 detached musketeers under Colonel Gunn, another Scot. In reserve and guarding the bridge over the Dosse were 4,656 men including twelve squadrons of cavalry4 (so roughly 50/50 cavalry and infantry), and Colonel Johan Vitzthum von Eckstadt, whose deputy was Major General John Ruthven, Leslie’s son-in-law. Posting Major General Ruthven with the reserve was likely aimed at underpinning the unpopular Vitzthum, who was regarded as slow and politically unreliable. General Torstensson was second-in-command and the only senior officer with whom the irascible and wayward Baner enjoyed a good relationship. The command was riven by tensions; Baner was unhappy that Leslie had been promoted to general; ‘an ancient envie and ill will’5 and this resentment against preferences for Scots was widespread amongst the Germans. Conflicts broke out over quarters for their soldiers. Not surprisingly, Baner decided not to make a frontal attack on a fortified position over marshy ground. Instead he sought to overwhelm the left flank of the Imperial position by an oblique attack, rolling it up just as had been planned at Nordlingen; it was the oblique attack method so favoured by Frederick the Great a century later. Baner’s plan was almost identical to the one deployed by Lee and Jackson at the battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. Perhaps Lee had studied Wittstock as a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute, VMI. Military historian and Sandhurst lecturer Sir John Keegan explains the risks of such a manoeuvre in the context of the battle of Chancellorsville and military theory: ‘Lee was to violate the two inflexible rules of war – not to divide an army in the face of the enemy and not to march across the face of the enemy army deployed for battle.’6 It was the fatal mistake made by General Marmont at Salamanca where Wellington trounced him. If you broke this rule it was vital not to be discovered. Baner sent General

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Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse   223 King’s division on a wide sweeping march across the front of the enemy, aiming to swing round the Imperial right flank while drawing enemy reserves towards him by attacks on the left flank. A classic contemporary failure by dividing armies to attack on exterior lines is the second battle of Newbury in the English Civil War where attacks by Cromwell and Manchester were unco-ordinated, so posing little threat.

Battle of Wittstock 4 October 1636

Baner launched his right wing with oblique cavalry attacks on the left of the Imperial-Saxon line, which raged intermittently throughout the afternoon; the battle began about 2.30 p.m. on the upper slopes of the Scharfensburg and Vingardsburg. Baner has been criticised by Guthrie for not attacking en masse but drip-feeding his units into the battle, but this is mistaken. Baner was making holding attacks to fix the Imperialists in position. But would King and Stalhandske arrive in time? The battle became a near-run thing, because General King arrived late; as the day wore on, the outnumbered Swedes on the right became fatigued. Then the Imperial army counter-attacked, having shifted fresh units of infantry and cavalry from their right and centre. After making as many as ten attacks, Baner’s wing was exhausted and came under intense pressure. On the point of cracking, Leslie deployed his troops to the centre to counter-attack and sustain Baner who later recorded in a letter to Christina ‘and turned away from us four brigades of the enemy’s infantry … so that we could find our breath’.7 The front of the battle had decisively moved to the Imperial-Saxon left, raging in the forest on the lower slopes of the Scharfenburg: here Colonel Leslie (a different one) with Scottish infantry and Torstensson’s expertly positioned cannon held the Imperialists in check and counter-attacked while Baner’s cavalry regrouped. ‘We attacked in God’s name,’ reported Field Marshal Leslie proudly, ‘notwithstanding that he was far superior to us not only in his above-mentioned position, [on the higher ground] but also in the number of troops.’8 9 However, the situation of the Swedish army looked desperate, especially as Vitzthum with the reserves failed to come up in support; fortunately, his deputy, Ruthven, on his own initiative and against Vitzthum’s orders, took forward his units from the Army of Weser to support Baner. Ruthven’s troops advanced to the rescue and brought Vitzhum’s cavalry for good measure. We can only imagine the furious verbal exchanges, shouted amidst the din of battle. After the battle, Vitzthum fled the army in disgrace before court martial charges could be brought. The battle became an attritional slogging match. According to an eyewitness: There were heads, who had lost their natural owners, but also bodies that had lost their heads, on some bodies the intestines ran out – a horrible and gruesome sight; on others the head was crushed so that the brain ran out. There you saw the dead deprived of their blood and the living covered in

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10 Imperialist/Saxon army retreats 6 p.m.

rear of the enemy about 5 p.m.

9 Surprise flank attack emerges from forest in

counter attack. 4:30 p.m.

8 Torstensson infantry and guns defeat Imperialist

7 Ruthven advances with reserves to support. 4 p.m.

6 Imperialist-Saxon counter attack on Swedish army. 4 p.m.

5 Imperialist-Saxon units transferred to their left wing. 3:30 p.m.

4 Baner’s attacks beaten back. 3:30 p.m.

3 Wide Swedish flanking movement by Swedish-Scottish units. 2:30 p.m.

2 Baner attacks Scharfenburg heights 2:30 p.m.

1 Approach of Baner’s Swedish army 4th Oct.

Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse   225 that of others. There were arms shot off, whose fingers still moved. There you saw mutilated soldiers pleading for the thrust of mercy even if certain death was close; on the other hand you saw those pleading for mercy and clemency.10 The desperate nature of the fighting, including hand-to-hand combat, is attested by recent archeological discoveries. Suddenly trumpets, cannon and volley fire were heard to the left and rear of the Imperial army, as General King’s regiments emerged from the forest and slammed into the rear echelons of the Imperial-Saxon army. The surprise was total and the Imperial-Saxon army was completely undone as their left and centre were rolled up. Now disordered, and under attack from two sides simultaneously, they fled the field in panic, losing their baggage and thirty-one guns and suffering 5,000 casualties (including 2,000 prisoners) to about 3,000 Swedish losses. Over 100 guns were lost, including regimental guns. General King’s attack, though late, had been decisive. Without it the remainder of the Swedish army below the Scharfenburg Heights could not have prevailed. It was dusk as the Imperial army fled, but King ignored Baner’s orders to halt. In failing light, he destroyed three more enemy regiments. Losses in some regiments suggest a bloodbath; only 305 of 892 of Saxony’s Magdeburger Regiment returned, while in one Scots brigade 350 out of 800 were killed.11 The veteran Turner testified that Baner ‘had been undoubtedly beaten in the battle if the left wing had not prevailed’.12 To General Leslie’s dismay, Baner did not pursue the enemy on the following day. It was late in the year and no doubt Baner was thinking of quarters, ‘by reason of winter approaching the difficulty of the waies [roads] growing daily worse and worse’13 but his lack of energy is surprising for a Swedish commander. Besides, it seems that in the flush of victory Baner went on a week-long ‘bender’; he denied Leslie permission to take a flying column to harry the enemy’s retreating army ‘with horse and foote and a few small pieces’. As retreating armies tended to fall apart, a hot pursuit might often inflict more damage than in the battle itself. However, ‘Bannier spent the best part of the weeke in drinking and merriment.’14, 15 reported English envoy Joseph Averie. As the first major victory, and a reversal of the desperate strategic, military and political situation since Nordlingen, there was much to celebrate. From Stockholm, cleric John Durie noted the excitement caused by the victory, ‘On Sunday next they will shoote all ye ordnance here about ye towne in signe of joy.’16 Allies were re-assured. As Professor Wilson states: Wittstock was one of the most important battles of the war. A Swedish defeat would have destroyed the last field army in Germany and encouraged Hessen-Kassel to convert its truce in Germany into a peace. Hatzfeldt’s

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226  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 defeat not only prevented this but discouraged the Guelphs from bowing to the Emperor.17 There were important strategic effects because Piccolomini’s army was drawn off from the invasion of France in combination with Spain’s Flanders army. France would not be invaded again. Although there were no major territorial gains leading directly from the battle, the Swedish position in Mecklenburg and Prussia was consolidated and stabilised; Saxony was invaded, Torgau taken, and the key strategic base of Erfurt in Thuringia was relieved. Once again, the Habsburg strategy had failed. With Sweden on the ropes, Imperial troops should have been concentrated to finish them off in northern Germany instead of making a speculative invasion of France at the behest of their Habsburg cousins. The mistakes of the Mantuan War had been repeated. In 2007 a mass grave on the Wittstock battle site was unearthed containing 130 bodies packed in the sandy earth composed mostly of Scots and South Germans, stripped of everything except undergarments. The skeletons and skulls reveal hideous wounds. Heads were found, jaws gaping open, rigid with the death screams of agony and despair, skulls smashed by musket balls and bones marked by sword cuts and shrapnel damage.18 Many were suffering from syphilis.

Death of Ferdinand II February, 1637

There were no great changes resulting from the Emperor’s death in February 1637. His son, Ferdinand III, having just been installed by the Regensburg Electoral Congress as King of the Romans on 22 December 1636, was the automatic successor to the Imperial throne: nor were there any changes to the key advisers because Trauttmansdorff was already well established. Continuity in policy was assured.

Ferdinand III

Ferdinand III took the throne aged 29. He lacked his father’s overwrought religious convictions as to the exclusion of the Reformed Church in the Empire. An accomplished musician and composer, he occupied himself with the secular world of baroque instrumentation. Other interests included gardening and collecting art, a pastime that was almost universally in vogue amongst the monarchs of Europe. Nevertheless, Ferdinand, brought up by Jesuits, maintained the strict Catholic political line adopted by his father as well as the prioritisation of absolutist power consolidation within the hereditary lands: the exclusion of the Reformed Church from the Empire remained a fundamental dogma. In many ways father and son’s political failings were very similar. Both nurtured exaggerated hopes of military victory and lacked the clarity of thought and political flexibility to seize their opportunities for peace on favourable terms.

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Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse   227 In the end, Ferdinand III had the same pettiness and lack of strategic insight as his father. After Ferdinand III’s accession, a pro-active peace policy was continued with more determination, but it failed again. Hesse was the main problem. Not expecting anything to come of negotiation, William of Hesse cast around for subsidies, money and political support, even offering to aid Charles I in his hopes to restore the Palatine and electorship to his nephew Charles Ludwig. After over-finessing the talks with Hesse-Kassel following another truce in March 1638, with the Empire still slightly in the military ascendant in 1638, Ferdinand might have struck a deal and disengaged the last major German holdout; but the military advantage was dissipated and the chance was lost. Ferdinand’s accession to the Imperial throne had offered the opportunity for the issuing of pardons and making new beginnings: his response was only partial. In 1637, the Hohenlohe were pardoned (once again), as were various other minor Rhenish nobles, while Württemberg was returned to the ‘innocent’ heir to the Dukedom. In northern Germany the Guelphs maintained their neutrality in Wolfenbuttel despite Saxon pressure, while Hesse negotiated with the French. Truce worked to Hesse’s advantage.

Baner’s campaigns 1636–1641

Baner’s campaigns in this period were inconclusive, but he consolidated Sweden’s hold on northern Germany and the Baltic coast, and stabilised Sweden’s military position, which prior to 1636 had seemed in danger of being extinguished altogether. His attempts to push further into Saxony and Silesia stumbled on the matter of supply, in the face of the successful ‘stomach strategy’ pursued by his opponents with their very effective Croat light cavalry. These territories, picked over by so many armies, were threadbare in resources for sustained offensive military operations. Field armies at this time shrank to an average of about 15,000 or sometimes less, but with a large cavalry component representing half or more of total forces. Smaller armies limited the effectiveness of offensives because fewer captured cities or towns could be properly garrisoned. In the Gustavian mould, Baner would take the initiative to the Imperialists, which was risky, and he would have some interesting escapades. However, showing himself a master of surprise, and medium-sized actions or ambushes, there were important advances in Sweden’s territorial control. He was quick to size up a situation, and pounced on any mistakes by the enemy. In taking the strategic initiative in every campaign season from 1636 to 1641 he pegged back the enemy and consolidated Sweden’s position in Northern Germany. Using his base at Stettin in the earlier offensives, by 1640, having occupied Brandenburg, he was able to advance his base to Magdeburg for his last two campaigns in 1640 and 1641. Baner’s operations were always hampered by a chronic shortage of funds. As in other warring countries, Sweden’s coffers were bare. Discussions in all

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228  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 the councils of Europe were very similar. After a doubtless depressing meeting of the Rad on 1 June 1638, Matthias Soop lamented that ‘to mortgage or sell land to Swedes will not take us very far’. Claus Fleming noted that ‘Little or nothing can be cut from the budget’. Oxenstierna suggested that ‘selling at 3% [a lease of 33.3 years] is better than borrowing or mortgaging at 6%.’ Cold water was poured on all these ideas by the Treasurer: ‘I don’t see how we can make a success of borrowing: we have borrowed before, and haven’t paid; and we shall hardly get anyone to lend any more … mortgaging will not give us enough.’ The Steward warned that ‘it would be unwise to impose any further burdens on the country’. Then the Marshal added, ‘we must borrow or pawn or sell.’ Oxenstierna concluded saying that ‘selling land is certainly a questionable procedure …; but there seems no other way out.’19 Baner’s army lived hand-tomouth, as did the country, as did all the protagonists.

Campaigns in Europe 1637

The year started off badly again for France but this time for different reasons. Yet another plot against Richelieu was foiled and the perpetrators, Gaston (again) and Soissons, only recently an army commander, fled into exile. France was beset by financial problems and internal unrest. The main effort of the campaigning year was thrown behind de La Valette who captured a number of irrelevant little towns including Mauberge and La Capelle, taken by the Spanish offensive of the previous year. The siege lasted till 23 September; then the season was over. Supply was once again the main problem of the campaign; the young officer Count de Bussy-Rabutin recorded in his memoires that when we were well advanced into enemy territory, it was difficult for supply convoys to reach us; this led to sickness and famine amongst the troops. In the corrupted air I became ill and fell into a severe fever … . I had to ask for leave and was taken back to Paris in an ambulance.20 As usual the army was drastically reduced by sickness and desertion. Once again it was a pathetic return for the cost and effort. In Franche-Comté, de Longueville, brother in law of Condé, commanded an army which attacked a number of small places ‘because his forces were not strong enough to attack Dôle, Grai, or Salin, the best places in Burgundy’, according to Henri de Campion, who returned once more to campaign in Spanish FrancheComté. De Longueville focused on the capture of smaller weaker châteaux so that he ‘could still claim to be the master of the campaign’. The little army captured the Châteaude Curlaon, then attacked an attractive little town called Lous-le-Saunier where a breach was established after only eight hours. The town was stormed and the soldiers set fire to it: ‘The soldiers behaved as badly as can be imagined,’ remembered Campion, ‘on all side there were scenes of licentiousness. Most of the women were raped violently and belongings thrown

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Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse   229 into the flames, or pillaged. All this filled me with a pity that I am not able to express but it was impossible to prevent.’21 The same horrors were meted out to the small town of Orgolet. ‘I have never seen such terrible things as were suffered by their [Franche-Comté] poor country which was entirely ruined.’22 But divine vengeance was on hand. The campaign ground to a halt under the impact of plague which killed half the soldiers and many officers. Meanwhile Saxe-Weimar, with French troops attached, took Rheinau in Alsace and defeated an Imperial army under Werth at Kentzingen, before recrossing the Rhine to invade the Saône valley in Franche-Comté where he defeated Charles of Lorraine near Ray-sur-Saône. The war now began in earnest in the south of France, where Schomberg raised a militia army in the Languedoc, crushing a Spanish invasion at Leucate, while on the opposite, Atlantic, coast the duc d’Epernon, and his son the duc de La Valette, sought to drive the Spanish out of St Jean de Luz. This campaign came to nought because of Croquant peasant uprisings inland, which demanded the attention of the French army. Overall, the war was in paralysis because it was producing so few decisive actions; it was difficult to envisage a time when any final result might be achieved. Once again, the French direction of the war and strategy was topsy-turvy, with failure being reinforced and success being starved, resources poured into unimportant strategic objectives and denied to important ones. Absent the previous year, the Dutch negotiated a new Treaty with France on 10 June 1637 that yielded 1.2 million guilders in subsidy. The amount could provide for about 8,000 troops. The plan was for Frederick Henry to capture Antwerp while the French attacked Landrecies in Artois. A regular pattern now emerged: the French succeeded with their target in July, while the Dutch failed. Nonetheless the Stadtholder enterprisingly switched his focus to Breda, which was retaken quickly in a surprise attack with minimal cost. The Dutch concentrated their resources increasingly on an aggressive naval blockade of Spanish Flanders, with search and destroy missions against Dunkirker privateers. In 1635 alone the Dutch had lost 124 herring busses with 975 fishermen taken prisoner. As a result of Baner’s victory at Wittstock and the subsequent invasion of Silesia in 1637, the Imperialists in the north were entirely out of position to deal with the offensive launched by Saxe-Weimar in the south in 1638. No doubt Saxe-Weimar was completely appraised of Imperial troop dispositions, and the fact that the southern states of the Empire were now virtually defenceless because both Gallas and Götz were wintering in the north. Saxe-Weimar’s winter offensive, facilitated by Baner’s attacks in the north, would be a great surprise.

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Amelia of Hesse

Landgrave Wilhelm V of Hesse died in 1637 in his cold, windswept East Frisian eyrie on the North Sea where his army, court and many of the refugee population were huddled against the supportive Dutch border. Their lands were mainly occupied. Although a clutch of fortresses, including Kassel and Trendelburg, held out, Hesse was under great pressure, both internally and externally, to conform to the Peace of Prague, and there were many at court and in the Estates, who were only too willing to compromise and recover their lands. They just wanted to go home. Moreover Hesse, despite its Calvinism, had never been a naturally rebellious state. The Hessian commander-in-chief Melander was also sympathetic to the idea of peace; a prickly and arrogant man, this social arriviste was notoriously greedy for money and status. He shared the pro-thirdparty neutralist and anti-foreigner bias of many princes and their advisers. So, the Landgrave’s death at this juncture made Hesse seem particularly vulnerable to Imperial pressure of all sorts, particularly as his son was a minor and the state was left in the hands of his wife, Regent Landgravine Amelia. The international community expected her to fail, and enemies both internal and external descended like hyenas on a dying animal. Richelieu sent Tercy on a diplomatic mission to sound out the situation: he was extremely impressed by her and his opinion was that Hesse-Kassel had ‘very well maintained itself and powerfully re-established itself by the spirit and the admirable conduct of Madame the Landgrave’.23 Sweden could offer little help. Ferdinand appointed arch dynastic rival and Lutheran, George of Hesse-Darmstadt, as administrator of Hesse. The Hessian political establishment wavered; it seemed that the political situation was drifting away from her. However, she proved to be a master diplomat: crafty, cynical and stubborn, this exceptionally strong woman, steeped in Calvinism, feigned feminine weakness on occasions but at other times she was ruthless in supressing opposition. Despite her apparently weak position as head of state in exile, Amelia’s negotiating hand held some strong cards. The most important was her tight control of a significant and well-trained army of about 20,000 who were loyal to her alone, which was demonstrated when her commander Melander defected to the Imperialists empty-handed. She controlled parts of Cologne and Mainz territory, as well as seven fortresses within Hesse. In consequence, her ‘secret council’ in occupied Hesse and the estates had virtually no direct leverage on her. Most importantly Amelia exploited the will and last testament of her dead husband, as well as his actual body which remained unburied in a coffin at her residence. Guardianship of the corpse added lustre to her regency claims. She therefore held political legitimacy in the eyes of her subjects. In the end, it was just enough to keep the estates loyal to her. Only two places defected. She was also driven with confidence and self-belief imbued by Calvinist predestination; the sense of being ‘elect’. Typical of the strength that the faith

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Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse   231 gave her was the note she sent to her minister, scholarly lawyer Johannes Vultejus in 1639: ‘I expect that God will presently through his grace change things and bring us out of dishonour and I place my hope and confidence in this entirely.’24 However, unlike Frederick Palatine, she backed up her faith with hard work, and considerable astuteness, being particularly crafty in playing for time and maintaining the truce with the Imperialists pending negotiations on a settlement. Keeping her options open she was willing to consider the Peace of Prague terms with the Imperialists as long as the essentials of Hessian sovereignty, including religious parity, were not compromised but, like her husband, she had an implicit and visceral distrust of the Imperialists. Not the least of her problems was the appointment of George of Hesse-Darmstadt, the junior Hesse line, as mediator and negotiator on behalf of the Emperor. A crass mistake by the Emperor, George’s only interest was in reducing Hesse-Kassel to a puppet status, taking over their lands and installing himself as administrator. However, she was careful in her study of the fine print and despite the pressures, she would not risk an inadequate compromise; no deal was better than a bad one which compromised her sovereignty and reduced her to vassal status. Underlying her steely resolution was the determination of a mother and a dynast whose sense of pride and duty consisted in handing over an intact patrimony to her son and heir. ‘Her only plan and intention,’ reported the French ambassador, ‘is to conserve and advance her children. This is where all her cares and worries go.’25 It was not the only motivation; maintaining the Calvinist religion was just as important.

Landgravine Amelia of Hesse holds out, 1637–1639

Realising the dangers of continued holdout by disgruntled princes of the Empire, the Imperialists decided to try to detach Hesse-Kassel from the struggle through negotiations initiated by the Elector Archbishop of Mainz. This policy developed rapidly after the Imperial-Saxon defeat at Wittstock 1636 and the accession of Ferdinand III. Sweden’s victory saved the Hessians and gave them room to negotiate. Aware of increasing French mobilisation and intervention in Germany, Amelia continued to drag out the negotiations, even entering into a truce with the Emperor while she waited for the military balance to turn in her favour. Playing for time was her speciality. The Emperor was desperate to get his hands on the Hessian army of about 19,000 men, including 4,000 excellent cavalry. To add pressure to the negotiations Hanau was attacked and occupied. On a political level the Landgravine was blasted from all sides for her betrayal of Germany to the hated foreigner; this diatribe of John George of Saxony is typical of ‘German’ sentiment: Amelia was apparently ‘under the domination of foreigners and you want to rent asunder all the volumes of the holy Imperial constitution under the name of German freedom.’26

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232  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Von Trauttmansdorff led protracted negotiations from 1636 to 1638. It seemed that the talks were on the cusp of success. In a letter written on 20 November 1638, Amelia’s councillors had even unanimously advised her to accept the peace terms: ‘we see that the entire work rests solely and alone on the point of religion …  . We then … unanimously agreed that in case one could not gain more on account of religion.’ Amelia dug in her heels against pressure from her councillors. After all, capitulation on the Peace of Prague terms, even if Calvinism had been legalised as offered, would still have implied the loss of the claim on Marburg; Hersfeld would also be lost. The only chance of recovering the Marburg patrimony was alliance with France and Sweden leading to military victory. Undoubtedly Amelia’s ability to stand firm was enhanced by the radical change in military fortunes beginning with Baner’s victory in 1636 and SaxeWeimar’s triumphs in 1638. Her responses underline the fact that religion was not solely a prism through which political and constitutional battles were fought, but one of the primary elements of the war. In order to rein in her councillors’ negotiating power, Amelia, Letter to her Privy Council 26 Dec 1638 noted coolly ‘we have produced here various letters and blank forms and given them, along with a measured instruction’.27 She had a lawyer’s eye for detail and would not be trifled with. Imperial attempts at trickery were to no avail. The French, who had picked up rumours as to the imminence of a peace deal, now made strenuous efforts to keep Hesse-Cassel in the alliance for fear of losing their key ally and the use of her army. Large subsidies were promised. Writing on 7 January 1639, Amelia reported on the latest news from a meeting with the French ambassador: ‘He then disclosed to us one and another thing about the strong preparations for war that were newly in process of being realised, and he particularly strongly mentioned Duke Bernard of Saxe’s successful progress.’28 At last, events were moving in her favour. The Emperor Ferdinand III failed utterly to understand the importance of making concessions to neutralise Hesse and secure Westphalia and north-west Germany. It was a most consequential mistake of the kind that his father might have made. If Amelia left the alliance with France, the Guelphs in Brunswick would undoubtedly follow. Hesse’s military and political contribution to the Franco-German-Swedish alliance was crucial; it can be quantified. Chairman of the Emperor’s military council Schlick wrote a memorandum in 1637 on the military balance in Germany: the enemy are estimated at the most as 36,000 Swedes and 74,000 French. At least 18,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry must remain in Germany to fight the Swedes, excluding those who will be needed against Landgrave Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel to which end another 4,000 will probably need to join Georg and Geleen [about 6,000 troops] …  . The above

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Swedish Recovery and the Emergence of Hesse   233 calculation leaves 45,000 men with Piccolomini’s troops [12,000] and the aforementioned recruits against the French.29 Hesse made a 10,000 troop difference in field forces, numbers that would mean the Swedes being overmatched by 20 per cent if Hesse was neutralised, but in fact the swing if Hesse changed sides would be much greater at 20,000. This would lead to the Swedes being overmatched by 38 per cent. Given that Brunswick and their 5,000 troops would follow where Hesse led, the swing against the Swedes would be even larger, probably fatally so. Not surprisingly, Hesse came under intense pressure. Surprisingly, given the swing factor, the Emperor did not make even greater efforts to draw these recusants into the Peace of Prague. Distrust of Ferdinand was explicitly set out in the Hindelsheim Treaty of alliance between Amelia and Lutheran, George of Brunswick-Lunenburg; ‘the house of Austria fully intends to subjugate Germany completely and extirpate liberty and the Evangelical religion.’30 Ferdinand and his advisers overplayed their hand. Most important was the backing and respect of the army; a typical view of one of Amelia’s foreign officers was given by Scot James Turner who called her ‘the brave Princess Emelia Landgraves’ and lauded her for ‘these feates in opposition to the Emperor’.31

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Chapter XIV

Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’ Campaigns in Europe 1638

F

rench subsidies to the tune of 1.2 million guilders were to be provided to the Dutch who agreed to cover French attacks against Flanders with complementary attacks in the north on targets such as Antwerp, Dunkirk or Hulst. The French army’s main effort was attached once more to the King’s personal court. He chose to go to the Flanders front and this became the main military operation with a siege of the important fortress town of St Omer. The siege was a disaster. A surprise attack allowed the Spanish to reinforce and resupply the place with 1,500 men while the French strength drained away. So, the siege was raised. To save the King’s face, the French army moved on to a small and irrelevant target, which was taken by assault in early September. As Parrott writes, ‘The ministry and the bureau de finances had always accepted an effective hierarchy of campaign theatres; once the king travelled to be present with a particular army-corps, the order of priorities was immutable.’1 It was a pathetic result once again but, on the eastern front, France’s putative satrap SaxeWeimar was about to do extraordinary things that would change the course of the whole war. From small beginnings France’s road to victory was to emerge. In Franche-Comté Longville was ordered to maintain a passive stance, but to stand ready to reinforce Saxe-Weimar. He would go on to fight to a marginal victory at Poligny against Charles of Lorraine. There was an unexpected French success in 1636. A large French fleet of over thirty-three ships attacked the Spanish on their Atlantic border at Fuenterrabia in support of a French land force. It seemed that French maritime reforms instituted by Richelieu had been resoundingly vindicated when the French overwhelmed, then destroyed or captured eleven Spanish galleons at anchor off San Antonio at Guteria. In a bloody battle of several hours, skilfully deployed fire-ships eventually won a resounding French victory. It was a triumph that flattered to deceive. Shortage of funds and higher priority targets in the European land war prevented the French from following up this significant naval victory; having to fund two fleets, in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, hardly helped. French Atlantic coastal vessels would prove to be ineffective in cutting off Spanish troopships sailing to Flanders. Following the naval victory, a major effort was mounted against the fortress of Fuenterrabia on a strong isolated seaside promontory on the western end of

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6 Saxe-Weimar army on the left bank and baggage train retreat 1st-2nd March.

5 Saxe-Weimar retreats to Bad Sackingen; destroys enemy unit 2nd March.

4 Battle-armies revolve 180° and Saxe-Weimar cut-off from bridge 1st March.

3 Saxe-Weimar crosses the Rhine with half of his army 1st March.

2 Werth & Savelli relief army from Breisgau, just in time, 1st March.

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8 Saxe-Weimar advances to renew battle for Rheinfelden 3rd March.

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Siege and battle of Rheinfelden Feb-March 1628

1 Saxe-Weimar’ besieges Rheinfelden 4th Feb, mine sprung 29th Feb.

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236  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 the Pyrenees, the gateway to north-west Spain. Victory at Getaria gave the French at least temporary dominance of the Bay of Biscay, and it seemed that the capture of the fortress and invasion of Spanish Navarre would follow. Its capture would offer the French an ideal logistical base for launching raids on a vulnerable part of Spain and tying down valuable Spanish resources. Prince Condé (senior) was put in charge of the operations but the campaign was soured by vicious feuding between the various nobles under his command including the head of the French navy, Sourdis, one of Richelieu’s cronies, and another, Cardinal de La Valette. The Spanish were taken completely by surprise, so much so that there were only 1,300 defending troops. However, one reason for the surprise was that the capture of the place would offer neither great strategic advantage nor fruitful surrounding territory in contrast to the isolated Spanish province of Roussillon that lay north of the eastern end of the Pyrenees, centred on the city of Perpignan. French artillery pounded Fuenterrabia over several months with a deluge of 16,000 shot, reducing it to a smouldering ruin. Meanwhile the French fleet proved strong enough to prevent attempts at relief and reinforcement. The place seemed doomed. However, with 300 defenders, a scratch relieving force of 8,000 Spanish infantry and 500 cavalry attacked the French lines on 7 September. The French army was swept away and dissolved in bitter recrimination, focusing on de La Valette’s refusal to lead his men to attack the remnants of the garrison. French losses included 4,000 dead and 200 taken prisoner. Divided leadership was disastrous but de La Valette, being universally blamed, felt the need to escape into exile to avoid Richelieu’s wrath. The Spanish meanwhile hailed the miraculous rescue of the city, whose relief is celebrated to this day in an annual event on 8 September called ‘Alarde’. The town was honoured with a bombastic royal title, ‘Muy noble, muy leal, muy valerosa, y muy siempre fiel’. (Nowadays in the world of ‘woke’, the fighting there is about whether ‘girls’ should be allowed in the annual parade to celebrate the victory.) There would be no more grand actions on the Atlantic coast. In a return to strategic logic, France would concentrate on the Roussillon front at the other end of the Pyrenees

Dutch debacle at Kallo 22 June 1637

The problems in attacking Antwerp were daunting and the requirement for resources quite massive because an attacker would have to reckon on forty kilometres of lines of circumvallation. Would an army of 25,000 be large enough, especially given the expected rates of attrition? Moreover, there would have to be amphibious operations because Antwerp lay on a broad and mildly tidal stream which would require unconnected forces operating on separate sides of the water; this risked isolated divisions being separately defeated. That is exactly what happened when 5,700 Dutch troops, in a bold amphibious

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Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’   237 attack, were landed by barge on the opposite side of the stream. At first there was triumph with the capture of the outer forts of Kallo and Shans. However, the chances of capturing a fortress city, on whose formidable defences 400,000 ducats had been spent, were remote. The Spanish reacted vigorously, collecting veteran tercios to launch sustained counter-attacks. Fort Shans was retaken by the Spanish and, though repelled at Kallo, the offensive put Frederick under so much pressure that he decided to withdraw before he was overwhelmed. This would involve a tricky retreat from Kallo to the point where they could embark on barges. A very rare rearguard battle would have to be fought by the Dutch army in the open field, a turn of events that had been avoided since the battle of Nieuport in 1600. They retreated toward their transports, but were caught in the open; so, as night fell, they entrenched in the field. Unusually, but presciently, the Spanish decided on night attacks made ‘with great violence … and began that time and again anew up to three or four times’, reported the Dutch army’s commander, Willem van Nassau-Siegen.2 On the night of 1/2 June several assaults were repelled but the second major assault was too much for the Dutch. They fled in panic. ‘On the enemy side there were more who perished in the first night attack, so this flight was caused by the unassuageable terror among our soldiers that they would not have been able to withstand a second assault,’ according to an exculpatory report made by Utrecht’s field deputy, who acted as the political representative for that province.3 Only 1,500 Dutch troops escaped to the barges; 2,000 prisoners were taken together with hundreds of horses and fifteen cannon; additionally, the Spanish captured eighty barges and other vessels loaded with supplies. It was a signal and unprecedented Dutch defeat, the worst since the re-opening of hostilities in 1621, and presaged an important shift in Dutch strategy. In domestic politics Gomarist hardliners were already in retreat before the resurgent Arminian faction, so the political environment and mood for war was softening along with a renewed scepticism about the efficacy or even the point of expensive land-based attacks. As with the German, Flanders and Italian fronts the war seemed to be in stalemate.

Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar

Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar was the ninth and youngest son of a relatively small and impoverished Protestant Thuringian principality. They were typical of a principality on the margins of importance in Germany, those that Professor Wilson refers to as paladins. His father had been an early supporter of militant Protestant resistance to the Emperor. There was also a low-level family feud with John George of Saxony and bitter antipathy to the Emperor over a contested inheritance on which they had lost out in the Imperial court (Riechsofrat), so the family were predisposed to alliances against the Emperor. Bernhard had enlisted as a young man early in the war. He took part in almost all the major defeats and catastrophes in the early years, participating in the lost

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238  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 battles of Wimpfen, Stadtlohn, Lutter and Dessau Bridge. On the positive side, he volunteered himself for the Siege of Breda with Prince Maurice, where he probably learnt a few things about the discrete art of siege warfare. There were others in the Breda schoolroom of siege warfare: Turenne, Prince Rupert and many other future captains. By the time Gustavus landed in Germany, Saxe-Weimar was a young, belligerent and experienced soldier. His lust for battle action was insatiable. Incorrigibly pugnacious, he escaped prison after being captured at the battle of Stadtlohn. His first taste of victory occurred at Breitenfeld where he helped stabilise the line after the flight of the Saxons. Impulsive, brave and sensitive of his honour, he had badly overreached himself at Nordlingen where he suffered catastrophic defeat. His military reputation rested on his lion-hearted and bull-headed bravery in leading the renewed Swedish offensive at Lutzen after Gustavus’s death; more than anyone else, he secured that blood-soaked victory by his leadership, example and stubborn determination. Brutal in pursuit of military objectives, he drove his men hard. Driven by hunger, and lack of pay, his troops were notoriously brutal and undisciplined on the march. Villagers, townspeople and ecclesiastics fled before his advance ‘because of the daily and nightly attacks and persecutions of the Weimar riders and soldiers … . How often was I discouraged by the terror of the Swedes?’4 and ‘no one can see the daily and nightly long treks of refugees before the eyes without the deepest pity’. He was ordered by Oxenstierna at the start of the 1633 campaign season to attack and devastate Bavaria. The main initial targets were Regensburg and Straubing, and other, smaller, places including Eichstatt. A ruthless soldier, he was nonetheless still genuinely upset by the rapine and violence of war. As a person he is something of an enigma, but we do know that he was extraordinarily prickly as to his honour and social status, even by the standards of a typical princely paladin, whose position in German political society was increasingly under threat. Extreme pride soured his relations with Oxenstierna, Horn and others. But they were difficult characters themselves. He was correspondingly ambitious in a personal and dynastic sense, like many of the Paladins and military men who emerged during the period. Exhibiting all the insecurity and edginess of a noble family in decline, he sought some permanent and long-lasting additions to the family estate. His personal life seems to be unblemished and religiously devout, something noticed by sister Maria anna Junius: ‘the prince sat on the pew before the crucifix and spoke quite friendly with the sisters’ and ate a lemon tart which they proffered. He posted guards and made sure they were safe.5 There was chivalry in his behaviour towards women. He lived the life of the camp, knowing no other over a period of twenty years of continuous campaigning, but there is no record of carousing or licentiousness. Perhaps somewhat colourless, he was charismatic as a soldier, inspiring enormous loyalty from his men.

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Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’   239

Battle of Rheinfelden, February 1638

After several years consolidating the Alsace/Rhineland-Swiss and Franche Comté area, it was time for a major offensive. Saxe-Weimar had already taken over the key riverine towns of Sackingen, Laufenburg and Waldshut. Hohentwiel, an impregnable fortress in the area, was secured by political subterfuge when the Protestant commander refused to surrender it as part of the Duke of Württemberg’s rapprochement with the Emperor. From his base in Basel, Saxe-Weimar started his winter invasion with an assault on the key strategic Rhine crossing and walled city of Rheinfelden, already the scene of bloody sieges and a slaughtered garrison when the Spaniards under the Duke of Feria had last taken the place in 1633. Weimar was joined by out-of-favour de Rohan. A victim of Richelieu’s vindictiveness and paranoia, Grotius, Sweden’s ambassador in Paris, informed Oxenstierna what was obvious to everyone, that ‘The duke [Rohan] does not come to his place at court even though he was ordered there. He thinks himself attacked by false accusations. This is usual with those who govern here.’6 The duc de Rohan, French Protestant leader and military theoretician, offered his services to Saxe-Weimar as an ordinary trooper. Against French objections, Saxe-Weimar offered political asylum to Rohan, declaring pugnaciously ‘that he would prefer to break with the king than tolerate that he might do something bad to his friend’.7 A Calvinist stalwart, de Rohan was attracted to Saxe-Weimar by the fact that the army was overtly Protestant, marched into battle with the call sign of Gott mit Uns and was led by a radical Lutheran. For de Rohan as military thinker and soldier the principles of tactical command were simple. ‘Never be forced into battle against your will’ and ‘Forbid pursuit and pillage before the enemy is fully defeated.’8 Saxe-Weimar may well have benefited from this wisdom because his performance as a general improved remarkably from this time. However, at Rheinfelden, Bernard would fall down on the first of the military mantras. Saxe-Weimar opened the siege at Rheinfelden on 4 February 1638. It was an early start to the campaign season, and his attack was intended to catch the Imperialists unprepared. Perhaps he wanted to steal a march on his enemy who must rouse themselves from winter slumber. The nearest substantial force under Götz was 400 kilometres away in Westphalia. Relief would take time. Bernard’s force, consisting of only 2,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry, was not an ideal size or composition of force for a siege. He was also short of artillery, having just fourteen cannon, only three of which were siege guns (24-pounders or heavier). Not surprisingly, he had an alternative method in mind for the attack on the town whose defences consisted of old-fashioned medieval curtain walls. Following Feria’s example, mines dug underneath the fortifications were successively sprung on 15, 16 and 23 February. Another was sprung on 29 February. Well-established in customary rules of war, breaches in the defences meant a formal call for surrender, followed by a storm if unanswered. No

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The Battle of Poligny 18 June 1638 Fight for Franche-Comte and the Jura. N

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De Campion's Normandie regiment successful attack. Duc Enghien's (the Great Conde) cavalry victory. De Longueville attacks rebuffed with heavy casualties. Imperialist counter-attack. Limestone cliffs-escarpment.

French army penetrates forest.

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Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’   241 affirmative answer having been received, the assault was set for the following day, 1 March. The Imperial commander was probably aware that relief was on the way, otherwise he would likely have surrendered rather than face a storm, a sack, and a massacre of the garrison. He judged the matter finely because a hastily assembled Imperial relief column of 7,410 men, under the command of Werth and Savelli, hove into sight on 1 March after a dash across the Black Forest from the Breisgau. Saxe-Weimar, who was taken by surprise by the relief army’s sudden appearance, faced defeat because his inferior forces were divided by the Rhine and linked only by a narrow bridge. He could have retreated from the right bank of the river but that would have meant abandoning the siege and ruining the campaign. In true Bernard style, he took the most aggressive and risky option. Having time only to transfer 600 musketeers across to the north bank, SaxeWeimar was to face the enemy at a 2:1 disadvantage. What happened next was unexpected and one of the important inflection points of the war. Having been beaten with the tragic loss of de Rohan, SaxeWeimar, who was ousted from his hold on the bridge, retreated eastwards down the right bank of Rhine; his army on the left bank did likewise. Prior to the siege Saxe-Weimar had taken the sensible precaution of securing the next bridge up the Rhine at Lauenburg some fifteen kilometres distant to the east. Weimar’s forces made a junction there and wiped out a 300-man Imperial outpost on the way at Bad Sackingen. Still outnumbered, he was clearly undaunted; having great faith in his soldiers he returned to the attack. When the Weimarian horde suddenly re-appeared on 3 March, the Imperialists were both utterly shocked and totally unprepared. Werth hurriedly set up a battle line. In classic Wallenstein fashion they lined up behind a drainage ditch full of musketeers, but the veteran Weimarian army attacked across the whole front supported by eleven cannon. Our itinerant mercenary, the irrepressible Hagendorf, had a knack for being in the crucible of history, often on the losing side; even in victory he was badly wounded at Magdeburg. He takes up the story from the Imperial ranks: Duke Bernhard assembled his army once again, for he had reconnaissance about us, that we had installed ourselves in villages [near Rheinfelden]. He came in full array early in the morning to the battlefield where we fought before, and we knew nothing; before we could bring out troops together, the first were already shot dead. Thus, on this day he once again beat us, captured Johann de Werth, and captured all the troops – those that were not killed.9 The disordered Imperial infantry had managed one salvo but were then overrun by Saxe-Weimar’s cavalry rushing in from the flanks. The bulk of the Imperial army was trapped against the river and surrendered: 500 of the enemy were killed and 3,000 of the prisoners opted to join the Weimarian army which now

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242  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 numbered 12,000. The elated Saxe-Weimar celebrated his unlikely triumph: ‘He enjoyed himself immensely watching Werth and Savelli blame each other for the defeat at a banquet he gave the captured officers to celebrate his victory.’10 Slick Savelli would escape imprisonment with the help of a serving girl whom he charmed; Weimar had her executed. Savelli’s habit of running away from battles eventually led to his promotion to the more appropriate diplomatic service. Rheinfeld, now bereft of hope for relief, surrendered on 22 March. Marching out with full honours, the garrison proceeded to Breisach fortress on the Rhine.

Consequences of Rheinfelden and the serendipity of war, March 1638–April 1638

Political consequences that followed on from this victory were immense. Götz’s army would necessarily be drawn south: his grip on Hesse’s throat would be removed. Harried politically by the Emperor George of Hesse-Darmstadt and her own Estates, pressure on Amelia to join the Peace of Prague was suddenly reduced. Moreover, there was a greater incentive now to join the Franco-Swedish alliance with reasonable prospects of victory. French diplomat d’Avraux realised the significance of Saxe-Weimar’s victory: ‘I have done everything possible toward Madame Landgrave,’ he reported to Richelieu, ‘in order to prevent her from making a mistake [i.e. joining the emperor]. I hope this new Treaty [with Sweden] will assure it, but everything depends, my Lord, on that which has been done by the duke Bernhard.’11 Saxe-Weimar’s victory was enough for Amelia to hold off from defecting. With his army reinforced to full strength, Saxe-Weimar had the option of moving into the rich Breisgau region of the upper Rhine valley to use it as a supply base for his attack on Briesach, in addition to his base in Alsace. The Imperial field army having been destroyed, it would take precious time to raise another. If SaxeWeimar moved quickly he could be in place at Breisach before the enemy reacted. If he immediately invested Briesach, Götz, marching from the far north-west might not be in time to stop him. Additionally, the victory at Rheinfelden took place unusually early in the campaigning season, so it gave him a full campaigning season to do his worst to the enemy and exploit fully his victory. Richelieu immediately realised the potential importance of Saxe-Weimar’s victory. On this occasion, in contrast to his fumbled handling of de Rohan’s Valtellina campaign, he quickly reinforced success by sending Saxe-Weimar 4,500 French infantry under General de Guébriant. Though reduced by 2,000 from desertion inside one month, Richelieu would continue to send troops. The Spanish Road would be even more firmly shut, and any Imperial attempt to recover Alsace would be all but impossible. If captured, Breisach would operate as a forward logistics base for the invasion of Bavaria and the Empire by French and French-backed forces Besiegers would be vulnerable because of the need to secure the siege from both riverbanks: forces on each side of the river would be unable to provide

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Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’   243 mutual support and could be picked off individually before help arrived. To counter these threats, and to keep his army from festering in unhealthy encampments, Saxe-Weimar decided to operate an active defence to ward off attacks before they threatened his siege lines. The Imperialists had given Breisach a garrison of 3,000 under Colonel Reinach, a tough professional soldier. Besides that, the idea of attacking the fortress was a daunting prospect, as anyone visiting Breisach today may easily imagine. The inner town and fortress sit atop a great escarpment of rock that rears up alongside the Rhine on the flat plain of the Breisgau, an exceptional geographical phenomenon – a veritable ‘Gibraltar’. Towering precipitately above the broad stream of the Rhine, its garrison had an unfettered view for many miles around; nothing could be hidden from the Imperial commander. Every trench, traverse and battery or daylight patrol would be visible. Only a long siege aimed at starving the garrison offered any prospect of success; however, a protracted siege would give the Imperialists plenty of opportunity to relieve the place. The stronghold also had defence in depth because the central fortress covered a great network of outlying defences both on the left and the right bank. Bristling with guns, from bastions and ravelins, there were 302 cannon in the place, 135 being large-calibre field guns, 150 fortress wall-mounted swivel guns, and seventeen small regimental pieces. The fortress was provided with plentiful stores of shot and powder.12

The Breisach campaign and siege, April–December 1638

While Bernard finished off the siege of Rheinfelden he sent his lieutenants Taupendel and Rosen on an extensive cavalry raid into the Black Forest as far as Stuttgart. Saxe-Weimar soon followed through the Breisgau, capturing small towns as he went, before besieging the key Black Forest city of Freiburg with its garrison of just 200 men. With no hope of relief, they surrendered on honourable terms on 11 April after a ten-day siege. Capturing Freiburg was a vital precursor to attacking Breisach because it would block the relief forces, reinforcement and supplies from any Bavarian or Imperial army operating in the Rhine valley. Supply or reinforcement would have to make a circuitous and long journey far to the north via the river Neckar and Heidelberg. The proximity of his Alsace and Breisgau bases areas was very helpful to Weimar’s army but, more importantly, he had control of the river. Throughout the siege, Saxe-Weimar’s banker and main supply contractor, Marx Conrad Rehlinger, of the Augsburg banking family, was based in Basle from where he sent supplies downriver directly to the Protestant encampment. Facing the Hessians, Field Marshal Götz, who was wintering in Westphalia, was alerted to the problem in the south, but was unable to leave Dortmund until 21 March. Coming out of winter quarters he had only 9,000 troops on hand. He moved south, picking up reinforcements on the way from the garrisons in Bamberg, Frankfurt and Nassau. They arrived in dribs and drabs but by the

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244  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 end of May he had still only mustered 15,000. In Franche-Comté, meanwhile, just 150 kilometres away from Breisach, the irrepressible Imperial general, the Duke of Lorraine, was also raising troops and mustering. Breisach’s perimeter of the lines of circumvallation was about fifteen kilometres. To man the perimeter, it is doubtful if more than 5,000 were available; that would represent at least half of all the infantry, given that over a third of Saxe-Weimar’s troops were cavalry or dragoons. At best the number of soldiers per 1,000 metres would be 330. If the garrison of Breisach were included in the numbers, Saxe-Weimar’s field army was outnumbered overall, and this numerical balance excluded the troops that Charles of Lorraine might bring to the fray. Saxe-Weimar’s only real advantage was in holding the inside line behind good field fortifications, having invested Breisach on 15 June before Götz could come down to its relief. Overall, the odds on holding Breisach clearly favoured the Imperialists. The second reason for believing that Saxe-Weimar had little chance of success was the fact that his tally of cannon was utterly negligible, consisting of just twenty-three guns compared to the 302 guns in Breisach and the thirtytwo guns with the Imperial army. Of his twenty-three guns, only four were siege guns. Saxe Weimar added one important ingredient to the mix of options: his particular genius and character. He rightly understood the need for active defence against relieving armies, for always taking the strategic initiative even during a static siege. This was not just a trait of his character, but a lesson learnt from Gustavus Adolphus. If the Weimarian/French army had rested inactive and bored on its siege lines, in the squalor of camp, then the campaign must have failed. In taking the fight to the enemy, maintaining his army in the field while keeping just enough soldiers to seal the fortress, Saxe-Weimar could maintain the strategic initiative. By so doing he kept the Imperial armies at bay, using interior lines and defeating each attempted relief in turn.

The battle of Poligny 18 June 1638 and war in Franche-Comté

Cycles of war, plague and famine were particularly horrible in Franche-Comté following the unsuccessful siege of Dôle in 1636; the small province was crisscrossed by multiple armies of French, Spanish, and Lohringians. Charles of Lorraine often campaigned there, as did Saxe-Weimar’s Germans in two campaigns from 1636 to 1639. The horrors are recounted by contemporary Giradot de Nozeroy’s eleven-volume history of the war in Franche-Comté: ‘In this year of 1638, famine in Burgundy is beyond precedent and comparison … . With my own eyes I saw well-off people picking up rats, … And lastly, human flesh. … human flesh was being consumed.’13 Another horrifying aspect of Franche-Comté life was the widespread persecution of ‘witchcraft’; incidents increased over the period. The Duke of Lorraine had been engaged by Spain to bring his army to the defence of the Spanish territory which was threatened by the French. It was

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Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’   245 a polyglot force of 10,000, half infantry and half cavalry. Longuevilles also had about 10,000 men, with just 3,000 cavalry. In a topsy-turvy battle fought through and around an intervening forest, the very young hero Condé, known as d’Enghien, third in line to the throne, made a dramatic cavalry attack to throw back the enemy, while on the other wing the duc de Longeuville was nearly overrun in a fierce attack where both sides were fought to a standstill before retiring to their original positions. ‘Both armies believed they come off worst,’ was de Campion’s sardonic note. In consequence both sides decided to retreat, quitting the field accordingly before discovering the other’s intention. However, the French had the benefit of receiving reinforcements the following day, which emboldened them enough to re-occupy the battlefield, recover their 600 dead, find 1,000 bodies of the enemy and claim victory. As a battle in the fight for Franche-Comté the affair was of little significance, but Longuevilles’s Pyrrhic victory meant that Charles of Lorraine was in no position to go immediately to the relief of Breisach. After the battle, the Normandie Regiment was sent back to Saône in Burgundy for a rest; the army need to re-supply also. Henri de Campion took the time to revive his book club with three fellow officers who were both ‘spiritual and well educated’. Books formed a major part of his wagon allocation. He recounts how ‘one of us would read passages from several good books, which we would then discuss and examine, with the object to understand how to live and die well with moral purpose’. Campion’s regiment was posted back to Moulin; de Campion spent six weeks in St Germain where he caught the eye of the king who ‘gave me a manservant and promised me a company command when a vacancy fell due’.14 His courtship with Madame de la Fontaine continued such that his romantic campaign seemed on the point of success. Even his disapproving brother, who was a follower of the exiled Comte de Soissons, had come around to accepting her. At this point she fell seriously ill, and soon after de Campion was called away on campaign to the Spanish front at Roussillon; his commander was Henri de Bourbon, Prince Condé. Madame de la Fontaine made a miraculous recovery and was soon sending him passionate letters.

The battle of Wittenwier, 9 August 1638

Götz, who had started to mobilise at the end of March, arrived in the area to the north of Breisach only on 26 June; he sought to disrupt the besiegers and re-supply the garrison from his base at Kenzingen about seventeen kilometres north of Breisach. Failing to dislodge the enemy, he moved his army to the left bank of the Rhine, hoping to foil the siege by threatening Saxe-Weimar’s base in Alsace and the fortress of Benfeld in particular. With a detached cavalry command, the enterprising Weimarian Colonel Taupadel, no doubt using superior local knowledge, beat up Götz’s cavalry in two separate ambushes in mid-July; one Croat regiment was destroyed and its colonel taken, while another regular Imperial cavalry unit was all but wiped out at Ottenheim.

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246  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Saxe-Weimar came up from the south leading an army of some 6,860 cavalry and 12,000 infantry with thirty-two guns.15 At stake was Breisach, the control of the upper Rhine Valley, control of Alsace, control of the Spanish Road, and the future development of the war in the south-west of the Empire. Anticipating the enemy’s line of advance, the Weimarian army was hidden in the forests alongside the road on which Gotz’s army was pursuing them. The Imperial army was ambushed to perfection. The Imperialists lost 2,000 dead, 1,700 captured, thirteen guns, and, most importantly, the entire baggage train of 3,000 wagons loaded with food supplies, including 5,000 sacks of wheat, and ammunition that was intended for the beleaguered Breisach garrison.16 In retreat to Offenburg, bereft of food, they fell apart, to the extent that only 3,000 could be mustered. A rare army level ambuscade, the sort that Hannibal had pulled off with regularity at Lake Trasimene, Trebia and elsewhere, it was a victory that decisively swung the odds against the garrison holding out in Breisach.

Battles for the siegeworks October 1638

Götz’s next plan was for a co-ordinated pincer attack with Charles of Lorraine, which would prevent Saxe-Weimar from concentrating his forces and allow the Imperialists to burst through to relieve the garrison. Given that Saxe-Weimar’s besieging force was down to 9,000, the moment was opportune. However, the attack of Charles of Lorraine with 4,000 troops was not properly co-ordinated: Saxe-Weimar ambushed him and dispersed his little army taking 600 prisoners on 13 October. In a desperate last throw Götz made attacks on Saxe-Weimar’s southern lines of circumvallation on the right bank with 14,000 troops, but failed to make a decisive inroad, eventually being repelled with 2,000 dead, wounded and captured. Breisach’s garrison was incapable of a co-ordinated sally because they were now much reduced and enfeebled by starvation. Götz was duly court martialled; found innocent he would nevertheless be relegated to command the forgotten and remote HungarianCroatian frontier. The siegeworks were drawn tighter round the fortress and the outlying defensive redoubts were picked off one by one. Towards the end of the siege of Breisach, Turenne was ordered to take one remaining sconce/redoubt in the outer defences on the Rhine. ‘Turenne advanced to it at the head of 400 men, who cut down the palisades with hatchets, entered it in three places at once, and put all who defended it to the sword.’17

The surrender of Breisach, 17 December 1638

With no possibility of sufficient food supply, the garrison faced starvation; the fall of key defensive redoubts meant that the integrity of the defence system became fatally compromised. Colonel Reinach had little alternative but to surrender on terms. On 17 December Breisach surrendered, and the garrison marched out with full honours of war. There were 450 survivors out of 3,000;

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Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’   247 as per custom, they were permitted to take their side-arms and two guns with them. When Saxe-Weimar discovered the conditions under which Protestant prisoners had been kept he had to be restrained from chasing after and slaughtering the retreating Imperial garrison. A total of 20,000 men had died in the course of the siege. For the Protestant prisoners held in Breisach, an official report described how ‘A soldier died in prison on the 12th December. When the provost wanted to have him buried, the other prisoners fell violently on the corpse and ripped it apart with their teeth and ate it raw.’ In Paris Richelieu was on tenterhooks; Breisach’s fall would be a major victory. Fearing that the news would arrive too late, on 15 December, two days before the confirmation of success, Richelieu whispered in the ear of his only friend, the dying Father Joseph, ‘courage, courage, Breisach has fallen!’18 It was a lie because the news, even though imminent, had not yet arrived.

Cutting the Spanish Road: Consequences

Breisach’s fall was a disaster for the Imperial-Bavarian alliance and the Habsburgs. Operating with limited resources Saxe-Weimar had pulled off, against the odds, one of the most successful campaigns of the war; using interior lines, he had picked off each Imperial force separately. Barring another miracle victory or major mistake by the Franco-Swedish alliance, any hope of the Habsburgs recovering Alsace and Franche-Comté was gone, and with it the Spanish Road. The capture of Breisach and the interdiction of the Road made certain that the Dutch and French would eventually triumph in their war in Flanders. Another point of significance in this epic battle was the absence of Spanish involvement to save the strategic fortress that bestrode the Road; bereft of resources no Spanish armies came to the rescue as they had in 1633–1634. The Imperialists and Bavarians had had to fight alone. Despite the strengthening of Dutch naval activity in the channel, the Spanish had been forced to make increasing use of the sea route to send reinforcements to the Flanders front, as the disruption and stranglehold on the Spanish Road began to bite from 1635 onwards. The Road was firmly closed following SaxeWeimar’s Rheinfelden/Breisach offensive in 1638. Spanish reinforcement for Flanders Period

1567–1609

By land

114,420

By sea

13,120

1610–1620

  8,600

 4,504

1631–1640

 22,892

28,436

1621–1630

Total 1567–1640

  7,251

153,163

 1,500 47,560

Total

% by sea

 13,104

34.4

 51,328

55.4

127,540   8,751

200,723

10.3 17.1

23.7

Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, Cambridge 2004, 2nd edtn

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248  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Meanwhile, Olivares tried to approach Saxe-Weimar with the offer of a deal over Breisach and his army, but he had misjudged the man. He was no mercenary and the offer of a meeting with Olivares’s agent was dismissed out of hand.19 Olivares was not alone in his misjudgement. Saxe-Weimar refused to hand over the fortress of Breisach to the French, contrary to Richelieu’s understanding of the agreement between them. Proud as ever, Bernard exclaimed, ‘Am I to be made a slave, I who am fighting for freedom? And now you are trying to take away from me what I have won by force of arms.’20 The French argued bitterly that they had paid for the campaign, and provided troops. Despite the snub over control of the fortress town, the French nonetheless celebrated Breisach, the ‘Gateway to Germany’, as their great victory and pamphlets were issued to laud the event. Weimar’s victory at Breisach led directly to Olivares’s bold and desperate decision to challenge the Dutch for strategic supremacy in the English Channel in 1639. Amongst other factors, it also led to Hesse’s decision to throw in their lot with France and Sweden rather than the Peace of Prague alliance. Duke Charles approached Richelieu for a peace deal. Writing from Briare to his plenipotentiary, the duc de Hallier, in 1639, Richelieu commenced his instruction letter by saying ‘There is little trust that can be assumed of duke Charles, and there is the danger that he is trying to deceive us.’ There was much discussion in the negotiations about sovereignty and the garrisons that Charles was due to hold along with the vexed issue as to whether he could pay for his garrisons from local revenues. Richelieu was not willing to give him the means to ally with the Spanish again. In April 1641, after tortuous negotiations, an agreement was patched up but it only lasted a matter of months as Charles, once more in cahoots with Chevreuse and Olivares, was implicated in the de Soissons rebellion.

Death of Saxe-Weimar, 1638–1639

In his subsequent campaign Saxe-Weimar failed to keep a strong hand on his troops who ran amok, sacking and burning Pontarlier. He watched with bitter chagrin: ‘I can no longer abide such Godlessness with a clear conscience.’21 He had seen it before at Landsberg and elsewhere; perhaps he was becoming weary of war. Then he fell ill. A stubborn fighter to the end, unwilling to die, he complained to his pastor, ‘I am surprised that my heart is so fresh and will not resign myself to death.’22 He died on 8 July 1639 at 7.00 a.m., possibly from the plague or from a stomach complaint, which had intermittently affected him over the previous year: perhaps it was peritonitis or cancer.

England’s last eccentric intervention February 1637–October 1638

Charles I swung back eventually to James I’s pro-Spanish foreign policy, even indulging in an informal alliance in 1634. At the same time government

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Saxe-Weimar Breaks Out and the Battle for the ‘Spanish Road’   249 propaganda was lauding the benefits of neutrality; a government approved publication, published by George Welkherlin, gloated with schadenfreude that England enjoyed ‘the blessed fruits of peace … we reap the harvest, which other realms would faine to see’.23 Press coverage of the war emphasised ‘ware, famine and the plague’ across Europe. Policy then changed tepidly in 1637; Swedish success in stabilising the Protestant position in Germany after the battle of Wittstock 1636 and the defeat of Gallas’s Austro-Spanish invasion of France had no doubt emboldened him. A treaty with France was signed in February 1637, providing thirty ships in support of the French as well as allowing 6,000 troops to be raised in Britain. Accompanying this diplomatic about-face, the English press was allowed for the first time in five years to cover the news of the war in Germany, but censorship became even tighter following a Star Chamber decree in 1637.24 A feeble English force to restore the Palatine was overrun by Count Hatzfeldt’s superior forces at Vlotho on 17 October 1638; dashing young Prince Rupert of the Rhine was captured, only to be released on parole against future participation in the war. He would cut a dash in the English civil war instead.

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Chapter XV

Global War Dutch and English attacks on Spain’s Empire

W

ar followed the globalisation of world trade which was the consequence of Portuguese and Spanish discovery and conquest from the early 16th century. In the raw Darwinistic world of the 16th/17th century, trade meant wealth and wealth drew the jealous attention of rival powers and their merchants. Not just mere Caribbean raiding by licenced privateers such as Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh, Dutch and English merchants’ hunger for trade with fat profit margins led them to ventures in every corner of the world including the lucrative commercial thoroughfares discovered and tapped into by the Portuguese in Africa and Asia. Given the world legal structure as sanctioned by the Papacy in consultation with the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, global trade would mean global war which merged seamlessly into a Protestant grand strategy for defeating Habsburg supremacy in a maritime arena. Protestant navies excelled in contrast to the military superiority of the Spanish tercio on land. Global war with the Habsburgs predated the 1618 Defenestration of Prague by nearly twenty years and was one of the prime factors in causing the Thirty Years War because militarised trading conflict in Asia was a non-negotiable block to any initiatives to turn the twelve-year truce between the Dutch Republic and Spain into a permanent peace. The initial draw for the trading nations to attack Habsburg trade was the Asian spice trade, to seek a direct route to source these immensely popular and expensive products so cutting out the Venetian middle man. A trade hailed in legend by Tiberius, Pliny the younger and Marco Polo, would make a late 16th or early 17th century merchant immensely rich, the equivalent of a multimillionaire today, with just one spice laden ship on the key at Amsterdam. Luis Vaz de Camoes Portugal’s national poet and 16th century Asian adventurer writing his epic poem Os Luciades of the romantic, exotic and dreamily picturesque Indian ocean and Moluccan island chain noted ‘the search for burning pepper, or in contrast the dry nut of Banda (nutmeg), and the black clove of the Maluco Islands, of the cinnamon (trees) with which Ceilao (Ceylon) is rich, illustrious and  beautiful’. Luis Vaz de Camoes (1524-1580’ ‘Os Luciadas’.10th Canto Article 14.

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Global War  251

‘Look out across the seas of the East The endless islands scattered: you will see Tidore and Ternate, …With Portuguese blood still bought;’ Camoes, ‘Os Luciades’, 10th Canto Article 132

Sir Francis Drake would call at Ternate with the Golden Hind to load cloves on his epic circumnavigation of the globe in 1579. News of such riches on these remote islands-still very remote today-filtered out across Europe. Increasingly cash rich from their Baltic trade, Dutch merchants were looking for new markets and opportunities and could afford to diversify their risk. Information about the geography and mapping of the region leaked out despite Portuguese efforts to keep their maps secret. Dutch attacks on the Habsburg global imperium were focused on the Spanish Empire and the Spanish king’s Portuguese Empire. The Spanish realised early on that their global imperium was under threat from Dutch trading incursions. In a letter dated 2 March 1605, Philip III confirmed the status of Syriam (Burma) and instructed the Viceroy to safely keep and defend in my name and keep in obedience and subject the neighbouring ports and establish a customs house of which the expected great profit would give to my treasure, as well as preventing … the Dutch from seizing the fortress which would be very convenient for them to cause damage to the southern navigation (from the Bay of Bengal) of my armadas and vessels.1 (Emphasis added) Portugal would lose control of Burma and the Bay of Bengal when their new colony was destroyed by the King of Ava and then a Dutch naval flotilla defeated a Portuguese fleet outside Mrauk-U in the Arakan Kingdom 1615. It should be noted that the Portuguese and then the Dutch presence in Asia also rested on the acquiescence of local powers. Alliances could be made with Portugal’s regional enemies such as The sultan of Johor, the King of the Arakanese, the King of the Kongo, Queen Nzinga of the Mtamaba, the King of Candy and the Emperor of Japan. Dutch diplomacy with Portugal’s enemies would be one of the main strategies in the Dutch quest for dominance. The Thirty Years War in Europe joined in with an existing global conflict against Habsburg interests. Global issues would have a profound affect iterative on issues of war and peace in Europe and globally right up to the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. But the global war would sometimes run its own course because commanders often took scant notice of orders that took many months or even a year to arrive. The two Iberian Empires were under one king but operationally separate, a fault line in the defensive system which was never completely reconciled, especially in Asia. As we have noted in the introduction to the book, the first

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252  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 challenge to the Imperium arose out of the quest for commerce and the desire to reap the enormous profits in Asian trade. Oldenbarnevelt, the Grand Pensioner of Holland, then seized on the idea of a symbiotic trade-and-war strategy to attack the Imperium in Asia. The English, who had been at this strategy since early Elizabethan times, had already set up the East India Company in 1600. In the early years of their cold and hot war with Spain from 1560 to 1594, English efforts had focused on Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, for the purposes of trade, looting from Spanish colonial cities and plundering Spanish treasure ships or convoys. Drake, in the course of his circumnavigation to the Spanish Pacific, had carried the conflict into Asia. Portugal and Spain after mediation by the Papacy and evidence given by mapping experts signed the Treaty of Tordesillas 1494 which dealt with the western hemisphere drawing a meridian line 2,193 klm west of Cape Verde so giving Africa to Portugal and south America to Spain excluding Brazil. The Eastern hemisphere was negotiated by the Treaty of Zaragoza in 1529 where Spain’s hold on the Philippines was confirmed. De facto adjustments would be made as new geographic information invalidated some of the assumptions made in the treaties. For example, on discovering a geographic discrepancy, Portugal negotiated the right to the Moluccas for a mere 350,000 ducats, which was a bargain at the price, being hardly more than a few shiploads of spices. By the treaties the Papacy had divided up possession of the world and given legal force to the international law on ‘discovery’ which is relevant in international law. However, in the 16th century the effect was to depict the entry of Dutch, English and Danish vessels into these regions as infringement of sovereignty. ‘Illegal’ incursions were subject to extreme sanctions in the law as interpreted by the two Iberian monarchies. Profit and monopolies attract predators and hand copied maps on parchment were bought secretly and smuggled. The buyers were the Venetians and later the Dutch, who in the course of the late 16th and early 16th Centuries turned cartography into an extensive Amsterdam based publishing and consultancy business to feed growing curiosity and commercial interest. The Portuguese not only kept their maps secret, they even put out disinformation as to the southern latitude of the Spice islands. Maps showing the location of the islands were a state secret; moreover, warned the Venetian ambassador to Castile in 1501, “It is impossible to procure the map of a certain voyage because the king has placed a death penalty on anyone who gives it out.”2 However, in the latter part of the 16th Dutch spies, leaning on knowledge gained from the English cartographers and acting on the possibilities for fabulous wealth which Sir Francis Drake had prized from the region on the return from his global circumnavigation in 1581, started to infiltrate the area. A Dutch ‘traveller’ actually a spy, merchant and travel writer, Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563 -1611) recorded information on trade flows in Asia. Reporting on Malacca in the late 1500s, he noted that it was a trading hub for all India, China, the

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Global War  253 Islands of Moluccas, Banda, and the Islands of Java, Sumatra, Siam, Pegu, Bengala, Choramdel, and the Indies, whereby a great number of ships...load and unload, sell, buy, and barter, and make a great traffic with Oriental countries.”3 As the Dutch grew into a wealthy world power, the need for English friendship lessened, although great efforts were made by the Dutch in conferences in 1613 and 1615 to secure a merger of the EIC and VOC; the reasons were matters of trade as Grotius points out in De Jure Praedae: ‘This union would impede the commerce of the Chinese, Malays, Javanese and others who trade in the Malukus.’ There was no merger, but an agreement of sorts was patched up: it never really worked and relations would be badly soured by the Amboyna massacre of English merchants in 1623. However, at the ending of the DutchSpanish truce in 1621, English arms were once again aligned with the Protestant cause in Europe, notably due to the overthrow of Frederick V Palatine, who was married to James I’s daughter. Law was used as a weapon by Dutch soldiers and officials; weak local powers were regularly gulled out of their rights by ‘Dutch’ interpretations of contract and the law. In reality, the only law was naval power. The Portuguese reacted with deft diplomacy to deflect the Dutch from Aceh but their enemy had better success with the sultanate of Johor, where Portuguese diplomatic missteps and disputes led to a tacit alliance between the Dutch and the Sultan; the results immediately led to the famous capture of the nau, Santa Catarina, brim-full of precious cargo in the Johor river in 1603, just to the east of Singapura island. The cargo of silks, porcelain, and precious woods would yield 3.5 million florins at auction in Amsterdam, giving a 50 per cent return on capital invested in a single voyage. The VOC would not lack for finance and investors. After the ruler of Johor tipped off the Dutch, the huge vessel of 1,500 tons dwt was surrounded and pummelled by two Dutch ships; as Admiral van Heemskerk recounted, ‘All day we pounded the second Macao Carrack with both our ships … we tried to aim for the main sails lest we destroy our booty by means of our broadsides’.4 Typically such nao were undergunned with six to ten heavy guns compared to twenty-five to forty on Dutch fluytsheppen.5 Galleons were also undergunned, but Olivares’s reform and new shipbuilding in the 1620s would begin to close the firepower gap. The Portuguese lost naval supremacy by 1610. By 1600 the attack on the global imperium would be made primarily by the Dutch with the English in a lesser role. It would be aimed at the Portuguese Asian empire where profits from spices offered an allure even greater than that of gold. Unlike the Spanish American empire, which was a huge land-based entity, the targets of attack in Asia were mostly vulnerable to Anglo-Dutch maritime power. The desire to attack the bullion trade for reasons of profit and war calculus continued, sometimes with spectacular results; the attacks focused on the Spanish Caribbean after the establishment of the Dutch West Indies Company

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254  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 in 1621. Over time, the fulcrum of the Atlantic war developed into a battle for colonies on which sugar could be grown, and the symbiotic trade in African slaves, rather than for bullion plunder. Demand for sugar was seeing explosive growth; by 1630 there were over twenty sugar refineries in Amsterdam. An economic battle as much as a military one, the long attrition in these wars favoured the expanding trading economies of the Dutch Republic and England; it imposed enormous defence costs on the Imperium, whose previous cash flow and profitability had barely been challenged before 1600. The global imperium controlled by Spain was confronted as never before; into the mix were thrown the native and regional powers of the world, whose friendship, alliances and military participation became crucial for both sides. The era of vicious and exploitative imperialism, especially in the Americas and, to some extent, Africa, where tribes also participated in the slave trade, had been established in the sixteenth century; but in Asia for the most part the Portuguese intruders operated on licence from local rulers, and, until the arrival of the Dutch, with the exception of their policy in the Moluccas and Bandas, trade was usually a matter of genuine free exchange; not yet the capitalist exploitation model that Marxists might like to project. Spain had already established the ultimate racist and exploitative model of empire in Mexico and South America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. C.R Boxer, the legendary historian of the Portuguese Empire, regarded the Thirty Years War as the ‘First World War’, writing that ‘this seventeenth century contest deserves to be called The First World War rather than the holocaust of 1914–18’, but the European struggle did not account for all the fighting in the East. During the Thirty Years War, both the Dutch and the Portuguese would have to fight off major assaults on their vital East Asian assets from powerful local sultanates. The ‘undeclared war’ for trade and global power had been going on for some while, with the Spanish-Portuguese empire under attack from the English in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and from the Dutch after the Revolt of the Netherlands. In chance meetings on Christmas Eve 2013 in the Portuguese seaboard forts of Gammalamma and Calamata on Ternate, the volcanic clove island in the Northern Moluccas, with Professor Ronald and Ursula Daus of the Freie University Berlin, the professor, an expert on the Portuguese Empire, expressed the view that there were two components to the colonial conflicts around the world; one was the continuing global trade war, of which the struggle for control of the clove trade from the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore was a part, and the second element of the global conflict was the power struggle in Europe. Strangely, historians of the Thirty Years War have lacked this holistic understanding, possibly because the long, complex, and wide European conflict

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Global War  255 is already hard enough to encompass with scholarship, let alone the global struggle. Once Spain had absorbed Portugal in 1580, the joint empire covered the globe, but this was not a unified Spanish imperium. The Spanish and Portuguese empires were separately controlled and administered. Although the Crown would correspond and direct its viceroy on certain policy decisions, the entire system was disjointed with several attempts to combine against the Dutch in the spice islands aborted, the last in 1617. It was a signal political and military fault line. The understanding of the relative duties was expressed by Spanish official Pedro Fernandez Navarete ‘that Portugal should pay for its own military defences and for the East Indies fleets, as it did before incorporation with Castile’.6 This was fine in theory but, from a political point of view, Portuguese loyalty could only be assured by Spanish attempts to help them defend their interests, by military means if diplomacy failed. As Dutch attacks increased so the bond between Spain and Portugal came under strain; but the stress came more in the Atlantic rather than Asia (though the indirect effects were significant through declining tax take and diversion of Lisbon’s finance to fund Spain’s budget deficit). A mature economic system, the Portuguese Estado in Asia was to some extent self contained. The political impossibility of allowing the Dutch to attack the Spanish-Portuguese assets with impunity meant that peace and truce talks broke down; resumption of the Spanish-Dutch war in 1621 was inevitable. From the Spanish perspective, the costs of supporting the Portuguese Atlantic empire against Dutch attack in Brasil were enormous; at the same time, copious sums were spent on Caribbean and South American defences, both on land and sea. It was a drain on resources for the war in Europe. The Habsburg imperium in Europe would be damaged in no small measure by the Dutch indirect strategy of attack in the Atlantic and Asia. Dutch expeditions to Asia late in the sixteenth century resulted in the sudden diversion of six out of twelve new galleons under construction by the Spanish at Bilbao in 1599 being diverted for use by the Portuguese Carriera.7 Following various Dutch incursions and outrages, including the capture and sale of the cargoes of the Santa Catarina, San Antonio and Sao Jorge in 1602 to 1605, Philip III proclaimed a new law informing his viceroy by a letter written on 28 November 1606: I am sending herewith a copy of a law that I ordered to be proclaimed, whereby … I forbid trade by foreigners resident in these lands of India … you will immediately publish it with a great deal of diligence in all the places and lands of that Estado and implement it …  . Now since I want this law applying to them to prevail rigorously, some inconveniences

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256  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 may subsequently arise. They could go the enemy moors, giving them information about my fortresses. Absurd though it may seem today, this was the outlook of the Habsburg monarchy as to its universal imperium on earth. Grotius, Oldenbarnevelt’s brilliant legal acolyte, was commisioned by the VOC directors to knock down these pretensions by penning a legal justification for war and trade against the Habsburg global empire. He also published De iure praedae (De Indis) in 1604, putting forward the argument on the basis of ancient authorities that there was a right to free trade and that trade deals with local powers such as Johor could contract partial sovereignty, which was then both irrevocable and enforceable by violence.8 Mare Liberum, published in 1609, reinforced the argument about ‘freedom of the seas’. Armed with quill and parchment, VOC merchants would repeatedly trick native powers into signing away their birthrights on pieces of paper whose significance they did not understand; for example, treaties signed in Banda, Johor and Ceylon. In any case, the Dutch would simply interpret any agreement as they chose, then enforce their interpretation with cannon. Ultimately, it was Swedsih bronze cannon mounted on Dutch warships which blew away Papal and Dutch notions of Universal Imperium, as envisaged in the Treaties of Tordesillas, 1493, and Zaragoza, 1529. Dutch war strategy against the Habsburgs was also a trade strategy. If Portuguese military power could be crushed then super profits from trade and monopoly would follow; war would become self funding and Habsburg military resources diverted. Admiral Matelieff at Ternate received changed orders for his voyage, on 7 December 1607, from the Gelderland ‘who left harbour [in the Republic] with eight ships in May 1606’. He comments on the new instructions received during the voyage, ‘The Gentlemen directors’ intention to postpone trade and prioritise war is very wise in my opinion.’9

The Portuguese Empire and trading riches

Many trading forts were built in Asia, and a majority of them still stand, with their little white guard cupolas on the battlements; a typical example is the whitewashed fort which mounts iron cannon at the still remote Sanana on Sulabes, amongst the Suva islands, some 400 kilometres south of Ternate. Still a two-jetty habour where lateen-rigged caravels load cargo, timeless, it is complete with its old ‘factory’ and it remains the hub for trade and administration as it did in Portuguese times, and then Dutch. This system depended upon a network of alliances with local powers, tribes, native states or sultanates, and diplomatic relations with some of the more advanced civilisations such as the Empires of China and Japan. By the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese had taken a 75 per cent market share of the trade to Europe, displacing somewhat the Venetian monopoly via

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Global War  257 the overland route through the Levant. Fabulous profits accumulated as exports of the extremely expensive fine spices, mace, nutmeg and cloves, expanded by 500 per cent from 1500 to 1620, with most growth coming in the later period. Quiroga de San Antonio noted the seventeen different nationalities who ‘come and pick up cloves on those islands’.10 Portuguese power was based on a chain of 53 artillery fortresses along the west coast of Africa and around the perimeter of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, extending down to the Banda, Flores and Suvu seas which protected trade and settlements from local land powers. A feature of coastal architecture to this day Portuguese 16th century builders increasing used the latest designs incorporating trace Italienne geometric designs into the white washed structures (about 34/53) which deployed three or four canon on each of 3–6 bastions. Almost always built directly on the coast, according to a survey and paintings of all Imperial forts commissioned by Philip II, such structures encompassed protected ‘factories’ and settlements, deterred envious local powers or rivals. Some of the most important bases (17/53) were located on islands or peninsulas such as Goa, Hormuz, Macau, Galle and Luanda and most forts were built with modern defences woven into existing forts and natural features. The fundamental basis of Portugal’s trading empire was sea power and trade. The jewels in the Portuguese crown were the Spice Islands. Along with pepper traded through Malacca, control of Spice Island trade from the Moluccas (Ternate, Tidore, Ambon), and the Banda islands, 140 kilometres south of Ambon and traded through Makassar, was the great cash cow of early AsiaPortugal trade. Remote even today, the Moluccas are located at the eastern end of the vast Javan archipelago (Indonesia). The Banda were tiny and idyllic island specks with some 25,000 population, but the vagaries of nature had devolved on them certain plants, trees, and spices which were unique, at least in their purest form, nutmeg and mace.11 As they were the most profitable commodities, all these islands were prioritised for invasion by the Dutch with the clove island of Ambon captured early on in 1605. It was artillery fortresses in Asia and in the rest of the empire that allowed the Portuguese to defend so much with so little, because local powers were unable to muster sufficient sustained strength to attack these outposts successfully, even if they wanted to. According to military engineer Pedro Barreto de Resende, whose drawings were appended to Antonio Bocarro’s book of Plans, fortifications, cities and settlements 1635, there were fifty-three fortifications in the East. In addition to the official Portuguese-controlled coastal towns and cities ruled by the Estado Das Indias, there was a multitude of unofficial Portuguese trading hubs which were interlinked with the Estado. As Philip III noted in 1607, ‘Ever since the discovery of India, experience has demonstrated the importance of fortresses; and now this seems even greater with appearance of the [Dutch] rebels in these parts.’12 Around the turn of the century, these included cities in Bengal such as Hooghly, Chittagong or Mrauk-U (the Arakan), as well as

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258  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 others in the East Indies such as Makassar, Ayutthaya (Siam), Syriam, (Burma), Sandwip (Bangladesh) and Phnom Penh. These places were difficult to occupy and fortify because they had to be accessed by river or tidal estuaries which, due to monsoon deluges, did not afford year round access or safety from attack along narrow river channels, a lesson Van Diemen would learn at Phnom Penh in 1644 where a Dutch squadron was badly mauled.13 Ambon captured in late February 1605 by a Dutch fleet of 12 warships and 1500 sailors and marines. It was an event witnessed by Sir Henry Middleton, a more or less neutral observer from his ship the Red Dragon, from England under the aegis of the EIC. Having but little in the way of outward cargo to interest the natives of the east, Sir Henry had received from James I permission to export sterling 12,000 in bullion to buy pepper and cloves from Bantam (Java) and the Moluccas respectively. Prevented by the victorious Dutch from buying cloves, Sir Henry then moved 600 kilometres to the northern Moluccas to the powerful and rival regional sultanates of Ternate and Tidore who inhabited small volcanic and clove rich islands just a few kilometres apart. Picturesque islands, a vessel approaching them would be accompanied by schools of dolphin and see the cone-topped islands against the backdrop of the huge mass of Halmahera Island, which is often covered in purple storm clouds above its vast and still largely unexplored rain forest canopy. At Tidore Sir Henry treated with the Portuguese controlled island sultanate for cloves, but he was prevented once more by the actions of the ‘Hollanders’ and their Ternatan allies who chose this moment to attack the Portuguese fort and Tidorean township. Dutch admiral Sir Henry described what happened in a first-hand account,14 it is one of the rare eye witness accounts of a military action in early modern Asia: the Dutch ships bombarded the Portuguese fort but caused little damage and were answered by the single cannon which the Portuguese deployed for their defence. Dutch and Ternatan forces then landed, and dug trenches to seal off the fort. A few days later Sir Henry recorded ‘up in a sudden the Dutch and Ternatans sallied out of the trenches with scaling ladders and entered the walls before the Portingals were aware and had placed their colours upon their ramparts what the Portingals then seeing came with a charge upon them with shot and fireworks (grenades)…that they (the Dutch) cast down their weapons and leaped down faster than they came…and took to their heels and ran into the sea. At that very instant when the Tidoreans had victory in their hands…the fort took fire…so all the Portingals were burnt and blown up.’ The dazed Portuguese survivors were rounded up and taken prisoner. Such was the serendipity of war in Asia (or Africa and the Americas) where major events decided by small numbers and sheer chance. The Dutch and their Ternatan

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260  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 allies burnt the Tidorean-Portuguese clove stores and took control of the clove trade. Most revealing, from Sir Henry’s evidence is that the Portuguese were totally unprepared to defend their prized Moluccan monopolies in cloves and nutmeg/mace. The Dutch maritime offensive in Asia hit them like a typhoon. With only one mounted canon to protect their Tidorean fort, their complacency is obvious. Perhaps they regarded their possessions, extremely remote even today, as being practically inaccessible especially as they had guarded their maps with great care. Another notable point in the siege and assault on Tidore was the great feistiness of the Portuguese garrison which was typical of the war in Asia where Portugal’s citizens were significantly reinforced by Luso-Asians of many stripes who provided a pool of manpower many times larger (perhaps 20–50 times) than that available to the Dutch. This fact was one of the primary reasons for the survival of the Estado da India even when massively overmatched in naval power and monetary resources. Even major hubs such as Malacca might deploy no more than half a dozen professional soldiers but the Casado militia living in the port could provide hundreds more. The loss of Tidore would soon be mitigated by a Spanish expedition launched from Manila, to which re-established forts on both Ternate and Tidore. On Ternate the rival Dutch and Spanish forts at Fort Oranje and Calamata were just a few miles apart and the rival parties conducted low key and intermittent warfare for the next half century until the fall in clove prices encouraged the Spanish to vacate their possession. Estado das Indias trade fortresses were almost exclusively coastal, enjoyed limited local control while others had only a licence to operate; this was especially the case with those ports licensed for trade by powerful land powers, the Mughals, the Ming and the Japanese at Nagasaki. In other places such as Brasil, Angola, Ceylon and the Zambese valley there was extensive conquistador development of power and territory in the interior,15 including fortresses in parts of the African interior, either because of the economic nature of the trading opportunity, such as ivory, gold, cinnamon, sugar or slaves from the respective interiors. In the Spanish Americas the great Potosi mine was over 2,000 kilometres from Lima over exceptionally difficult terrain. Goa in India, capital of the Estado, had only a small hinterland for local food produce. It took the Portuguese 100 years to build up their network, and it only started to generate large amounts of positive cash flow after about fifty years of toil and investment. The Dutch build-up of such profitable networks was initially cash-negative for two reasons; firstly, the northern Europeans had nothing that the Asians wanted; the EIC found out when they tried to sell the primary English export, woollen textiles, in the sweltering tropics. By contrast, the Portuguese had found plentiful outward-bound cargo, such as copper as well as gold, slaves and ivory picked up in Mozambique. Additionally, unlike the Dutch and English, the Portuguese had accumulated over a century enormous

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Global War  261 sums of working capital as well as access to trade finance which had been long established in Malacca before the takeover of this eastern hub. They also had ready access to Spanish bullion coming from Acapulco in the New World, and virtual monopoly in the Asia-Japan trade in which Japanese silver paid for Asian products. The Dutch would have to outfinance the Portuguese as well as outgun them; however, the enormity of cash flow from the maturing economic superpower based in Amsterdam allowed them to do both within the first decade of the seventeenth century. Even when backed by the wealth of Amsterdam, there were complaints of lost opportunities or the threat of competitors due to insufficient working capital; Coen wrote several pleading letters in 1616 to the Herren XVII ‘You can be assured that if you do not send a large capital at the earliest opportunity … the whole Indies trade is liable to come to little.’16 The longevity and resilience of the Portuguese Empire was aided by the closed loop of Portugal’s Judaic New Christian global financial network which underpinned the Spanish-Portuguese empire despite inquisitorial persecution.17 For the Dutch, the sheer size of the VOC’s capital resources and buying power gave them a competitive edge, but even they struggled as they sought to build up the trade. Costly networks are built to maximise revenue but also to deter new entrants by raising the barriers to their entry, because networks are inherently vulnerable to ‘creaming off ’ by predators, the exact VOC method. The VOC’s fear and loathing of the English, the other newcomer, rested on their flexible trading strategy without heavy fixed costs in fortress bases. In a letter to Grotius of 14 May 1613, Admiral Matelieff discusses the strategy of the English to cream off the nutmeg business at the Banda islands after the Dutch had invested: ‘He [the English] thinks he can let us do the dirty work for him.’18 Some Portuguese contemporaries such as Joao Ribeiro (and historian C.R Boxer) criticised the size of the fifty-three-fort Estado; however this misunderstands the economics of the network effect which was also a source of strength because no single loss or even a clutch of them could destroy it. Boxer also supports Robeiro’s thesis that Dutch social mobility promoted better commanders; ‘with us only the fidalgo are fit to command, whether they are knowing or not, and whether they are fit or not,’19 the bitter complaints of one disappointed man. Boxer perhaps overestimates this factor in Portuguese decline; the capability of Coen, Van Diemen and Caron cannot be denied; however, it was the same aristocrats, fidalgos and common men like Ribeiro himself who had built the extraordinary Portuguese trading empire. Dutch capital vessels in the East Indies easily outnumbered the Portuguese by 1608; by the start of the Thirty Years War in 1618 the Dutch had about 100 large armed merchantmen operating in Asia, the Portuguese no more than twenty. Two out of every three Dutch vessels sent east remained in Asia to work the regional markets. Having achieved network dominance, the next move of monopoly or oligopolistic networks in modern times was always to protect the

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262  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 monopoly and franchise with aggressive legal, military or commercial actions against potential competitive threats. ‘Imperialism,’ wrote Lenin, ‘is the monopoly stage of capitalism.’20 Admiral Matelieff wrote to Grotius on 3 May 1615, pointing out the size of the working capital burden under which the VOC operated, including the value of cargo purchased at cost price for 3.25 million guilders plus 0.17 million for ammunition, and the cost of fortresses at 0.93 million. This did not include costs for shipbuilding. He reported that ‘the sustenance of soldiers in the Indies far exceeds the profit made on the inland trade every year’.21 Unlike the Portuguese, whose eugenic policy initiated by Albuquerque in the early sixteenth century, had produced plentiful Luso-Asians to provide cheap labour, the Dutch had to pay high-cost German, Scandanavian and Japanese mercenaries. High fixed and operating costs needed monopoly price protection.

The Habsburg Asian Empire

The secret to profitable two-way trading was the establishment of a network to trade spices out of South-east Asia in exchange for superb Indian textiles moving the other way. In 1600 the population of South-east Asia alone, excluding India, China and Japan, was about 23 million, about 10 per cent larger than France, the largest European power. Of that population, 5 per cent was urbanised in major coastal trading cities, six of which had populations over 100,000 such as Aceh, Banten, Kim Long (Hue) or Makassar. There was another clutch of cities with over 50,000 such as Phnom Penh or Surabaya. Meanwhile, Than Long (Hanoi), Ayutthaya (Siam), and Mataram had populations of 150,000 to 200,000.22 Early colonial traders had come out east for spices, but they discovered a long matured trading system of enormous depth, sophistication and variety. It was a network which they entered with vim, ploughing in capital and human resources because its profit margins and cash flow were so attractive. Spice, including pepper, may have been the initial focus of interest but in time textiles and rice would become staples of trade. The regional trade in textiles boomed in the 1620–1650 period with the trade in Indian cloth alone worth fifty tons of silver per annum. Twenty million metres of cloth per annum was exported from Gujerat, Coromandel and Bengal, with the Dutch shipping from Coromandel alone requiring up to twenty tons of silver’s worth of textiles per annum. The textile trade from India, already worth an annual £300,000 in 1617 grew by 500 per cent 23 over the course of the Thirty Years War with profit margins ranging between 60 and 120 per cent. From the Coromandel coast, Gujerat and Bengal there were long established trade routes across the Bay of Bengal to Burma, Siam and Malay sultanates, to Java and beyond. VOC Governor Coen was particularly alive to the regional arbitrage opportunities; writing in 1617 he instructed his agents that ‘it is paramount that only the best quality gouleng and saris should be purchased for the Javanese market because the people there have very particular demands as to quality

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Global War  263 and given the high price of pepper they want to pay well for the cloth of their choice’.24 Spices were in high demand in India, Arabia and Persia especially, as well as other parts of the East. Slaves from the Bay of Bengal and the Portuguese slave market in Chittagong were also highly sought after, both for the VOC needs in Java and on their estates around the region. Regional sultanates and various Burmese kingdoms were also major buyers of Bengali and Indian slaves. In 1629 the Portuguese and Luso-Asian population of Dianga alone was 750 persons. Dutch trade in the area took off also, with traders bringing in pepper and spices to Bengal from South-east Asia, as well as increasing cargoes of copper from Burma. Textile products formed the return cargoes to Burma and South-east Asia. Dutch ships from Pulicat also put in to the rogue Portuguese settlements in the Arakan kingdom at Chittagong, Dianga, and Mrauk-U, to buy slaves from the Portuguese privateers for transhipment to Batavia (Jayakarta). It has been estimated that 38,441 slaves, many of them ‘harvested’ from Bengal via Arakan territory were transhipped from Pulicat to Dutch Batavia in 131 ships between 1621 and 1665.25 Indigo for the English and Dutch textile industry became a major export from India with tonnage shipped expanding twofold from 160930 from 215 tons p.a to over 500 tons per annum by the end of the 1620s. Return cargoes from Goa to East Africa included spices, vegetables and rice, with ivory and gold going the other way. Secured by friendly arrangements with the Mughal Empire, British Strength in north East India in ports such as Surat on the Gujerati coast helped them displace the Portuguese on the India to Gulf of Persia trade route to Hormuz and Jask. Musk, pearls and horses and myriad of other products flowed into north west India, while textiles and premium ‘Lahore’ indigo flowed out. William Methold, an English merchant living at Masulipatnam from 1618 to 1622, noted that in the hinterland for grain and rice, traders were ‘taking children in exchange which cost not above three or four shillings’; they could be sold for 40 shillings on the coast. In one year, 1624, 10,000 slaves were shipped from Pulicat to Java in response to the urgent demands of Governor General Coen; he wanted ‘only young persons – boys and girls between the ages of eight and twenty years are to be bought. The old and unsuitable are to be left out.’ Saltpetre for Portuguese gunpowder needs was also a major export from Bihar, via the Ganges and Bengal. Demand was rising in Europe, especially with huge amounts being consumed by war and magazine restocking as the conflict spread. It became standard VOC practice during the war to use 16 per cent of their return carrying capacity for saltpetre as ballast, 26 because of high prices in Europe.27 For the same reason both the Dutch and Portuguese carried back copper from Japan for cannon. Pepper was the main traded product in the long-haul commerce of Asia and South-east Asia. Unlike the fine spices from the Moluccas Islands, pepper was a widely grown, semi-bulk product. Demand was huge, both from Europe and

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264  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

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2 Portuguese invasion of the Kingdom of Arakan defeated and fleet destroyed by the Dutch 1615.

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5 Goa, Portuguese capital in Asia. Explanatory note:

Despite the rich trade in the Bay of Bengal there were few bases due to the low lying coast and the position of cities on rivers inland from the coast which were not easy to access or resupply due to the monsoon; additionally there were powerful states, eg Mughals Empire and the Kingdoms, of Ava and Arakan.

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Global War  265 China, so that exports continued to climb fast throughout the first half of the seventeenth century, reaching 6,000 metric tons per annum by 1648 (based on VOC statistics). The industry employed as many as 200,000 people or 5 per cent of the population of Malaysia, Java, Sumatra and Borneo. As a cash crop, pepper far surpassed all others. From the point of purchase in the east the price of pepper increased by thirty times by the time it reached northern Europe.28 Unable to capture major Portuguese or Spanish fortresses, blockades became the standard tactic chosen by the Dutch to try to ruin Portuguese trade. Malacca was besieged from 1606 to 1608, and Manila from 1616 to 1617. A Dutch fleet blockaded the viceroyalty at Goa from December 1622 to April 1623 and again from 1637 to 1644. Powerful Portuguese counter-attacking expeditions were made in 1624–25. Upon the renewal of the blockade in 1626, Portuguese naval forces successfully destroyed three of the Dutch ships holding station on blockade duty, an action which delayed and deterred Dutch attacks on India and Ceylon for some years. An alternative to costly blockading was setting up ‘nearby’ trading ports to the main Portuguese hubs with the aim of draining off trade. Patani, 100 kilometres south from Ayutthaya, drained off pepper trade from Malacca, and in Ceylon the Dutch captured Nagumbo to do the same for cinnamon. However, Nagumbo would be recaptured in July 1640 after reinforcements with a new governor and 400 fresh troops, once again showing the value of embedded population strength; timely arrival of small numbers could be very decisive in Asia. The normal garrison of Ceylon’s five main fortresses was just 700, but there were 15,000 local militia, numbers much greater than could be mustered by the Dutch.29 Dutch Venguria, which was close to Goa, drained off textile and indigo trade, alternatively providing a blockade base. On India’s east coat the Dutch port at Pulicat diverted Nagatputnam’s lucrative commerce in textiles with South-east Asia in return for pepper and spices from Java. Writing to Philip IV (1623–28) former Walloon merchant de Coutre testified to the effectiveness of Dutch strategy: ‘The Javanese and Malays do not come to Melaka to buy textiles … [they] lost this trade in textiles because of the Dutch. Sailing from Mayapur southwards … there is a fortress called Pulicat, where the Dutch procure many textiles … they have their factors in all the villages.’ Another Dutch base at Johor challenged Malacca as well as offering a base for blockade activities at Malacca and Manila. The Dutch sought to enter the China trade and disrupt the Macau-Manila, Macau-Japan and Manila-Acapulco trades by the establishment of a base in Formosa (Taiwan) off the south-east coast of China, an island which had hitherto been an exclusive preserve of the Spanish until their two fortresses, Tamsui and San Salvador, were respectively abandoned and captured in 1638 and 1642.30 In Japan, where the bakufu maintained strict control on the trading post at Nagasaki, the Portuguese hold on this extremely valuable trade depended

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266  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 on goodwill. China-Macau’s occupation was really on licence from the Ming dynasty in return for tribute, including of Jesuit-originated cannon technology and suppression of pirates; there was no question of ceding sovereign territory. When local states roused themselves, then the Europeans could be expelled; the Sultanate of Aceh nearly took Malacca in 1629 but in 1642 the Sultan of Johor helped the Dutch overthrow the Portuguese. There were only about 4,500 troops in Estado da India; numbers were hard to maintain because soldiers shipped out to Goa soon found a better way to make a living. The Le Coutre brothers became traders; others such as de Brito or Tibau became trader-mercenaries. Troop or sailor numbers were filled out by Lascars recruited in India. ‘The strength of the Portuguese became their Achilles tendon. Coastal forts and fortresses were eminently vulnerable to being picked off, one by one.’31 As Mahan would have noted, Dutch control of the sea meant that the defending Portuguese laboured ‘further under the onerous uncertainty where the offensive may strike’ but there were too many fortresses even for Dutch resources. When the Dutch menace became apparent, under orders from Philip III the Viceroy in Goa was to send out a strong fleet to sweep the Dutch away from the Malacca Strait and thereafter the Sunda Strait round Banten where the Dutch had made an alliance. Also under threat was Ambon and the spice routes up from the Banda and southern Moluccas through allies at Makassar, as well as the pepper trade from Java and Sumatra. Philip of Spain, under the Lerma regime, took a keen interest in the matter. A first fleet, assembled in 1597, failed in its objectives as the first Dutch had already left. another fleet was sent out from Goa in 1601 which included six galleons and fourteen other vessels. Partly wrecked and badly damaged by a storm, the powerful fleet struggled on down to the Sunda Strait where it fought an inconclusive battle with the Dutch. Local sultanates were not intimidated despite several flotillas sent to blockade the Sultan of Johor at the Johor river estuary. A first attack by the Dutch in 1602 was defeated in a naval battle off Malacca. This was followed by a battle which raged from 7 to 11 October 1603, watched by the ruler of Johor, in which three Dutch ships overwhelmed a large Portuguese galleon and a host of smaller Portuguese vessels. The remnants of the battered Portuguese fleet retreated to Malacca. Another fleet sent in 1604 was similarly unsuccessful. Off St Helena in 1602, an Anglo-Dutch squadron captured the homeward bound Santiago. In the Moluccas, the Spanish wrestled with the Dutch for control of Ternate’s clove crop from 1606; great fortifications were built on the volcanic specks of Ternate and Tidore but the war there soon entered stalemate; the Dutch already controlled the major production centres at Ambon and Ceram.32 A plan to send a fleet from Lisbon was delayed due to threats from English warships. In 1606 the Dutch flotilla commanded by Admiral Matelieff attacked and besieged Malacca for several months. However, a Portuguese fleet from Goa helped to stave off an attack from the Dutch and Johor in a naval battle

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Global War  267 off Malacca. Eighteen Portuguese ships fought eleven Dutch ships; both sides lost two vessels. However, the cost for the Portuguese was high in terms of men lost to much superior Dutch firepower; 300 to 500 valuable seamen were killed. Portuguese vessels carried as few as six guns which took as much as an hour to load; adequate against indigenous fleets and forts in Asia, they were no match for the 20-30 gun Dutch East Indiamen. It would take a decade or more before the Portuguese could provide galleons to match them but even then they never had the numbers to compete. Shortly thereafter, a new governor sent out with a long-delayed Lisbon fleet was entirely lost to a storm at sea; less well-built and designed, losses at sea were much greater for Portuguese-built vessels Despite the setback in the attempt at Malacca, it seemed that the Dutch had their foot stamped firmly on Malacca’s neck. For a while in 1606–1609, trade was all but stopped; Dutch warships based on their ally Johor, scooped up a score of Portuguese prizes at the eastern entrance to the Malacca Strait. However, there was somewhat of a reversal in the following years following the twelve-year Truce in Europe. The last roll of the dice strategy of Philip III and Lerma’s regime to shake off the Dutch menace was to seek to combine the forces of Manila and Goa in a joint effort in 1615. The truce with the Dutch as it applied to Asia had already broken down. However, the grand strategy conceived in Madrid was not so easy to co-ordinate and the insubordination of the Viceroy in Goa did not help. He failed to obey orders and sent a deputy as commander instead; he also disobeyed by not proceeding directly to join de Silva’s fleet at Manila.33 Caught in the middle of the pincer, the Dutch beat off each attack in turn due to Portuguese and Spanish bungling. The Portuguese lost two galleons in a battle at the entry to Malacca’s port. Manned by a motley and ill-disciplined crew of lascars, the galleons could not match the Dutch for rates of fire. Spectators watched the tragic end of the thirty-six-gun flagship which blew up, according to one witness, ‘so great was the noise that the Island of Malacca trembled and houses shook. A cloud of smoke rose to the heavens and hid the clouds … we lost sight of the galleon.’34 So ended the last attempt at joint action by Portuguese and Spanish forces in Asia. The imperium in Asia, and the idea of ‘universal Christendom’, which only ever existed in theory, was finished. In 1607 revenues from India and the eastern empire were 16.3 per cent and 24 per cent respectively of Portuguese royal revenues, and in 1619 the numbers were little changed at 15.1 per cent and 26.5 per cent, but costs were rising fast. In the early decades of the seventeenth century, Portuguese and Spanish overseas powers were at their zenith but the costs of maintaining that rose as the Dutch assault increased. Added to the wastage caused by weather and foundering, the attacks by the Dutch and English in the 1620s meant that only two out of three Portuguese ships were reaching their destinations on any outbound or inbound leg, or one in three for a round trip. Meanwhile the VOC from 1610 sent out an average of 12 Indianmen a year up until 1640 of which about a

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268  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 quarter made return voyages and the remainder operated in inter-regional trade. This gave them overwhelming control of the sea and of shipborne firepower. Dutch-built ships, which lasted three to four times longer than Portuguese or Spanish vessels, were built with superior north European oak, better designs, more durable fittings and superior armament in both quantity and quality. They were also far cheaper to build by 30 to 40 per cent.35 ‘Of 33 ships which left Portugal for Goa in 1606–8 only 3 returned to Lisbon,’36 much of that due to decrepitude, as well as wreck, loss in battle and local needs. The feistiness of the Portuguese and Spanish Empire was nonetheless remarkable in the face of relentless Dutch-English attack. The practical difficulties of attacking coastal fortified towns of the Estado da India, with attacks launched from long distances, meant that the VOC was very slow to dent, let alone destroy, the trading structure of the Portuguese in Asia. It was not easy to enlist local allies who were often ineffective in any case as Admiral Matelieff discovered at the siege of Malacca, recounting Johor’s failings bitterly in his journal. The fortresses of the main places were too strong to be rushed by a small force of marines. Long sieges were logistically difficult and needed more manpower than was available; moreover, the Portuguese were better provided with men by their use of the Luso-Asian community in addition to a leavening of European professionals. This leavening and exploitation of mixed-blood populace was the deep legacy of the duc d’Alberquerque who had encouraged mixed-race breeding since the early sixteenth century. Despite Dutch power and prowess, Portuguese and Spanish seapower was still formidable; in 1606 a relieving fleet saved Malacca after a hard-fought battle with the Dutch.37 Spain had defeated Dutch fleets off Manila in 1600, then again in the first Battle of Playa Honda off Manila in 1610. A ten-ship Dutch fleet was defeated at the second battle of Playa Honda in 1617. Dutch attacks on Spanish Manila in the 1620s also failed, as did the attacks in five battles in 1646. Extensive blockading on Goa, Malacca, Colombo and Manila throughout the period also failed in its purpose. Although a task force could in theory arrive at places with an element of surprise, in practice the Indian Ocean buzzed with the criss-cross of thousands of smaller trading craft carrying intelligence of large task force preparations as well as intended targets. Defences and preparation were usually well in hand before the arrival of the Dutch enemy. Dutch attacks on Mozambique in 1604, 1607 and 1608, on Malacca in 1606 and 1615 and 1616, and in 1629 by the Sultan of Aceh, and attacks on Macau in 1622, 1626 and Goa in 1603 and 1610, were all defeated. There had also been raiding around Macau in 1601, 1603 and in 1607 by Admiral Matalieff, but his fleet was too worn out and ‘dirty’ (with barnacles and sea worm) for him to consider an attack. Following on from Dominican friars, trading posts were also established at Oecusse and Dili on Timor, in the mid-sixteenth century. Timor was a far-flung place 2,000 kilometres from Batavia; the Dutch established themselves in West

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Global War  271 Timor by 1613. What were they fighting for? Even in the 1570s the camphor and sandalwood trade from Timor and Solor to China and Japan required up to twenty-two ships per annum. Camphor (a key ingredient of ‘Tiger Balm’) was a product of such value that the Chinese priced it higher than gold; aromatic sandalwood was also highly prized for incense and cosmetics.38 The two key Dominican missions and trading fortresses, i.e collection points for Timorian products, were Solor, an island off Flores’s eastern tip, and Palau Ende, southern Flores. Having lost control of Palau Ende and Solor in 1613, the Portuguese moved to nearby Larantuka at the east end of Flores, but in 1616 they returned to defeat the Dutch on Solor and regained the fortress. But in 1618 they lost it again to a Dutch fleet, which also tried to eradicate the Portuguese presence in the area. They failed. In 1625 and 1629 the Portuguese attacked Solor’s fortress, regaining then finally losing it. Abandoned, the fort was re-occupied by the Dutch in 1636, but was handed back to the Portugeuse in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years war. Coen believed that the time was ripe for taking the China trade and Macau, sending a letter to the VOC directors on 9 April 1922: ‘Macao … could easily be taken by a force of 1,000 to 1,500 men converted into a stronghold which could hold against the world.’ Macau boasted the Estado’s richest trades with concessionary value in 1634 of 2 million cruzados. Fine manufactures, silks, and porcelain were exchanged for precious metals, spices, benzoin, ivory and sandalwood to list a few of the imports. A thirteen-ship Dutch fleet attacked on 22 June 1622, losing one ship to battery fire from Fort Saint Francisco and plunging fire from the Monte’s citadel while their infantry attack was driven back into the sea with heavy losses. A cannon shot of divine trajectory, aimed by Jesuit gunnery experts Adam Schall and Geronimo Rho, hit a powder barrel. The resulting fireball carried dozens of the Protestant attackers directly to hell. Meanwhile the defending troops, including local militia, reinforced by fifty professional soldiers, attacked them in the flank and rear, causing a helterskelter panicked retreat in the face of highly-motivated defenders; ‘the Toscin was rung; our people flew to assist us,’39  testament, as at Malacca’s siege, to the ability to exploit their Luso-Asian population and casado (married men) in the militia. Numbers were bolstered by black slaves: afterwards they were given manumission; 300 Dutch, Germans and Japanese were killed from the 700 deployed in the assault.40 A bitter Director General Coen complained, ‘The Portuguese beat us off from Macau with their slaves; it was not done with any soldiers, for there are none in Macau … See how the enemy thus holds his possessions so cheaply whilst we squander ourselves.’41 (emphasis added) Attacking from sea over long distances was risky, the outcome uncertain and it involved vast costs of fleets and regular troops, but defences with sunken costs manned by local troops were much cheaper. The Dutch moved on to establish Fort Zeelandia as their China trade base on Isla Formosa (Formosa) near Tainan

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272  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 in the south; under orders from Van Diemen they drove the Spanish out of their last bastion on the island in 1642. By 1608 the Dutch VOC had already outgunned the Estado, having deployed forty large ships and recruited 500 employees in Asia, with an average of twelve ships sent per year. Through the course of the war these numbers were to go up. Twenty years later twenty-four ships per annum were being sent east, of which two out of three stayed to service regional trade and military requirements. By comparison the Portuguese were sending only six ships per annum to India in the first quarter century, albeit their ships were much larger. However, support from Lisbon declined, regional shipping requirements were supplemented by considerable local building including fine galleons constructed at Goa. Bom Jesus whose launching at Goa in 1636 was witnessed by Cornish traveller Peter Mundy; this magnificent 1,200-ton galleon mounted 70 brass guns and was described by the German, Mandelso ‘as one of the noblest vessels I ever saw’.42 Losing control of the sea, the Portuguese reacted by deploying large numbers of fast galleys, galliotts, foists and caravelles which, in many circumstances, were better suited to Asian conditions, especially shallow coastal waters. But Dutch power steadily increased; the setting up of the main naval base at Batavia on the strategic Sunda Strait in 1619 was an essential step in solidifying regional dominance. VOC expatriate employee numbers rose over the next twenty years to 10,000, including sailors and soldiers, but excluding native auxiliaries. Japanese mercenaries were employed by both sides. Total military and civilian employees of pure European descent in the Portuguese Empire never exceeded 9,000, but there was a considerable Eurasian population, perhaps twenty times larger, which had built up over the decades. Unlike the wars in Europe, in Asian amphibious war, the deployment of trained Europeans troops in small numbers (hundreds) could have a huge impact in changing the military balance. However, in 1614, Pieterzoon Coen, who was to become the ruthless enforcer of Dutch policy and the first true ‘Imperialist’ in Asia, put into clear words the symbiotic, twin-track reality of Dutch policy. On 27 December 1614, Coen, future head of the VOC in Batavia, wrote to the Herren XVII (VOC Directors), ‘trade cannot be maintained without war, nor war without trade’.43 His murderous brutality and enslavement of the entire Banda population appalled even his contemporaries; he expanded the existing regional slave trade to feed corporate growth. Rosa Luxemburg in The Accumulation of Capital, published in 1913, advanced the theory that capitalist expansion takes place in foreign markets or less developed parts of the same country, with capitalists needing to destroy these underdeveloped places as independent entities to rake in surplus profit. The Dutch and Spanish experience of colonial development in the early seventeenth century (followed later by the English) seems to support Luxemburg’s theory: however, Rosa Luxemburg may sometimes have overstated her case when she accused the early imperialists of a desire ‘to destroy

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Global War  273 the social organisations of primitive societies so that the means of production may be appropriated,’44 but in the case of South American mining at Potosi, or the Banda islands whose entire population was enslaved and deported, or imperialism in Brasil, Africa and the Caribbean islands, she was surely right. However, in most of Asia, except in discrete locales such as the Banda or the Moluccan spice islands, seventeenth-century trade was not monopolised, but rather fitted into an existing complex trade system involving a multiplicity of regional powers and Arab traders from the gulf. Most local powers welcomed and encouraged trade with the Europeans because it increased their wealth and tax take, as well as giving them better and cheaper access to inter-regional food, spices, incense, textiles, slaves porcelain and other luxury items. Born in 1587 near the town of Hoorn, Coen was groomed for the merchant life. Sent away to Italy at the age of 13, he became an accountant then joined the VOC as a junior merchant, taking passage for the east in 1607. He returned again in 1610 and, having impressed the directors, was promoted as senior merchant when he returned in December 1612. Made the Director General of the VOC in 1614 he was appointed Governor General from 25 December 1617 at the age of 30. He retained the post until his death in 1629. Coen routinely disobeyed orders from both the local director and the Herren XVII in Amsterdam to whom he would write scathing letters attacking their ‘appeasement’ tactics with the EIC. ‘And now see what has happened,’ he spat scathingly to the board in Amsterdam, ‘I swear that no enemies do our cause more harm than the ignorance and stupidity existing amongst you gentlemen.’45 Few can treat their masters with such contempt, but he was delivering record profits which could easily smooth down any ruffled feathers. Not just a great administrator and military strategist, Coen was a sharp businessman, recognising early on the vital importance and profitability in twoway trade between India and South-east Asia, essentially ‘textiles for spices’, which delivered both large stable profits and, just as importantly, obviated the need to finance trade in hard cash, i.e. silver bullion; ‘Without these textiles,’ he wrote, ‘it would be difficult to continue the trade.’46 He micro-managed, knowing his markets to the extent that he specified the types of cloth to be brought from India, even the colour and patterns, e.g for the Java, red borders, small flower patterns with bright colours. A humourless martinet and Calvinist bigot, armed with the self-righteousness of the ‘elect’, he drove his men hard with a misanthropic disregard for their wellbeing or indeed anyone else’s. Referring to his men, he coldly remarked, ‘let the soldiers and seamen be used against the enemy, to which task they were created of god: few or none can be expected to make good citizens’.47 His portrait shows a man with a severe countenance, dark cropped hair and a closely clipped beard. He stands imperiously hand on sword dressed in exquisite cloth of understated extravagance. Prudishly frowning on his men for liaising with the locals he was also severe with ‘immorality’ amongst the Dutch community.

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274  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 As for the women sent out East to satisfy local needs, he referred to them also as ‘the scum of the Netherlands’. This lanky and pinch-faced businessman was driven by duty, hatred and greed. He could have retired to Holland with his fortune but he loved power most of all. Without his drive and strategic focus at this point in the company’s history the VOC may well have foundered. Coen was the true founder of the Dutch Empire and curse of the Portuguese. When he returned to Amsterdam for a visit in 1623, the populace feted him although his reputation was soon badly tarnished by reports of his methods on Banda. He departed for the East again quietly without any send off or fanfare. Modern Dutch historians regard him as no better than a psychopathic war criminal, a view shared by many of his officers and civilian contemporaries. Under modern international law, they would certainly have been found guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’, a common criminal enterprise, including murder, enslavement, and genocide for their actions against the Bandanese. Company articles allowed the VOC delegated sovereign agency powers and a monopolistic licence.48 At 13,000 kilometres from Amsterdam, state and corporate morality was forfeit to profit. Spices commanded a markup of 60,000 per cent and a net profit margin after costs of about 2,000 per cent on the wharfs of Amsterdam, Lisbon or London. It was a profit margin to kill for. Over 90 per cent of the 16,000 Banda islanders were expelled and sold into slavery, some of whom ended up working on the construction of Fort Zeelandia in Taiwan. Many died en route to Java; a typical shipment of 883 persons resulted in a 20 per cent death rate. Coen, who was roundly detested by his men, was severely criticised by a number of them; Lieutenant Nicholas van de Weart lamented that, six Japanese soldiers were also ordered inside with their sharp swords … the executions [were] awful to see … . The heads and quarters of those who had been executed were impaled upon bamboos so displayed.  … All of us, as professing Christians, were filled with dismay … we took no pleasure in such dealings.49 Ugly rumour of the slaughter reached Amsterdam and, in reaction to public outrage, Coen was censored, although he was simultaneously rewarded with a 3,000-guilder bonus by the grateful Herren XVII. Coen’s handpicked successor was Van Diemen who was equally aggressive in developing Dutch interests by war and monopoly. After the failed peace talks with leading nobility in Spanish Flanders, indications of a renewed aggressiveness came in the appointments made by the VOC. Aggressive, ruthless, and capable, Van Diemen was appointed director of the VOC in Batavia, with effect from 1 January 1636. A good choice, during his nine-year tenure the VOC share price would double and the total return including dividends was much higher, over 200 per cent for investors who bought in 1636.50 High dividend payments in 1636 and 1637 drove the share price much higher, fed perhaps by confidence in

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276  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 the new management. Van Diemen had the hard-edged ruthlessness of the selfmade man and self-righteous Calvinist. Typical of the desperadoes who went east, an undischarged bankrupt after the failure of his first business venture, in 1618 he had joined the VOC as a common soldier under an assumed name. However, unlike the mass of fortune seekers, this son of a bergomeister from provincial Utrecht was also educated, conversant in Latin and bookkeeping; moreover, his curiosity for the east would lead him to become a great patron for exploration. He said of his career that he had ‘the firm intention, through hard work, in due course to advance from the lowly and poor condition in which I have come out to something better’.51 By 1624 he was Auditor General and a VOC councillor, then sent on an important mission to Japan. A man of principle, he would repay his debts and bravely stood out against his patron’s arbitrarily cruel behaviour. However, he was no tolerant liberal; later, when a senior councillor, Justis Houten, was discovered to have taste for the company of young boys, van Diemen had three young native children drowned. Houten himself was sentenced to be burned at the stake to purge his proclivity, but mercy was shown; the sentence was commuted to garrotting. A report on him by director General Brouwer described Van Diemen as ‘industrious, extremely observant, an enemy of sloth and indolence, friendly honourable respectable and able effectively to manage all things’.52 Not just a bookkeeper but a man of action, on becoming Director General, he turned his ruthlessness on the Portuguese; in 1637 and 1638 he led large naval expeditions to expand and enforce the clove monopoly in the Moluccas, becoming in the words of VOC historian Alfons van der Kraan ‘an empire-builder of the first order’53 with renewed aggression; Goa, for example, was blockaded nine times between 1637 to 1644 and other key ports, such as Colombo, were similarly constricted. Like Coen before him he was implacably aggressive; he opined, ‘We are taught by daily experience that the Company’s trade in Asia cannot subsist without territorial conquests.’54 He intended to finish the job started by Coen, to wipe out the Portuguese and their allies and raise profitability by enforcing a spice and trade monopoly in Asia. Enormous sums were invested in naval blockades of the Portuguese bases of Malacca and Goa. Dutch attacks on the Portuguese Empire were fatal to its economic cohesion, disrupting the profitable nexus of inter-regional trade, which was the key to profitability. If Portuguese power was destroyed, the VOC could become more profitable and less risky by reducing permanent military establishment costs and higher monopoly prices; earnings would also be more stable and predictable. In 1636 Van Diemen also launched a successful attack against the Portuguese fortress of Solor and Ende in Flores Island, to take control of the camphor and sandalwood trade which accounted for about thirty shiploads of premium product per year to China and Japan. Even then, the Dominican-dominated Portuguese Luso-Asian community simply moved to nearby Larantuka on the eastern end of Flores.

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Global War  277 The Portuguese Empire was distracted by the need to defend the country’s land border after the rebellious accession of Braganza nobleman Joao IV in December 1640. It was a perfect moment to attempt the extinction of Portuguese global interests. However, the Estates General, in deference to the French, reluctantly entered into truce negotiations with their new ally, but the talks would be dragged out to give the VOC and WIC time to launch attacks on their weakened enemy. Eventually the Dutch-Portuguese Truce was signed at The Hague on 12 June 1641, although it would not be promulgated in the east until 1644. Due to last ten years, the treaty was observed mainly in the breach, except in continental Europe. Van Diemen, a good eight months voyage away from the Herren XVII, ran his kingdom with scant regard for orders from Amsterdam or the foreign policies of Estates General. One excuse after another put off the truce and, even after its acceptance, VOC officials arrogantly dismissed any suggestion that they should pay heed to diplomatic agreements; the VOC general manager in Galle (Ceylon) asserted that It was true they had an order from the States and Prince of Orange to deliver Negumbo to the Portuguese but they were not servants of the Prince nor states but to the company: nor when they shall receive such an order from their company, will they surrender it but by force.55 [As reported by M. Bowman English head of delegation at Surat, 1646] Not all his attempts at monopsony were successful; Van Diemen failed to get control of the tin and copper trade, and the regional elephant trade.56 In a severe reverse, when a Dutch flotilla was defeated at the Battle of the Mekong at Phnom Penh 1644, by a Portuguese, Khmer and Japanese alliance. Portuguese aligned Sultanate of Makassar held out against Dutch military pressure. The sultan refused to oust the Portuguese colony or to stop trade in contraband nutmeg and cloves from being smuggled from Banda and Ambon or Ceram. Van Diemen’s occasional failures were the measure of his many energetic efforts and policies. Ruthless leadership and commercial abilities of Coen and Van Diemen enabled the success of Dutch war-trade policies which in a long war of attrition was very damaging to the Portuguese domestic economy due to the curtailment of previously large positive cash remittances. By 1620 the clove, nutmeg and mace trades had largely come under Dutch aegis, with the takeover of Ambon and the Banda Islands, though Makassar still provided an outlet for smuggled product. Pepper trading and all other products could not be monopolised because they were too extensive, but the Dutch soon became the major shipper of pepper in Java and Sumatra. A Venetian envoy to the Safavids reported, ‘Ships come to the said city of Hormuz from everywhere, that is from Basra, from India and the [straits] of Mecca. For great busness is done in diverse merchandise’.57 With high-value cargoes moving both ways, fifty-four ships sailed to India each year in the early seventeenth century.58 Hormuz, famous for its rich trades in Levant silks,

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Global War  279 musks, spices, porcelain, Indian textiles, salt, sulphur and arabian horses, was the first key Estado base to fall in 1622 after losing control of the sea to the English at a naval battle off Jask in 1621 in which the Portuguese lost 360 killed and wounded. Portuguese diplomatic arrogance had angered the Shah who signed an alliance with the English at Kuhistak on 5 January 1622. It was the classic tactic of alliance building which the Dutch would also use to their advantage against a Portuguese empire which over the previous century had made many enemies in Asia. First Kishm was captured, then Hormuz itself after the Portuguese fleet in the harbour had been sunk. The city was taken by a joint English-Safavid attack of over 3,000 troops, after the breach of a bastion by mining and fierce fighting on the ramparts in which 1,000 slain Persians ‘carried newes unto their profet Mohammed’.59 Despite failing to regain Hormuz in 1625 after defeat against the combined English-Dutch fleet in two further close-run battles, Portugal, under intrepid commander Ruy Freyre, continued operations out of Muscat and fourteen other ports in the region, but after the loss of Hormuz their profits and power faded. The inflection point in the military and trading struggle between Portugal and the Dutch in Asia was around 1630, just at the point when large positive cash flows started to build up in the VOC, with the minus-260,000 cruzados per annum in the second decade being replaced by almost the same in positive numbers in the fourth decade.60 A deficit of 300,000 Cruzado in 1631 had to be covered by borrowing. Meanwhile Portugal’s Estado da India started to turn negative with inward- and outbound-shipping tonnage dropping by more than 300 per cent.61 Revenues held up but costs of defence increased rapidly. From 1629 to 1636, the Portuguese lost 150 ships in Asia alone62 and the Dutch invested some of their burgeoning cash flow in seeking to knock out their rival. With positive cash flow after 30 years of heavy investment the Dutch started to become more aggressive again after the hiatus following Coen’s death and the breakdown in peace talks with Viceroy Isabella in Brussels. However, the most grievous blow to the Estado was the diplomatic victory which ended Portuguese trade in Japan by fiat of the Shogun; the Dutch secured a monopoly there instead. Shogun Iemistu was also given lessons in geography, so he learnt how small the Dutch Republic was and how vast, populous and powerful the Spanish/Portuguese empires were. Dutch representative Francois Caron wrote of his talks with Iemitsu, ‘After investigating the size of the world, the multitude of countries and the smallness of Japan … he (Iemitsu) was greatly surprised and heartily wished that his land had never been visited by any Christians.’63 Paranoia about the Trojan-horse danger of the Christian community in Japan, as well as the influence of Portuguese Jesuits among various rival Daimyo, caused the Shogun to issue dramatic and brutal fiats against the Portuguese and Catholicism. The Portuguese were suddenly expelled in 1636 by the Tokugawa Shogunate in three ‘Acts of Seclusion’ 1633-39, it ended in July 1640 with an entire embassy of sixty-one Portuguese being beheaded.

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280  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 By playing on Iemitsu’s paranoia, diplomatic guile won for the Dutch a major triumph without a shot being fired. It had been the Portuguese Estado’s second richest trade, worth 2,000,000 escudos annually in 1634 including the export of about 150 tons of bullion a year According to Caron, Macau’s merchants cried aloud that they would ‘relapse into the utmost destititution’.64 In fact the trade would soon be somewhat compensated by increasing business with Timor, Makassar and the Annamite coast. In consequence of this diplomatic victory the VOC’s cash flows improved significantly so that the company ‘took less bullion to the east in the period 1630–1660 than it had in the 1620s despite the increase in trade. Up to 80 per cent of VOC financing needs could be sourced locally through Japanese exported bullion; which meant that the need for working capital and the cost of finance were considerably reduced. Dutch attacks on the Philippines failed in 1615 and 1646; extensive blockading failed too. However, Manila’s trade and importance declined after the Portuguese revolution and the overthrow of Spanish rule in 1640. Malacca fell to the Dutch in 1640 but its trade was much reduced already; its fall simply confirmed the decline and transfer in dominance that had already happened. The fall of the great city in the east was understood by all to be a seminal event in the history of the East, akin to the fall of Carthage after the Punic wars: ‘The fall of Malacca has caused great dejection among the Portuguese prisoners. They say openly “Now that Malacca is lost, there’s no more India for us”.’65 Attacks and blockades on Manila failed, but the Portuguese revolution meant that trade in the place declined precipitately after 1641 when the Portuguese traders left. The establishment of a Dutch base at Pulicat creamed off much valuable textile and spice trade. The Dutch also came to dominate the Bengal trades in textiles and slaves. Goa, the headquarters of the Estado da India, was never directly attacked; it did suffer blockades. Dutch ships were not only much more numerous but superior in sailing quality, construction, and armament. However, Boxer perhaps exaggerates the level of decline, which in trade terms was more relative rather than absolute, and contrary to his assertions the astute Portuguese switch to smaller, faster vessels, frigatas and caravelles enabled them to maintain trade even in the islands of South-east Asia; Goa and Macau remained unconquered: Makassar became a major trading port for Portuguese spice-textile exchange and Larantuka for sandalwood and camphor. By 1650 the Dutch had indeed become the dominant trader in Asia. While Estado revenues held up, the Dutch war increased their costs and wiped out profitability.66 Nevertheless, the Estado’s status and network had been degraded physically. Oldenbarnevelt’s indirect war strategy was winning. Weakening Portuguese cash flow from the Estado reduced Portuguese ability to provide for its own defence in the Atlantic, which came to rely on Spanish naval support off the coast of Brasil; it also led to Olivares’s increasingly onerous tax and conscription demands on a cash- and manpower-constrained Portuguese economy. Tensions

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Global War  281 over Habsburg rule mounted. Moreover, the VOC’s Asia trade financed wellarmed Indiamen to supplement the Dutch fleet’s successful actions against Habsburgs and their allies, the Danes, in the North Sea, English Channel and the Baltic, including decisive battles or campaigns at the Downs in 1639, Fehmarn in 1644 and the siege of Dunkirk in 1646.

War in the Atlantic, South America and Caribbean 1618–1640

Located in still remote and barren high mountains in Bolivia, Potosi was sited next to the dome-shaped mountain, the Cerro Rico which for the first sixty years of production provided silver from its cone of a quality so pure – 90 to 100 per cent – it was like spooning cream off the top of a cake. It is little exaggeration to say that the foundation of Spanish political and military hegemony in Europe in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century was maintained by Potosi’s silver, production from which dwarfed all others. However, due to falling production and higher costs (including defence), receipts had already peaked at 13.7 million ducats between 1596 and 1600, before dropping sharply to 5.5 million in 1626 to 1630 and 2 million in 1646 to 1650.67 Bullion was also diverted into the private pockets of the aristocratic administrators and smuggled into Spain. Flowing from the bullion imports was financing of future years of shipments; leveraged to the hilt on the treasure annual, via Panama and Havana, Spain’s finances hung on the long and vulnerable voyage from the Caribbean. Habsburg interest in spending huge sums in defending Portuguese interests in Brasil were primarily about defending their mining interests at Potosi as well as the enormously important sugar trade which had taken over from the Estado as the prime source of Lisbon’s wealth. From a Spanish viewpoint, if the Dutch established themselves in Brasil, the next target would be Potosi, which was an essential cog in Spain’s financial system.

Fortresses on the Spanish Main

The programme developed by Philip II in 1588, called A defence plan for the Caribbean in response to successful English attacks, was already in progress, but now accelerated due to the renewal of war. Fortresses were very expensive, ‘These forts were built according to the latest designs in military engineering, featuring lower walls, triangular bastions and other refinements.’68 ‘In more remote areas … building material, labourers, soldiers, supplies, food and ordnance had to be brought in.’69 Building was not the only cost; 70 per cent of garrison troop officers in the colonies had been diverted from the Flanders front; when foot soldiers were sent from Andalucía this would hardly have helped the shortage of naval and military personnel in Spain. Reacting to the Dutch threat, Spain ramped up fortress building. Cartagena’s fortress is one of the most famous and best preserved; it was completely upgraded with major new forts added between 1631 and 1634. After an attack on St Juan

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284  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 by the Dutch in 1625, in which the town was sacked, though the citadel held out, new defensive walls were built and a rampart added along the harbour side in 1634. Vera Cruz constructed defensive walls in the 1630s with a large battery constructed in 1635 (that is still standing). Other major works during the first half of the seventeenth century were undertaken at Santa Marta, Maracaibo, San Antonio, Santiago de Cuba, Panama and Santa Catalina. The last island was held for a while by Anglo-Dutch privateers until expelled by a Spanish expedition from Cartagena in 1640. From the 1620s French, British and Dutch raiding by officially encouraged privateers, as well as the creation of settlements in the Antilles, St Kitts, Tortuga, Nevis, Tobago, Providence Island (off the Mosquito Coast), Barbados, and Espanola led to attacks on various of the weaker cities in the region, such as Maracaibo, Puerto Cabello and La Guairá. Santiago de la Vega, known now as Spanish Town, Jamaica, was also raided.70 All of this enemy activity produced a climate of fear and demands for better protection by the local authorities, in the form of stronger fortresses, more galleons and soldiers. The shock caused by Pieter Heine’s assault on the treasure fleet at Matanzas Bay near Havana in 1628 stimulated further construction. Besides the Spanish Main, raids by the Dutch in the Pacific in 1623 and 1643 led to the works at Valdivia, as well as the fortification of Lima’s port of Callao at the cost of 876,000 pesos.71

War in the Caribbean 1620–1641

Admiral Hendricksz, with a powerful fleet of seventeen ships, approached St Juan on 29 September 1625. The siege would fail, but over the following ten years 500 prizes were taken which netted for the WIC 43 million guilders at auction;72 however, the undertaking required the financing of 700 individual voyages and, variously, 67,000 soldiers and sailors, so there was no great profit in it. The high point in Dutch attacks on the Spanish Empire came on 8 September 1628, when the WIC-Dutch battle fleet of thirty-one ships under Piet Hein attacked the Spanish treasure fleet off Havana as it made for Matanzas Bay. Hein had been cruising off the Cuban coast to follow up previous successful campaigns in Brasil in 1626, and in the Atlantic in 1627, when fifty-three prizes were captured. Spain’s treasure fleet under Admiral Juan de Benvanedes consisted of just four guarding galleons, which carried silver, gold, pearls and gems, and eleven merchantmen. Hein captured all fifteen ships and cargo intact when Benavedes surrendered before the treasure could be offloaded into the safety of the city. Havana’s population must have stared in amazed disbelief as the Dutch pursued, then plundered their prizes in full view of the Malecón. WIC shareholders received a 75 per cent special dividend and the WIC was loaded with capital to finance its attacks on Portuguese Brasil, the defence of which would add considerably to Spanish military expenditure. A knock-on effect of the disaster for Spain

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Global War  285 would be a change to sailing schedules, which had previously aimed to avoid the hurricane season. This led to another disaster in 1631 with the loss of a treasure fleet carrying 5 million ducats in a storm off the Yucatan in 1631. To secure the treasure fleets after the Matanzas disaster, vital Spanish naval units had to be redeployed from the Flanders armada based in Dunkirk, which diminished the impact of the Spanish attack on the key Dutch trading links in the Baltic and North Sea. The loss of these treasure fleets severely disrupted Spanish finances just as Gustavus emerged in Germany to threaten and take Spanish bastions on the Rhine. So a Spanish expedition to meet the Dutch challenge was despatched in 1629 under Admiral Don Fadrique de Toledo. In fact, it was just a larger than usual Armada de la Gardia, the purpose of which was to bring back the treasure from New Mexico and Peru. This time they would collect the treasure directly from Portobello, so cutting out one of the vulnerable short legs of the journey. Failing to find a major Dutch target, Fadrique de Toledo decided to crush the small new English and French colonies which had sprung up in recent years, like annoying bugs. Don Fadrique commanded a fleet of thirty-five galleons and fourteen merchant ships crowded with troops. On 17 September 1629 the Spanish fleet captured the English colony on Nieves where ten corsair vessels lay at anchor. Then it moved on to capture San Cristobal (St Kitts), jointly controlled by the English and French, respectively the south and north sides of the island. At Fort Charles, the English had deployed twenty-two guns, nine mortars and 1,600 men, overlooking the harbour.73 Don Fadrique’s fleet carried on to Cartagena, Portobello then Havana. Returning to Cadiz on 2 August 1630, the admiral was lauded by the populace, according to onlooker Blas Fernandez de Santiestaban, ‘with such joy and gladness that there is no pen that can describe the scene’.74 Fadriqe’s voyage in 1629 was a success but extremely costly. In a subsequent voyage made in 1632, only 20 per cent of the total cost of 716,000 ducats was covered by freight revenue.75 French privateering bases in Santo Domingo led to a thirty-ship Spanish expedition to capture Tortuga in 1631, after which the French established forts at the western end of Española, the future Haiti. Costs of patrolling against this and other menaces increased. Don Juan Alvarez destroyed another English colony in 1633 at Trinidad with a combined force of 400 Spaniards and fifty Indian archers. A detachment of the 1633 Armada de la Gardia under Lope de Hoces was diverted to take on a Dutch colony at the fortress of St Martin, defended by Dutch regular army troops. The Dutch promptly surrendered and there were no battle casualties. From the mid-1630s Spain was unable to afford flotillas both to the Caribbean and to the beleaguered Portuguese colonists in Brasil. A major expedition to eradicate the Dutch in Brasil at their Recife capital was abandoned in 1634 for lack of funds. After the funding of the expensive transalpine campaigns of Feria

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286  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 in 1633, then the Cardinal Infante in 1634, there was simply no money left in the coffers. Imperial overreach was the problem; too many military tasks with too few resources. Following the French declaration of war on Spain, Tortuga was again attacked in 1635, when the Spaniards, having learnt their lesson about paroling prisoners, hanged 195 colonists. Even then, the French escapees set up again on Tierra Grande and re-established control over Tortuga and thirteen other islands by 1642, with a population of 7,000. Despite Spanish attentions, the colonists kept returning, so that by 1640 the joint British populations of San Cristóbal (St Kitts) and Nieves were about 20,000. The English population of the West Indies surged to 37,000 by 1643.76

Sugar and slaves

Not surprisingly, the Dutch wanted to take over both the sugar and the slave trades. Demand for slaves was high in the Spanish Caribbean where labour shortages meant that wage labour rates in Havana, Santo Domingo or Cartagena were three times those in Spain. Another demand pull for slaves was the Cerro Rico silver mine at Potosi. Sugar production in the Portuguese Empire in 1588 had totalled 240,000 arrobas per annum, but by 1614 had reached 700,000 arrobas per annum, about 10,000 tons. During the Spanish-Dutch Truce of 1609–1621, annual sailings of westbound sugar ships numbered 130, 75 and 30 from Recife, Bahia and Rio respectively. By 1627–28 there were 200 sugar mills in Brasil, most of them in the north-east, and 300 sugar ships per annum carrying 70,000 to 80,000 chests of sugar worth 4 million cruzados; 80,000 slaves worked Brasilian estates in appalling conditions. In 1627, at 3,500,000 cruzados per annum, sugar revenue accounted for 40 per cent of total Portuguese state revenue.77 Sugar business was one of the richest trades in the world, second only to spice; the Dutch wanted it. The Dutch needed feedstock for the major sugar-refining industry in Amsterdam. There was high demand for slaves from Spanish America for farm work, mining and domestic service. The slave populations in the Americas totalled 325,000 in 1640. Demand was high and ordinary replacement needs from ‘wastage’ has been estimated at 3 to 6 per cent per annum. Slave shipment volumes increased accordingly. Up to 79 ships per year were needed to transport them, with one ship carrying 200 to 500 of the human merchandise. Losses on voyages were high, although recent research on the slave trade shows that losses of merchant seamen were as great as slave losses. Portuguese based in Luanda were the main shippers of slaves, but from 1621 the Dutch increasingly muscled in on the trades and attacked Portuguese entrepôts and forts at Benguela and West Africa. Figures for new world imports dropped slightly from 1621 to 1650 to 9,800 per annum from 10,000 per annum in the preceding period, before jumping after the Peace of Westphalia by 30 per cent from 1651 to 1675.78

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Bahia 1624–1625

The population of Brasil, which boasted 50,000 Portuguese and the same number of mestizo, was boosted by emigration from overpopulated Madeira and the Azores, as well as the riff-raff of Portugal, ‘exiles, bankrupts and convicts’.79 Booming demand for sugar made Brasil an attractive target for the Dutch. Opportunities in the Americas were also important for religious reasons. A fiery sermon given in 1623 on Saint Thomas’s Day by Father Bartolomeu Guerreiro, a Jesuit, in the Royal Chapel in Lisbon warned his royal audience of the Dutch threat: ‘And I have lived to see the banners of Maurice of Nassau, a heretic and damned apostate and son of another, lord of all the seas in the place of the Wounds of the Redeemer.’77 After sending twenty-four armed merchantmen, the WIC first conquered Bahia in 1624. There was little resistance to the overwhelming force, which suddenly and unexpectedly arrived before the city gates. The capital city, Salvador, was surrendered intact. Following their ouster from Salvador, the Portuguese in Brasil immediately started a campaign of guerrilla resistance in the Reconcavo hinterland, aiming to deny the Dutch any enjoyment of the plantation economy. Legendary Brasilian leader de Sa rose to prominence at this time and another, Vieira, describes what happened when Van Dort, the Dutch field commander, made a foray into the countryside. He was ‘surprised by savage Indians, Portuguese and blacks, and wounded, along with his horse, with many poisoned arrows.’80 Van Dort’s bodyguard panicked and ran, leaving him to be butchered mercilessly. Madrid and Lisbon immediately determined on a counter-attack to retake Salvador, the prime city of Portugal’s American empire; for Olivares, with their silver treasure trove at stake at Potosi, Dutch presence on the South American landmass could not be tolerated. Loss of revenue from the booming sugar industry was the main reason for prompt action. Given their relative maritime efficiency, the Portuguese left first at the end of November 1624 while the Spanish left on 14 January 1625. Eventually fiftytwo ships, 12,500 men and 1,185 guns rendezvoused off Bahia at Easter 1625.81 Salvador surrendered to naval hero Don Fadrique on 1 May, an event celebrated in Juan Maino-Fray’s painting that hangs in the Prado which includes a depiction of a banner portrayed in Bahia Bay with Olivares standing behind Philip IV. However, far from cementing Portuguese attachment to Spain, the expedition greatly strained relations. Manuel de Menezes, the Portuguese commander, noted that the raising of the Spanish standard over Salvador rather than the Portuguese one ‘was the cause of notable discontent among the Portuguese, who saw it as showing … the hatred of the Castilians for the Portuguese nation’.82 D. Tamayo de Vargas noted that there was uncontrolled looting by Spanish troops, which was the result of temporary loss of control. Manuel de Faria e Sousa pointedly marked the difference in behaviour between the supposed allies: ‘inside there was great pillaging, in which there were Spanish soldiers

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290  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 who seemed like Dutch: the city in being sacked found no difference but that it was by the one and not the other.’83 On leaving, the Spanish commander, Don Fadrique, forced residents to buy back their own homes and belongings or took loot on board as well as valuable cannon from the city’s defences. Not deterred, the Dutch counter-attacked. Recife and the Pernambuco region of northern Brasil were taken in early 1630 by Admiral Corneliszoon’s sixtyfive-ship fleet. After some years of mixed success, there followed from 1637 what was for the Dutch a halcyon period of colonial exploitation and military success under the benign and intelligent rule of Prince Maurits; his policies reconciled the Portuguese planter population; exports of sugar soared. However, his attempt to crush Portuguese Bahia by taking Salvador failed. Prince Maurits’s expedition had left Pernambuco in November 1639 with forty warships, forty-seven other vessels and 5,000 men.84 With Salvador being under siege, a huge eighty-vessel Spanish-Portuguese fleet was sent out to Brasil in 1635. It arrived in time to relieve the city and land troops. Another joint Iberian fleet of forty-one vessels with 1,600 sailors and 1,200 soldiers was sent out in 1639 with orders to capture Dutch Recife. After campaign delays, it fought a Dutch fleet of similar strength in an inconclusive five-day engagement in January 1640 off the island of Itamaraca. Each side lost several ships. Rebuffed and unable to land troops, the armada was forced to return to Spain where the commander was arrested. It was a bitter blow for the increasingly alienated Portuguese. It was Spain’s last significant fleet operation against Dutch Brasil. In various battles around the world between 1638 and 1639, the Spanish lost 100 warships and 20,000 irreplaceable naval personnel.85 Despite its size, the attempted Spanish-Portuguese counter-offensive to recover the whole of Brasil failed, so the campaign resulted in increasing anger and bitterness in Lisbon and possibly despair when the joint fleet, including Portugal’s most powerful warships, was destroyed at the Battle of the Downs shortly afterwards. If the Spanish could not recover or protect key Portuguese interests, if the Spanish wasted Portuguese assets on operations off Flanders irrelevant to Lisbon’s interests, what was the point of being part of Habsburg Spain? Itamaraca was another staging post on the way to the revolt in Lisbon a year later: that revolt would force Spain out of the Thirty Years War, split the Habsburg alliance, and end Habsburg dominion in Europe.

The battles for El Mina and the Gold Coast 1600–1625

By 1621 forty Dutch ships were visiting the ‘Gold Coast’ every year, laying waste also to the sugar island of Sao Tome, whose inhabitants emigrated with their skills to Brasil. Their main target was the gold and slave trading hub at El Mina. When in 1625 the Dutch appeared again with a powerful fleet of fifteen ships, they landed on the nearby coast of El Mina with 1,200 soldiers and moved inland, intending to take the fortress in the rear while the fleet pounded

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Global War  291 El Mina with over 2,000 cannon balls. However, the attack was rumbled well in advance, so the enterprising Portuguese commander and his African auxiliaries set an ambush in a jungle-covered valley on the approach to the fort. Blundering into the trap, the Dutch were virtually wiped out with just a few hundred reaching the safety of the fleet. A thousand muskets were captured. In response to huge demand for slaves, the Dutch attacked several key trading posts on the West African coast which led eventually to the successful takeover of El Mina in 1638; on this occasion the Dutch were better prepared after the catastrophe of 1624. The hill overlooking the fort was occupied and mounted with cannon; after several days of cannonade the place surrendered. In the rush to total victory after the Portuguese revolution at the end of 1640, the Dutch followed up by capturing other key forts and trading posts on the coast, including Sao Tome in 1641 and the fort at Axim in 1642. The main economic impact of the attacks was that the Dutch took over the Ashanti gold trade, and West African slave trading.

Luanda and ‘The Heart of Darkness’

At the inaugural board meeting of the WIC on 3 August 1623 it was decided by the Herren XIX that the company should attack the Portuguese in Brasil to take over the sugar business. As the symbiotic nature of this business with slavery was well understood, it was agreed that an attempt should also be made on Angola. Conveniently the same fleet could sail together to enact both policies because the trade winds to get most speedily to south-west Africa would take them via the coast of Brasil. In 1614, following the death of the King of the Konga, Portuguese policies and market hunger for slaves induced a more aggressive policy. In particular, the rapacious activities of the governor, Corriera de Sousa, had led him to align himself with the warlike and mercenary Jaga tribe. To increase the flow of business, Portuguese policy aimed at encouraging inter-tribal war to induce a sort of ‘social fracking’ which would release slaves from the frissures in tribal society as they fought one another. Feeling threatened by the Dutch, Catholic Prince Soyo of the Kongo sent messages to the Dutch asking them for an alliance to destroy Portuguese power. He wrote, ‘If the prince of Orange would send some four or five warships along with five or six hundred soldiers to secure the water and get rid of the Portuguese on the coast,’ he would ‘pay for the cost of the ships and the soldiers in gold, silver and ivory.’86 Having decided to attack Portuguese Africa at their inaugural board meeting, fortune smiled on the West India Company because conflict in Africa seemed to offer the perfect opening for their schemes. A report of WIC to the Estates General of the Dutch Republic of 27 October 1623 records the consideration of Prince Soyo’s request and of an official report of recommendation for the project. However, before the campaign could be

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292  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 launched the political situation had changed; a new Portuguese governor changed the policies of the former. Peace with the Konga was re-established. The opportunity for the Dutch passed for now, but some fifteen years later precisely the same dynamics would be in place again for the opportunistic WIC. Their strategy was based on the same premise that had failed in 1624. Commanded by Admiral Cornelis Jol with twenty-one ships and 3,000 men from Recife, the fleet found the narrow entrance to the bay of Luanda. Jol landed 2,145 troops at Luanda which surrendered after a brief siege. On 28 March 1638, Christianised King Garcia of the Kongo signed a treaty of military alliance with the Dutch. However, Konga’s king was only really interested in Dutch help in his civil war, so practical aid to his ally’s fight with the Portuguese was limited. Dutch victory proved hollow because the slave trade collapsed due to Portuguese unconquered garrisons in the strongly fortified slave markets of the interior. Despite their alliance with the formidable Queen Nzinga of the Mtamba and several significant victories over the Portuguese and their allies it was to no avail. Nevertheless, it was a serious loss to Portugal too, and there was no help from Spain. There followed ten years of jungle warfare at the end of which the Portuguese under Brasilian magnate Salvador da Sa won back their Luanda without any assistance when the Dutch and Queen Nzinga were occupied in the interior at the siege of Massangano.

Mozambique and Mombasa

Mombasa and Mozambique were of fairly small importance to the Portuguese trading system, accounting for just 117 million cruzados (5 per cent) of the Estado’s trading investment in 1634 but gold, slaves and ivory provided a lucrative trade flow to Goa nonetheless and an outward cargo that was increasingly difficult to find after the decline in copper exports from Europe in the second and third decades of the seventeenth century as it was replaced in Indian markets by copper shipped out of Japan. A first attack, made by the Dutch in 1604, was beaten off; this was a precursor to two sieges of Portuguese possessions on Mozambique Island in 1607 and 1608, as the Dutch sought to capture these vital revictualling depots. Both attacks failed. Dutch and English ships used ad hoc bases and inlets around the Cape, or in the many rivers or islands around untamed Madagascar’s west coast. Dutch and English ships lurked in these regions, ready to pick off Portuguese naus as they lumbered round the Cape and through the Mozambique Channel. In 1609 there was a sea battle between two Portuguese carracks and English and Dutch ships. In another sea battle off St Helena in 1613, the Portuguese sank a Dutch ‘return-ship’. Another Anglo-Dutch success was scored in July 1622 with the destruction of a Portuguese squadron off Mozambique, but it had no effect because the Portuguese held on to their colony.

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End of Imperium

The ideal of the global Christian Imperium was first envisaged when, under papal guidance, Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. It was reinforced when Philip II took over the Portuguese monarchy in 1580. However, the concept, which was only ever theoretical in a world without good knowledge of China, India, Persia and Japan, was doomed as soon as Oldenbarneveldt devised his grand strategy of indirect warfare by attacking the Imperium’s economic assets around the world. By 1610 the Imperium’s grip on Asian trade, never by any means a monopoly, had been broken by superior Dutch and English seapower. A Jesuit prisoner captured at the Formosan fortress, San Salvador, in 1642 noted that: The power which the Dutch enemy possess in those regions … is greater than we could imagine of them. According to what I myself have seen … the Dutch have at this time more than one hundred and fifty ships and pataches, at a moderate estimate – all equipped and provided by seamen, soldiers, artillery and other necessary supplies.87 The WIC and freebooting English and French adventurers would loosen the Imperium’s grip on its Atlantic and Caribbean assets. Although the Portuguese and Spanish empires showed considerable robustness in defence of Brasil against the enormous power and resources of the Dutch, it was less the reduction in trade which became the problem for the Imperium, but the rising costs of defence which meant that the large surpluses produced by the South American bullion, Brasil, Angola and the Estado da India, turned into deficits by 1630. Spanish military effectiveness against the French-Dutch and Swedish alliance in Europe was badly impaired by the global war of attrition. The disastrous Battle of the Downs in 1639, where the Spanish-led Portuguese fleet was destroyed, was the final nail in the coffin for Spanish credibility in Lisbon. Failure to protect Portuguese interests and Spanish demands on Lisbon for resources to prop up their interests in Europe led to the revolution in 1640, an event that shattered any remaining pretensions to a global Habsburg Imperium.   Financial overstretch induced by Spanish and Portuguese colonial defence needs, led to political mistakes by Olivares as he scrabbled in desperation for resources both in cash and manpower. By making arbitrary and sometimes unfair demands on Catalonia and Portugal he provoked major revolutions on the Iberian Peninsula, events so catastrophic as to force him to sue for peace and exit the war. With Vienna’s key ally forced to make a peace and so financially weakened as to be unable to offer any significant support, the Emperor and his Bavarian ally would have to fight alone against the Swedes, French, Hessians and others in a war of attrition that became unwinnable.

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Chapter XVI

Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution

F

rancisco de Melo was travelling through Germany from his ambassadorial posting in Vienna to his new appointment as military commander and viceroy in the Netherlands when, with Polonius-like gravitas, he penned these Shakespearean-like lines to Olivares: ‘Like malign fevers, sir, the epilepsy of republics and disobedience to princes runs through the world.’1 Prescient words because shortly after, on 26 October 1640, the era of revolution began to spread like a rogue virus. Wars of attrition are often accompanied by social upheaval. The Franco-Habsburg war was no exception. They test societies to breaking point. As in the First World War, there were mutinies and revolutions brought on by the destruction of social cohesion, itself due to high taxes, devastating casualty lists, poor conditions of service for soldiers, despotic political/religious actions and the development of new political movements or ideas. Every major participant in the Thirty Years War suffered significant social unrest; many of these, the Empire, Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Denmark, England, France, Hungary, Scotland, Savoy, Switzerland, Spain [Portugal, Catalonia] suffered revolutions and/or civil wars as a result of the international conflict. There were also revolutions in Spanish controlled Napoli and Sicily. Well-managed Sweden and Bavaria suffered some serious social unrest. Even the Dutch Republic was not exempt, despite wealth and employment generated by war; in 1617 a coup d’etat by the Prince of Orange had resulted in the arrest and execution of the great statesman Oldenbarnevelt; an event that created long lasting ramifications and stresses in Dutch society. These revolutions and disturbances had an important impact on how the war played out militarily and diplomatically.

The Pyrenees front 1637–1640 and siege of Salces

There had been desultory fighting in the south since 1636. In August 1637 the French defeated the Spanish incursion in Languedoc at the battle of Leucate, a fortified peninsula fronted by an escarpment near the Roussillon border on the Mediterranean coast. In a bloody assault the heights were taken, after which the Spanish evacuated the place during the night for their home province of Roussillon, losing 1,000 men by drowning. During the storm, each side suffered about 1,200 killed. Du Barry emerged from the besieged fortress with just fifty men. This French victory confirmed a shift in focus of French strategy

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   295 southwards to the Languedoc and away from Flanders and the Atlantic coast, following the humiliating defeat and retreat at Fuenterrabia. The Prince de Bourbon and the Marshal de Schomberg invaded Roussillon with 14,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, marching into the province over the high ground rather than along the beach which was protected by Fort SaintAnge. Lieutenant Campion of the Normandie Regiment was with them. The mountain route was protected by the fortress of Salces which was to be the object of the campaign. Built in the plain of Roussillon, it was, according to Campion, the strongest fortress in Europe and the gateway to Spain. Low slung, its walls were thirty-six-feet thick and its parapet sixteen feet. They were ‘cannon proof and, additionally, ‘there were four towers of the same thickness. … the fosse was one of the largest and deepest, dry and faced with brick and an excellent counterscarp’, noted Campion in awe. Bastions at the four corners were round in shape, quite different from the angularity of the latest designs. The infantry must have been horrified at the sight of it; its formidable mass stands intact today. Nonetheless, Campion’s regiment led the successful storming party after the counterscarp had been taken and the walls mined. Campion, armed with a half-pike, following with difficulty through the breach, followed by the most resolute of our soldiers. An enemy captain who guarded the breach with many soldiers, rushed at us violently but he was soon killed along with his most determined men … We pushed on vigorously but as we crossed the courtyard, a volley of musket fire rang out from the central keep, one shot of which passed under de Troisville’s right arm behind the breastplate and killed him.2 The fortress surrendered soon after. By using Catalonia as a base for the defence of Roussillon, Olivares hoped to secure the political integration of this recalcitrant province. So the Spanish threw massive resources into the recovery of Salces. Heavily outnumbered, the French army, reduced by desertion and disease to just 8,000 men, was soon facing an army of 14,000 including an escort of 3,000 cavalry. The prospect of being surrounded and forced to surrender, or being wiped out if they retreated across the plain to the safety of the mountains and the French border, was very real, so they planned to escape. Moving quietly on a dark night, the French army retreated across the plain. Challenged once by a small cavalry force, the army managed to reach the mountains and the Spanish forces in pursuit did no more than shadow their retreat over the hills. Caught unawares, the Spanish army had missed the chance of an annihilating victory. The French garrison in Salces was left to fend off the besieging Spanish. In response, Prince Condé (senior) raised a large army of 26,000 to relieve the French garrison. Intending to deliver a sudden attack to relieve the garrison,

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296  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 the French army set off in fine clear weather, leaving behind their capes. Then everything changed; as night fell there was a downpour of biblical proportions ‘with a violence never before witnessed in this country’3,4 as they crossed the mountains. The rain continued for twenty-four hours; there was no cover and no wood to burn to warm the soldiers who were now sodden and freezing. Truly, it was defeat by the weather. Some reports estimate that the effect on the troops and the roads was so brutal that 23,500 of them deserted during a chaotic, rain-induced retreat. ‘The bad weather lasted till the following day. Only 6,000 men could be rallied. It was the first time in history that an army had suffered a major defeat due solely to rain,5 noted de Campion laconically. Another more determined relief effort was tried; looking down from the mountain the French could see the enemy manning fortified lines of contravallation around Salces with infantry in three lines behind the defences, and behind them cavalry – 12,000 men and 2,000 cavalry. Campion’s account of the assaults is not too dissimilar to a description of attacks on the first day of the Somme 1916: The Prince of Condé [the elder] … saw as from a theatre, everything that happened in the plain. When we were in the middle of the plain, almost within reach of the guns, the enemy fired all their guns loaded with grapeshot, and made at the same time a volley of the first rank of their musketeers. Reaching the gap, we were taken by fire from all the lines. The remaining officers and soldiers threw themselves into the ditch, where they had more cover from the fire of the Spaniards.6 One exploding shell alone wiped out a section of thirty-six men. Condé’s attempt at relief having failed, Salces surrendered on 6 January 1640. Ironically, the successful siege and their victory over the relieving force were to have dire consequences for the Spanish, a factor that magnified the already searing anger from the enforced quartering of Spanish and Italian troops. Olivares decided to maintain the military effort in Roussillon in the 1640 season. In consequence Castilian and foreign troops in the Spanish army were billeted in Catalonia for a second winter in 1639–40.

Military stalemate, Flanders and Germany, 1639

Much of 1639 was taken up by political action rather than fighting. As he lay dying, Saxe-Weimar bequeathed his army to his four colonels, the main leaders being Rosen and Erlach. He advised them to sell themselves to the highest bidder, but it is unlikely that he expected them to change sides altogether, and Ferdinand’s hopes of recruiting them for the Imperialists were never realistic. Despite personal rivalries the officers’ camaraderie was enough to hold them together. The opportunity was taken to get better terms from the French who had the most money; an agreement was secured on 9 October. The ‘Bernadines’

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   297 retained control of Breisach; it was surety for good behaviour of the French in honouring the new contract. Erlach became Governor of Breisach. Following the capture of Breisach, and Baner’s campaign successes, the weather vane of victory was pointing towards the anti-Habsburg coalition as the momentum of victory started to work in favour of the Franco-Swedish alliance. Swing states positioned themselves politically for an eventual peace settlement. Richelieu secured the further allegiance of Hesse by the Treaty of Dorsten with an increase in subsidy to Princess Amelia’s army. Richelieu’s policy towards Hesse had been tardy and off-hand to say the least, because it was not a priority of the French war effort. No doubt he believed that Calvinist Hesse had few alliance options in the face of the implacable anti-Calvinist and pro-Hesse Darmstadt stance of Vienna. He took them for granted, but was prompted into action from time to time if there was a risk of HessianImperial reconciliation. Feigning ‘womanly weakness’, Amelia would complain vigorously of her desperate situation and let slip the imminence of a peace deal with the Emperor. Only when the possible defection by Hesse became a near reality did Richelieu belatedly demonstrate enthusiasm and concern for his ally. Amelia played similar games with Sweden whose emotional ties to fellow Lutherans in Hesse Darmstadt were closer despite George of Hesse’s patently pro-Imperialist stance. The Dutch could be forgiven for valuing Hesse’s bufferstate role on her Eastern flank, but in fact Hesse had overstayed its welcome in the Republic’s Calvinist client state in East Frisia by six years. So, they fostered trouble for the ruling house: pinpricks, but another distraction for the embattled Landgravine. The Truce, pending negotiation with the Emperor, still held, so Hesse insisted that the Treaty of Dorsten be kept secret until a later date, which enabled her to re-arm and prepare for renewal of the war in secret. In Brunswick the Guelphs resisted pressure from the Swedes to abandon their neutrality, but it was a neutrality which was now leaning towards the Franco-Swedish alliance: Oxenstierna was well informed, realistic as usual about mercurial Guelph motives; writing to Baner on 9 June 1639, ‘The councils of the Duke of Lunenburg are well known to me and are for nought but to gain time to hold with the strongest.’ 7 They would also come to terms with the French while keeping the agreement secret. De Guébriant manoeuvred his French-German army up and down the Rhine, shadowed by the Bavarians. The attempt by the Imperialists to force the Guelphs to join the Emperor petered out as Ferdinand sought to find a peace formula in negotiations with Baner. Little happened militarily in 1639 except for cavalry raids into Franconia, mounted by Swedish General Königsmarck, a Brandenburger, who had replaced General King. The hero of Wittstock left Germany with thirty other Scottish officers and most of the Scots infantry to fight for the covenanters in the Bishops’ wars against Charles I of England. The Scots exodus was a blow to Sweden, though many officers remained with the Swedish army. Baner’s offensive in 1639 was conducted with only 6,000 Reichsthaler in reserve;

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298  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 he clearly aimed to re-supply himself on the march. Baner’s confidence and capacity for improvisation was outstanding. This French campaigning year was once again to focus on the Flanders front with a massive concentration of forces. Regardless of the signal failures of the first four years, this myriad of enemy fortresses was to be the focus for another attack, despite the great successes achieved on the Rhine, where the Habsburgs’ position was now much more vulnerable. As it turned out, 1639 was a disaster for French arms. Châtillon besieged St Omer from March with 30,000 men but in mid-July he was driven off after a battle with a Spanish army of 20,000 in which he lost a further 4,000 men.8 A logical French strategy would have been to reinforce and support the effort on the Eastern frontier, using the base at Breisach to attack Bavaria in order to knock them out of the war. However, they chose a continuation of a failed one. It was a war of attrition with strange parallels to what happened three hundred year later in the same Flanders fields in 1914–18. 1639 saw the last intervention of the Viennese Habsburgs in the war in France; the Emperor was desperate to withdraw Piccolomini from Luxembourg following the Swedish revival under Baner as well as the expanding threat of the French in the Black Forest area after the loss of Breisach. Induced to stay by Spanish subsidy, Piccolomini, joined by Charles of Lorraine, concentrated a force of 14,000. Together they made a surprise attack on the badly outnumbered French army of 10,600 besieging Thionville on 7 June.9 Another vainglorious French aristocratic amateur, the Marquis de Feuquières, fought instead of retreating. In one of the most decisive victories of the war, the French lost 7,000 infantry as prisoners and ‘by my reckoning’, wrote Piccolomini to von Beck after the battle, ‘around a thousand more dead than wounded, several ensigns and cornettes especially all the ensigns of their army fell into our hands and ten canon and all the baggage.’10 It was the last hurrah for significant Habsburg military co-operation because Piccolomini was recalled soon after to meet Baner’s attack on Bohemia. Piccolomini used the victory to claw his way up to another rung in social hierarchy: he was duly rewarded by being created Duke of Amalfi with the gift of 34,000 florins. The Dutch launched their annual offensive in support of the French on 18 June when they crossed the Scheldt to Philippine, a town in the south district of Zeeland, preparatory to an attack on nearby Hulst, twenty kilometres to the west of Antwerp. Facing stiff opposition, the Dutch army sailed back on 31 August 1639 with the aim of switching front to the east. However, the Spanish army was diverted south due to the French army’s advance, so Frederick Henry sailed his army back again. As the Spanish army was occupied with the French attack in the south, Frederick Henry reckoned that he had several days’ leeway to get to Hulst first then seal the town before the relieving army arrived. It would, according to his calculations, take his army four days by barge to get to

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   299 Hulst while the Spanish would need six days to march from southern Flanders/ Artois. In the event the Spanish pipped him to Hulst and slipped in 2,000 reinforcements to the garrison. The Stadholder then did a maritime version of the Grand Old Duke of York – and sailed back again. On the north-east frontier Louis XIII set off again for his annual military ‘game playing’. The operational commander on the spot was another Richelieu relative, La Meilleraye, who was to be supported by Châtillon with his second corps from the St Omer debacle. The chosen target of attack was the town of Hesdin. It was a relatively low risk and unimportant target, but the point was that the King should enjoy his summer outing. With the royal prestige at risk, success needed to be assured. After two mines were exploded beneath its walls the town capitulated on 29 June. With plenty of time before the winter season, Châtillon was able to invade Luxembourg, while other French forces were moved into Flanders to live off enemy territory for the first time. The effects of Piccolomini’s earlier victory in 1639 had now been entirely nullified. Luxembourg, a Spanish stronghold and supply base, was occupied. La Meilleraye was promoted to Marshal.

Spain’s fleet 1630–1640

Spain’s fleet had five strategic purposes. The Fleet of Flanders and privateers should attack Dutch shipping and commercial operations in the North Sea, both the herring fleet and the huge Baltic Sea trade. In the Caribbean, the Armada Guardia from Panama and Cuba was tasked with shepherding back treasure fleets to Seville. In the Mediterranean, the sail and galley fleets were supposed to protect the Spanish and Italian coastline, to act as a deterrent to the Ottomans and to supress the Barbary corsairs. There was also the occasional need to put together special navies to send relief or invasion expeditions to the coast of Brasil to help Portugal ward off the Dutch WIC predators. Lastly, there was a need to contest control of the English Channel and to convoy troopships into Flanders as an alternative to the Spanish Road overland route. There were innumerable sea fights in the course of the Thirty Years War, most of them taking place in the North Sea, in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, or off the coast of Brasil. The cost of building and maintaining those galleon fleets was huge, with maintenance, supply and crewing costs accounting for two-thirds of the total costs, with just one-third for the charter hire or amortisation cost of the vessel. Of the non-ship costs, artillery and gun crews were the greatest cost followed by stores of food and drink, especially dry biscuits. Artillery costs accounted for a third of the budget for the 1629 fleet.11 Spain’s very wide-ranging strategic focus reflected the overstretch that was implicit in its worldview. In the 1620s emphasis had been put on the attack on Dutch commerce, but the increasingly effective WIC meant an increasing commitment to defending the treasure ships and the Caribbean generally, especially after the loss of the Matanzas treasure fleet to Pieter Hein in 1628.

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300  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Intermittently, large flotillas had to be put together in defence of Brasil: an example of the type of action in which the fleet took part was the relief expedition to Pernambuco from Lisbon in 1631 consisting of twenty-six ships and 5,000 men. Troops and supplies were landed after a two-month voyage, then sugar ships were herded into convoy for the return voyage. The WIC fleet of sixteen vessels under Admiral Pater gave chase and a fierce eight-hour battle ensued in which ‘the two flagships grappled and fought hand to hand until the sand on deck was wet with blood. The Dutch flagship caught fire and exploded, and its commander died in the water.’12 Two Dutch ships were lost along with a few hundred men. Spanish losses were 600, mainly on one ship. It was a ‘victorious’ fleet which was rapturously received back in Lisbon but, in reality, the Spanish had, at vast cost, done no more than bolster the resistance to the Dutch who were establishing themselves in Brasil’s richest sugar-producing areas. A typical example of this re-supply operation was the twenty-six-ship fleet that left La Coruña on 19 August 1636, with 4,500 soldiers and 1.5 million ducats of silver. The French fleet came out to challenge them but retired upon the first shooting. Neutral England waved them through and the Dutch were in port; a successful voyage which took only twelve days, ‘without losing a single plank of his Majesty’s ships,’13 boasted Admiral Oquendo. The Spanish defensive strategy in the southern Netherlands began to fall apart after the capture of Breisach in 1638. A surprising result was that naval warfare, already important, became the main focus of the war. The fall of the ‘Gibraltar of the Rhine’ was a terminal blow against the Spanish Road, barring another victory of Nordlingen proportions. In addition, the Dutch had strengthened their hold on the lower Rhine with their successes at Maastricht, Venlo, and Shenkenshans. The background to Olivares’s decision to launch a major naval attack on the channel in 1639 was not a happy one. The Spanish fleets had already suffered some severe reverses in recent times. The French army’s attack on Fuenterrabia in 1638 had encompassed the destruction of the important dockyards at Pasajes, including half-constructed galleons as well as new ones being fitted out. The Spanish in their desperation had hoped they could penetrate the blockade by the ruse of neutrality and flag of convenience. On one occasion, De Tromp attacked an English convoy capturing three of the five English ships, along with 1,500 valuable Spanish soldiers. In late December 1637 a forty-ship fleet under Admiral Hoces delivered 4,000 troops by cannily hugging the coast in the winter season when the Dutch and their blockading patrols would least expect such a venture. Writing of the exploit, one official wrote to his correspondent in Spain, ‘This success has much encouraged us here, especially after such a long wait. Moreover, it has lowered our enemies’ pride for they are bound to lose heart when they see our sailors run such risks, and yet come safely home.’14 The decision to launch a fleet was made in the Junta de Armadas meeting in Olivares’s study on 4 August. It was planned to force through a large

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   301 reinforcement and to challenge and defeat Dutch naval power in the channel, so securing the maritime supremacy needed for the continuous reinforcement and re-supply of Flanders. Olivares knew the risks, which is why he invoked God when he wrote to the Cardinal Infante in Brussels on 2 November. ‘It all depends on God and it is to be expected of him that now that hopes are so low things turn out better than when they were so high.’15 There is a sense of the gambler’s last throw about the letter. On coming to power Olivares had started a vigorous rebuilding programme, which developed a fine new class of galleon of twenty guns, rising to over thirty guns in vessels developed in the 1630s. Towards the end of the war galleons would unusually be around 600 tons, but the Spanish fleet at the Downs included several 1,000-ton vessels deploying sixty cannon.16 When in 1625 Martin de Arana of Bilbao offered to build six galleons of 300 to 500 tons ‘with all the fortifications and perfection necessary for war’17 he was handed a very strict set of construction specifications. Arana’s six ships built in 1625 survived for an average of only thirty-seven months; ship mortgage loans were only given for four-year terms. As with naval vessels in modern times, the cost of refits was high, accounting for up to 75 per cent of original cost.18 The evidence is that Dutch ships lasted up to three times longer.19 In 1639 the king was complaining that the Spanish fleet spent most of its time in port. The fleet suffered from many institutional and financial problems. These included the regular provision of sailing stores including sails, tar, rope and other naval accoutrements, including gunpowder and iron ore for gun manufacture, all of which had to be imported from northern Europe/the Baltic and paid for in silver. The Spanish navy was hit hard by the effects of exchange control. As Goodman notes in Spanish Naval Power 1589–1665, ‘the vellon was useless for a whole range of the Monarchy’s naval requirements. The foreign merchants who brought naval stores, the Flemings who served in the fleet had to be paid in silver.’20 Carla Rahn Philips points out in Six Galleons for the King of Spain that the admirals and administrators performed wonders to run their fleets as well as they did in the face of severe financial and logistical problems. ‘With the chronic shortage of ready cash and the extension of Spanish forces around the globe,’ writes Philips, ‘the successful provisioning of each year’s Indies fleets would continue to be a minor miracle.’21 Vessel construction asientos (contracts) were often taken up by aristocrats in the coastal regions or professional shipbuilders like Marin Arena from Santander who built seventeen galleons for the King in the mid 1620s with the contract for the first six vessels costing 80,000 ducats. 22 Technology generally lagged behind the Dutch in design and sailing rig, but not by much; more importantly the Spanish lagged in the development of anti-seaworm equipment. Spanish losses from sinking, accidents and wrecking as a result of poor seamanship and inferior vessels were also high; an example was the wrecking of eleven naval ships on

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302  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Minorca in 1635. If maintenance in Havana was not up to par, a galleon would sometimes spring a leak and sink in mid-ocean, especially on the last homeward leg. Spanish ships generally lasted only four to five years as against ten to twelve for Dutch ships. Fighting in the colonies the situation was more equal, as was demonstrated by various Spanish and Portuguese victories and drawn battles, but against the Dutch home fleet in the strategic battleground of the channel, the Spanish fleet would operate at a major disadvantage. The Dutch were much closer to their naval bases for re-supply of shot and powder. In addition, a long sea voyage from Spain would significantly reduce the seaworthiness and handling of the Spanish ships, with un-caulked hulls slowing speeds due to accumulations of barnacles and sea worm, worn-out sails, ropes and equipment. So the odds would be against the Spanish even if they had equal fighting efficiency. When matched in the large battles off the coast of Brasil, with both fleets far from home, the Spanish were the equal of the Dutch in fighting quality; likewise, the Portuguese in Asia. What gave the Dutch command of the seas was the sheer number of ships, superior build and their greater seaworthiness. Spain spent a significant part of its total budget on the navy. A typical naval budget from October 1636 to October 1637 was approximately 2,000,000 escudos, about 18 per cent of Spain’s total budget, of which about 5 per cent was allocated to new shipbuilding, and the balance about 13 per cent to current expenditure, including maintenance, refits, stores, equipment and crew costs.23 This was a fairly normal 1:2 to 1:3 ratio. However, their main enemy, the vastly richer Dutch Republic, were spending two thirds of their military budget on the navy and could also draw on the privately-financed warships of the WIC and VOC; moreover, their costs of building, maintenance and store provision were much lower because it could be directly provided in Amsterdam, or from Dutch trade in northern Europe, or from the ships and repairs from their highly efficient yards. Spain’s imperial commitments were effectively deprived of much-needed resources by the fact that 40 per cent of the entire budget was spent on the Flanders army alone. In a war of naval attrition, the odds were stacked against Spain.

The Battle of the Downs, 18 September to 21 October, 1639

The Battle of the Downs was one of the decisive battles of the Thirty Years War. A Spanish fleet, composed of about sixty-seven naval vessels plus thirty transports carrying 23,000 men (6,000 crew, 8,000 marines and 8,500 soldiers for Flanders), was sighted off Beachy Head on 18 September 1639. Having already received information on the Spanish preparations, which could scarcely be hidden, the Dutch were ready. Intelligence was not hard to come by because the Spanish depended on the Dutch for their naval supplies. The Spanish fleet included twenty-four armed merchantmen and carried 2,000 cannon. Tromp’s smaller fleet of seventeen vessels met them. Disadvantaged, Tromp

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   303 was downwind of the enemy. To maximise firepower the Dutch deployed in a novel formation called ‘line of battle’, which was to become so familiar in future centuries. Dutch vessels were typically much better armed and on average delivered greater firepower at the start of the war; typical of Dutch fluyte ships was the Charltas, which took part in the Battle of the Downs, with even heavier guns, thirty in all including four bronze 24-pounders and six bronze 18-pounders. Built in 1632, it was only scrapped in 1649. 24 Since the opening decades of the seventeenth century, firepower per ship had come into rough parity by 1630, after Olivarez’s rebuilding programe including the series of six 24-gun galleons commissioned in 1625 and built by Arana Oquendo, the experienced admiral commanding the Spanish fleet, bore down on the Dutch intending to overwhelm them in a close engagement but Tromp turned away, having released a full fleet broadside. He turned again, coming back into the wind and released a second broadside, tacked and released a third as the now bedraggled Spanish fleet sped by. One Dutch ship blew up, but Oquendo was unable to get to grips with Tromp’s better-manned fleet. Thereafter, there was a running battle until Oquendo hove to and dropped anchor to regroup on the French coast. On 19 October the battle recommenced with the wind having changed round to a southerly direction. Now the Dutch held the weather gauge so the Spanish could make little headway as they were close-hauled to the wind and suffered some damage to their rigging masts and sails from Dutch broadsides. They were trying to make for the Flemish coast but, with the wind against them, were forced to give up and allow the wind to blow them back to Dover to an anchorage off the English Downs, after which the battle is named. In the sheltered waters of the roadstead between the Downs and Goodwin Sands, an English squadron commanded by Sir John Pennington offered them protection. He warned both sides not to fight in English territorial waters. Oquendo sensibly detached his Dunkirker frigates to Flanders with 3,000 troops and the bullion to pay for troop deployment in Flanders. He stayed in position through the night to await events. Tromp sailed over to Calais and refreshed his supplies of gunpowder from his French allies. Twelve more ships joined him. On the next day he blocked the northern exit of the roadstead, following orders from the States General to take no heed of English neutrality, which was in any case tilted towards Spain. The Spanish fleet swung uselessly and uncomfortably at anchor. As several weeks passed, with the Dutch fleet replenished and growing ever stronger to a fleet of 103 plus thirteen fire-ships, Oquendo’s position was looking increasingly precarious. When the gales cleared, the Dutch were ready to attack on 21 October. Tromp describes the action: at about half-past eight we opened fire on the enemy who cut their cables and made sail; shortly after the action began it became very misty, so that we remained driving with our sails laid back on the mast for a good

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304  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 half-hour, until it began to clear somewhat, so that we saw the enemy; we fought him again and drove the enemy, to the total of 23 ashore, close under the castles.25 Brushing off the halfhearted attempt at intervention by the small English fleet, Tromp’s fleet bore down on the Spanish, then opened fire at 8.30 a.m. Then they sent in the fireships; trying to escape them, some Spanish ships ran aground, others beached as Oquendo cut loose with twenty galleons and drew off the Dutch fleet. London’s lively press reported that ‘The Spanish seamen performed their service and fought as long as there was any hope’. 26 Crowds of English on the shoreline, revelling in the spectacle of sinking Spanish ships despite the pro-Spanish policy of Charles’s government, cheered and celebrated the Spanish defeat, which demonstrated the popular Protestant reaction to misfortunes of the traditional enemy. In a running battle the Spanish lost thirty-two naval vessels and forty vessels overall, 68 per cent of the fleet representing about 15,000 tons, with a loss in manpower of between 7,000 to 10,000 men. One hundred hired English crew were blown to smithereens on one Spanish ship, hardly a good return on their time having been ‘hired for money at half a crown a day’. 27 Oquendo personally commanded his ship, aided by Admiral Horna who fought on after losing an eye, against four enemy ships. Seventeen galleons were eventually able to make passage to Mardyk, including Oquendo’s flagship, Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion y Santiago, which was peppered with 1,700 round-shot hits. The great Portuguese flagship Santa Theresa, commanded by Admiral Lope de Hoces, was sunk after holding off eight enemy ships for several hours before being incinerated by a fireship. The Admiral and 600 men were killed. Another captain fought on until there were only thirteen men left alive on his ship. Dutch losses were also high. Ten vessels were sunk and 1,000 men lost. The Spanish fleet was saved from total annihilation by the arrival of the Flanders Fleet from Dunkirk. It was a serious defeat, but most of the 8,500 troop reinforcements had already made it across the Channel in small boats chartered from England, along with most of the bullion to pay the army of Flanders. Nonetheless it was the last great challenge to Dutch naval supremacy in the Channel. ‘Nothing remains for me but to die,’ wrote Oquendo.28 He did so a few months later. The strategic impact of the victory was fatal to Spain’s chances of winning the war. From here on any reinforcements for Flanders had to come in penny packets in hazardous sea voyages. Spanish support for Flanders would be made very difficult because both land and sea routes were now blocked to anything except a trickle. If the Flemish army were to suffer any major defeat, defence would become difficult, if not impossible; offensive land action in Flanders consequently became increasingly arduous. Control of the English Channel was decisively surrendered to the Dutch.

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   305

Dunkirkers: Spanish maritime raiders 1630–1646

The ordinance setting up a system for privateering was issued in a printed Cedula in December 1621: it was inspired by Olivares’s understanding of economic warfare, and the need to attack the Dutch trading system, the source of Dutch. Absolute numbers of Dutch ships lost during the Thirty Years War were about 3,500, 20 per cent higher than those of the UK in 1939–45. From 1627 to 1638 overall prizes seized ran between 150–200 vessels per annum with a bumper year in 1632 when about 275 prizes were taken. This high level of success was maintained even after the Battle of the Downs and other naval setbacks of the late 1630s, with seizures still running at 150–200 per annum from 1640 to 1646, despite the introductions of convoys defended by naval vessels. Seventy privateer vessels were lost in combat over the period. Despite great success with his maritime policy, Dutch economic power could not be contained, just as Dönitz’s U-boats could neither restrain the flood of Liberty ships nor the produce of the United States’ enormous economy. So, too, average exports from the Baltic increased by over 700 per cent from 1620 to 1650;29 perhaps as much as 80 per cent of this was carried in Dutch-owned vessels. The elimination of Dunkirk’s economic threat became a matter of priority in strategic planning between France and the Republic. A spy reported to Madrid in 1637, ‘They realise here that Dunkirk alone is capable of ruining the greater part of their seagoing business, and putting up their costs [insurance] to twice the present rate.’30 Also in 1637 a Spanish sailor noted that ‘The merchants of London cry out that their business is lost through the activities of this port’.31 Olivares had identified the way to bring the Dutch to their knees, but resources were not focused enough on the only strategy which could have won the war or at least secured a peace with reputation. If the Imperialists and Poland together had been able to control the Baltic south coast as Olivares had planned, then the Dutch might well have been forced to sue for peace. The Spanish naval contribution out of Dunkirk, which ran at about 10 to 20 per cent of total Dunkirk achievements from 1626 to 1638, petered out in the 1640s when the Flanders fleet was sent to the Caribbean to protect Spanish colonies, leaving the task of attacking the Dutch at sea to the privateers. Under the impact of the Dutch threat in the Caribbean to the treasure flotillas, the Flanders Fleet was increasingly used for Atlantic treasure-ship convoy duty. The Flanders Fleet was withdrawn altogether to cover the heavy losses incurred by the disaster of the Downs and the expedition to Brasil in 1640. That Spain was declining as a major maritime power was well understood at the time; as the English ambassador said, ‘They are likely to be ill provided at sea next year and so every year worse and worse, for this want of mariners is a terrible difficulty.’32 (1639) The battles of the Downs and Itamarca marked the last great efforts by Spain to change the naval balance of power. Everything was thrown into the scales but the balance tipped decisively in favour of the Dutch. Olivares had made the gambler’s last throw.

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306  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

Campaign in Germany 1640 and Amelia returns home

By early 1640 the military situation had improved enough for Landgravine Amelia to return to Kassel for the first time in six years. In her peripatetic existence in exile she had moved her court four times. On an occasion of triumph and pathos her husband, youngest son and a daughter were laid to rest in an extravagant state funeral, which underlined the legitimacy and prestige of the House of Hesse. The 1640 campaigning season found the adversaries in northern Germany worn out by a decade of attrition, short of finance and military recruits. With the Emperor able to muster a free field army of only 12,000, the swing states of Hesse and the Guelphs of Brunswick could hardly be intimidated. The Guelph ambassador, writing to Baner after Chemnitz, made plain his distaste at having to choose sides ‘by the like miserable conditions was Germany brought to its present necessity; the annals of neutrality booted not’33 (i.e. neutrality is not an option which will save you). Both states had been sheltering for several years behind truces and peace negotiations but, in April 1640, they came into the open on the side of France and Sweden. As a political decision in the face of overwhelming German and domestic pressure against further war in the Empire, Amelia’s decision was an impressive display of willpower and confidence in her operational control over the levers of power. To support these major political moves in Germany, de Guébriant was sent to join with the new allies, Hesse and the Brunswick Guelphs. A notable political event was the defection of the Hessian commander Melander to Vienna in December 1640 over Amelia’s decision not to make peace with the Emperor, despite his pension having been doubled by Richelieu: Ferdinand trumped it. Having been formally ennobled by the Emperor in 1608, the self-made former peasant was made a prince of the Empire. Places which hosted Hessian troops included Frisia, Paderborn and Munster, Brandenburg, Cologne, Mainz, Neuburg and Hesse Darmstadt. Amelia was an independent ‘warlord’, with power derived from her contribution-financed army of occupation. The Hessians provided 4,000 troops and Brunswick 6,000 to Baner’s field army of 20,000. The Guelph defection from the putative Imperial alliance and Hesse’s resumption of their ‘rebellion’ had been facilitated by Sweden’s military manoeuvres, especially Baner’s success at Chemnitz and Brandies in 1639. However, the alliance of forces at Erfurt was not a happy one. In 1640 little was achieved in the face of Piccolomini’s steadfast entrenchment at Saalfeld. Hessians raided aggressively in the Westphalia region. Although there were no substantive changes in the military position, the fact of Hesse’s commitment to the French alliance under the Treaty of Dosten swung dominance in north Germany to the Franco-Swedish alliance.

The Artois–Luxembourg front, the siege of Arras, 1640

For Louis XIII’s and the court’s summer entertainment in 1640 it was decided that the main French army would attack Arras, the key fortress city of the

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   307 Artois area. As usual the attack would be covered by a Dutch offensive in the north of Flanders. They were offered the increased sum of 1.5 million guilders that probably reflected the importance of the French target and the fact that Louis XIII would be in attendance. With the king in attendance again there would be no room for failure. By way of encouragement, Richelieu made it clear to the commanders that ‘you will answer with your heads if you do not take Arras’. At stake at Arras was not just the progress of war but also the political future of Richelieu; his power and prestige would be compromised if the king was personally humiliated by failure in the army that he accompanied. De Bussy records that the army mustered at Corbie before starting the siege. Short of his complement by 7,000 men, the duc de Châtillon had failed at St Omer in 1638, so there was already ‘bad blood’ between him and Richelieu. Both Louis XIII and the Cardinal were in attendance at Arras, where there were 32,000 troops when the siege was opened on 1 July; this ran down to 18,000 within a month, so the siege’s outcome hung in the balance.34 On the other side the Spanish were determined and served by a feisty commander, Colonel Owen. Under pressure to capture the place quickly, French volunteers, including the king’s young favourite Cinq Mars, were thrown at the breach in the fortress, an action in which the duc d’Enghien, the young Condé, distinguished himself, unlike Cinq Mars, who exhibited a whiff of cowardice.35 Richelieu’s sarcastic teasing of Cinq Mars on this matter in front of the king would in due course rebound terribly. A personal slight to a vain young man would trigger a most serious political crisis and another attempt at a Spanishbacked dévot coup d’etat. Richelieu strained every sinew of the French war economy, depleting or diverting resources due to other fronts, in order to supply the wilting French besiegers. With the city on the brink and mines being dug under the bastion walls, nobody knew which side would crack first. Just in time, on 2 August, the French managed to push through a supply convoy of 1,500 wagons guarded by 2,000 troops, and shepherded by a whole army of 19,000 under du Hallier who had been forced to abandon an offensive against Lorraine to save the honour of the king. 40 The fall of the city now looked imminent, but Irish mercenary and commandant, O’Neill, attempted one last effort to take the French forward trenches and destroy the mines which the Spanish knew were being dug. On 8 August the defenders launched a major sortie but, after fierce fighting, they were beaten back. It was during this fight that Cyrano de Bergerac, the longnosed subject of a French play, suffered a severe neck wound. As the mines were about to be sprung to open up a breach, O’Neill surrendered. The king returned to Paris. Defence minister de Noyers requested Châtillon to continue the campaign but he was rebuffed by the crusty old marshal on 28 August: ‘The best and most honourable events occurred this year [the capture of Arras]. The impracticability

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308  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 of foraging and sickness will soon be putting pressure on us. I must risk your reproaches for never having done enough … I am preparing with all my patience and suffering to prove it.’36 Châtillon, in his own opinion, had done enough for the ‘season’, but it was still summer. Typical of the amateurism of French aristocrat-generals, it is not imaginable that the professional armies of Sweden or Spain would behave in such a manner, losing an opportunity to follow up a victory. The victory at Arras was just part of the long grind which was wearing down the Spanish. After the siege de Bussy-Rabutin was required to parade his troops before the king who watched from the ramparts. Taking a pike in hand de Bussy-Rabutin led his regiment but was criticised by the king for doing so because he should have led them on horseback. ‘It was not in good style,’ remarked the king, who often seemed more impressed by the show of things than the substance.37 Raids were made by Croat and Comtois cavalry in the region of Dijon across from the Spanish Franché-Comte border between 25 September and 4 December 1640.38 Grain, livestock and cattle rustling were the main aims, along with usual gratuitous plundering and destruction. In 1641 light cavalry pillaged a further six villages between January and July; however the longawaited counter-offensive, after six years of raids and exactions in the Burgundy region, led to the taking of the Comtois garrison at Jonvelle, one of the last Spanish holdout bastions in a territory that had been largely overrun in previous campaigns. However, extensive raiding by up to 300 Croat and Comtois cavalry would resume throughout 1642 and at a lower level in 1643, before being finally suppressed by Turenne’s army in 1644.

Dutch campaign 1640

Meanwhile the Dutch decided to make an attempt on Bruges with an army of 26,000. An advance corps of 7,000 was shipped over to Philippine, in southern Zeeland (known as Zeeuws Vlaanders), seven kilometres across the Scheldt. The plan was to rush the defences on the way to Bruges, but they were blocked. It was the typical problem of watercourses, which narrowed the lines of approach to key points, which could be defended by few troops. However the target was switched to Hulst, twenty kilometres to the west of Antwerp, which led to a night attack on a key outwork on the approach, when ‘the one party could not properly recognise the other, in part because of the night, in part because abundant shooting that lasted for an hour until the great intensity of the fighting caused everyone to look for his own party’. 39 The fierceness of the battle left about 400 dead on each side, but the Spanish were left in possession. Frederick Henry abandoned the attempt and sailed back in his barges – another disappointing campaigning year. Despite being the economic superpower, military costs were high not least because of high labour costs in the Republic. Total states expenditures were

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   309 16.53 million and the shortfall, which had to be covered by sales of government debt, was 5.68 million.40 Holland suffered the lion’s share of the burden. The failure to bring either victory or peace inevitably had political consequences, with the Estates seeking to reduce army estimates and troop head count. Reductions in army expenditure would undercut Frederick’s political power. However, Frederick Henry was able to delay a strategic change because the southern states bordering the Spanish Netherlands, Zeeland, Utrecht and Gelderland, insisted on land attacks. Nevertheless, the ‘navy first’ argument was gaining ascendancy. The defeat at Hulst seriously undermined Frederick Henry’s position in the Republic.

Regensburg Diet, Campaigns in 1641 and Baner’s last hurrah

The new Emperor’s political initiative for peace in Germany was pushed forward again in the context of the Regensburg Reichstag, which was summoned for the first time in twenty-seven years. It was also a forum for pushing through fund-raising measures; the tax measure was passed by the use of the inbuilt majority of electoral votes, but it was a pyrrhic victory because the great majority of the princes voted against. There was scant chance of collecting the money. Against the wishes of Ferdinand III, the other notable event at the Regensburg Diet was the invitation, which was eventually extended, to rebels, and Peace of Prague holdouts, Hesse and Brunswick. As the most reviled political leader in Germany, the presence of Amelia of Hesse’s delegates was an impressive coup, one which was doubly rewarded when it became clear that the new and young Calvinist Elector of Brandenburg was about to align with her and defect to the Franco-Swedish camp. The most dramatic event of the Regensburg Diet was the audacious surprise foray made by Baner against Regensburg in early January 1641, in an unusual winter campaign. As with many of Baner’s campaigns, it had more of the character of an extended raid in force than a serious attempt at strategic objectives. Baner shelled Regensburg, the city where the Emperor was resident and in conference with the other Electors, but he lacked the heavy artillery or manpower for a siege, so he moved on. Incensed at this impertinence, the Imperialists reacted like an enraged beehive. As usual, they started to concentrate by calling in garrisons while the Bavarians did likewise, even summoning reservists. According to the Abbot, ‘The 28th of January the territorial militia was most urgently called up and commanded to go to Ingolstadt in a hurry.’ A force was being prepared to confront the Swedes who had crossed over the ice to the south side of the Danube. Then the Imperialists had a stroke of meteorological luck: ‘But all at once, there came a warm wind that melted the ice on the Danube, so now the robbing Swedes had their retreat cut off, and not a few who still entrusted themselves to the ice as their sole way of escape drowned with their booty in the Danube,’41 wrote the Abbot gleefully. The Emperor’s army, having

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310  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 mustered and concentrated, counter-attacked in force against the Swedes who, typically, were depleted by their exertions. Making a detour, Baner’s last hurrah ended badly as his army was forced into a helter-skelter retreat back to Saxony via Bohemia in mid-winter, with the loss of 6,000 troops from capture, sickness and desertion. Virtually surrounded at Cham, he ended up abandoning his baggage train and guns in the face of Piccolomini’s hasty concentration of 22,000 troops. Carried in a litter on the retreat, Baner died shortly thereafter, on 10 May 1641. Poison was suspected but Johann Oxenstierna, the Swedish plenipotentiary in Stralsund, remarked sagely, ‘From poison I judge nothing is to be looked for; but an excess of eating and drinking.’42 He might have added ‘and womanising’; his had been a bacchanalian life. Baner’s death was the catalyst for another Swedish army revolt by the colonels that was supported by one of the senior corps commanders, von Puhl, and egged on by others, including the Guelphs of Brunswick. The other senior commanders were Wrangel, a Swede, and Wittenberg, a Finn, but by this time only 7 per cent of the army were Swedish nationals, mainly artillerymen. The negotiations with the colonels lasted through the summer; the anger of many officers was real. Wrangel in a letter to his father on 13 September revealed that ‘One said in my presence that they would hear no more of Swedish Generals’.43 Despite the huffing and puffing, mutiny leaders were eventually bought off by individual bribes, and the hoi poloi by interim payments of nearly 500,000 Reichsthaler, made possible by French subsidies, including an interim advance of 150,000 Reichsthaler from French ambassador d’Avaux’s own pocket. With Baner and Wrangel in the lead, they had all made fortunes, following the example of Horn and de La Gardie before them. Enrichment and incentive through war was Gustavus’s particular method that was later followed by Napoleon. When mercenary captain James Turner visited Stockholm in 1640 to petition about money defrauded in a troop-raising sub-contract, he observed that the capital was ‘much beautified since with these sumptuous and magnificent palaces which the Swedish generals have built, as monuments of these riches they acquired in the long German warre. The navy royall, compos’d of great and tall ships, carrying some 50, some 60, some 70 and some eightie brasse guns.’44

Soissons rebellion, Battle of La Marfee, 9 July 1641

Having returned from an enforced exile after the Chalais plot, Soissons had gone into exile again in 1637, following the discovery of yet another plot involving Gaston to murder Richelieu at Amiens. Since then he had been planning for a combined military strike and rebellion with a network of cohorts at court and in the government, populace and Parlement of Paris. De Chevreuse, who had fetched up in exile at Brussels, having escaped France to go to Madrid and then

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Stalemate on Land; Dutch Supremacy at Sea and Prelude to Revolution   311 London, was the intermediary with the Spanish. Olivares arranged military backing for the planned revolt. In Paris, Abbé de Retz described his entry into the plot; it is an account which provides a rare insight into the mechanics and psyche of the rebel factions in the febrile world of Spanish spies, double agents, traitors, torturers and courtiers; the constant spectre of Cardinal Richelieu and his network of ‘creatures’ terrorised them. De Retz recounted how the Comte de Soissons, … spoke thus: ‘There is nothing but the thrust of a sword or the city of Paris that can rid us of the Cardinal. Had I been at the enterprise of Amiens, I think I should not have missed my blow, as those gentlemen did; it cannot miscarry; I have considered it well. See here what additions I have made to our plan.’45 He passed the written scheme on to de Retz. In exile in the semi-independent Calvinist princedom of Sedan/Verdun, Soissons, a Bourbon, plotted with both the Bouillon and Guise families; this plot would be reinforced by elite Spanish units supplied by General Lamboy. Just one victory and there would be a rising in Paris and a general rebellion, with garrisons at the Bastille and the Arsenal set to rise in support of a general rebellion. ‘The whole city of Paris,’ recounted de Retz, ‘seemed so disposed for an insurrection that we thought ourselves sure of success.’46 The target for de Soissons was the advancing army of General de Châtillon. A key lynchpin in the scheme was the Abbé de Retz, who had a big following in Paris, where he stood in for his absentee uncle, the archbishop; the Abbé was a networker and oppositionist who was full of his own importance; ‘assured that the Spaniards had everything in readiness, I went for the last time to Sedan to take my final instructions. … The secret was kept even to a miracle.’47 The French army at la Marfée was heavily defeated; 7,000 Spanish troops coalesced with 3,000 French rebels under the Comte de Soissons. When Soissons’s forces attacked the French army in the flank and rear the French infantry fled in panic. France seemed set for a major revolt and coup d’etat. At La Marfée, near Sedan, on 9 July 1641, amidst the carnage of battle and the acrid gunpowder smoke, a group of horsemen surveyed the scene in triumph. Unfortunately, the victorious Soissons, wearing cuirassier armour cap á pieds, wanted some fresher air from under the musty confines of his full-face helmet. He held the reins of his horse in one hand and a loaded pistol in the other. With no free hand, and forgetting that the wheel-lock pistol was cocked, he used the muzzle of his pistol to raise his visor, as was his habit. Maybe the horse reared, maybe there was a jolt, but the end result was that the pistol detonated: having returned in glory from a long exile, the bungling Bourbon had just blown off his own head. Due to Soissons’s regrettable accident, the ‘rebellion’ element of the plot ended abruptly. De Retz noted laconically, ‘You may guess what a condition

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312  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 I was in when I heard this news.’48 Luckily, and unusually, Richelieu’s secret police network failed to unearth the details of de Retz’s treachery, though he did come under suspicion because of his known friendships. But at least the Spanish had regained control of Luxembourg. Another plotter was the duc de Bouillon himself, in whose fiefdom at Sedan, de Soissons had launched his rebellion. Not surprisingly, another usual suspect, Charles of Lorraine, was also implicated in the plot, so his brief rapprochement with France in April 1641 was abrogated in August. With 5,000 troops he re-invaded French-occupied Lorraine in April 1642, capturing three towns including the citadel town of la Mothe to the north of Verdun, before being forced to withdraw.

The Dutch-French land campaign, 1641

The campaign in 1641 was little better than what had gone before. Frederick recaptured a small fortress in Jülich. Once more co-ordinated, the 1641 campaign year saw Frederick Henry’s 19,500-strong army capture Gennep in the north on 29 July in tandem with the French capture of Aire in the south on 26 July. The capture of the town, which was determinedly defended, witnessed the improvement in French expertise in siege warfare; the siege was described by French general, Count Gramont: After spending forty days in reducing the outworks, we had to cross the ditch of the main rampart against a determined and inventive opposition from the Spanish, who were ceaselessly casting incendiary materials on our bridges. After that we had to ‘attach’ miners to the bastions, blow up the bastion faces, then undermine the gorge retrenchments and push further mines along the curtains between the bastions.49 When the Dutch switched the direction of attack by a waterborne landing in 800 barges at Philippine, they drew off the Spanish from the south, enabling French Marshal La Meilleraye to capture weakly-held Lens, la Bassée and Bapaume in short order. Meanwhile the normal water obstacles along the SasGent canal and strong Spanish defence blocked the Dutch who abandoned campaigning for the year. On 7 December de Melo recaptured Aire as if to prove the common refrain in Brussels, which (according to Van der Capellen) boasted ‘that which the French win from us in summer we shall take back again from them in winter’.50 These years saw the further rise of the Dutch peace party under Adriaen Pauw, the scion of a grain-trading house with significant investments in the VOC, who became the Pensionary of Holland. Pauw had been temporarily sidelined to an ambassadorial posting in France but, on his return, he continued his policy of confrontation with the House of Orange. The growing power of the moderate Arminian faction was particularly strong in Holland, the most powerful Dutch province. As his health and military fortunes faded, so did Frederick’s political power. Against his wishes the Estates General approved troop reductions from 70,000 to 60,000 in 1642.

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Chapter XVII

Iberian Revolutions and the Fall of Olivares The revolutionary road: Catalan revolt May 1640

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he Catalans had fiercely resisted the Union of Arms programme during the 1620s and 1630s. A second attempt to force them into line was made in 1632; there was a peasant revolt over the attempt to extend the salt tax to the province. This parochialism as to their local rights and laws was the basis of huge resentment in Madrid who thought of the Catalans as ‘freeloaders’. In turn, Catalans had a traditional and fierce resentment at the arrogance of the Castilians in Madrid who, according to Despuig, want to be so absolute, and put so high a value on their own achievements, and so low a value on everyone else’s, that they give the impression that they alone are descended from heaven and the rest of mankind from mud.1 Olivares saw the French probing of Spain’s southern border as an opportunity to bring to heel Catalonia’s great trading port of Barcelona, which was as yet an untapped economic and human resource. Olivares described it as a ‘rich province, abundant in men and supplies, and the most unburdened of all these Kingdoms’.2 Wishful thinking, as Castilians tend to do, even today; Olivares underestimated Catalonian ‘particularism’ and rebelliousness. Given that the voice of the streets was much more coherent, consistent and better educated than the usual peasant or urban mob, Barcelona would be an effective centre of revolution. It was a sign of the times in early modern Europe generally, as education and pamphlet media reached further down the social spectrum; they were forerunners of an industrial proletariat, later to become the flag carriers for Marx, Bakunin and Trotsky. While Madrid fumed at Catalonian particularism, in Barcelona the deputates, local representatives of the city government, complained bitterly to their Madrid representative on 9 July 1639, ‘We have no doubt that calumnies are being spread about us; in fact, we are certain of it, in view of the hatred with which we are regarded by the ministers here who invent them.’ The situation was not helped by Santa Coloma, the Spanish Viceroy of Catalonia, who was incompetent, unctious and ill-informed. Eager to please Olivares, he failed to represent the true state of affairs to Madrid. This resulted in a complacent belief on the part of Olivares that his tough attitude to the raising of funds and troops in Catalonia could be carried through with little risk: ‘Your majesty will find

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314  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 them so willing that further pressure to induce them to make a supreme effort will not be needed,’3 trilled Coloma in a letter dated 17 July 1639. Incandescent with rage and frustration at Catalan complaints, he wrote a letter to Viceroy Coloma on 7 October 1639. ‘Now I am nearly at my wits end; but I say, and I shall be saying this on my deathbed,’ he ranted, ‘if the constitutions do not allow this, then the Devil take constitutions.’4 In order to retake Salces, Catalans had been mobilised alongside the regular Spanish army. Retaking of the fortress cost only 500 battle casualties but up to 10,000 Catalans died, mainly of disease, including 25 per cent of the entire Catalan nobility. Catalans felt no joy in the victory. Desertion being as high as 80 per cent amongst the Catalan troops, the province seethed with discontent. Following the recapture of Salces on 6 January, winter billeting was ordered, but this was contrary to local laws, which restricted the rights of a billeted soldier to accommodation and candlelight, but not food. This law was simply ignored by Olivares and the army, if for no other reason than that it was impractical. Angered by this military imposition, ‘The people refuse in many areas to give the troops food’,5 wrote an official, de Calders. Emboldened by the presence of his army in Catalonia, Olivares then provoked more anger by making known plans for the enforced levy of an extra 6,000 Catalans for overseas service in Italy. Piling on the pressure, he also ordered a new ‘hearth tax’. The full incorporation of Catalonia into the Union of Arms system was being accelerated. Olivares’s policies fanned the flames of revolt; his advice to his governor Santa Coloma was uncompromising: ‘This is no time to beseech, but to command. The Catalans are naturally fickle. Do not spare force, no matter how loudly they cry out against you.’6 Billeting led to widespread resistance and peasant revolt throughout the winter of 1640, so that by the spring the revolt in northern Catalonia was general. Soldiers were either in open conflict with the peasants or deserting. Brutal reprisals by an Italian infantry regiment against a rebel town then blew up into a spontaneous province-wide revolt. Revolutionists entered Barcelona in the guise of labourers and rioting followed.

Revolution in Catalonia 1640–1642

The Spanish viceroy, Santa Coloma, running for a skiff to ferry him out to a departing ship, was hacked to death by the mob on 7 June on the rocky shore of the city. In Barcelona this sparked a pogrom: Castilians, including judges, were hunted down and horribly butchered in streets and churches. A conciliation policy was put into effect for over a month, but the failure of the new viceroy to assemble the Catalonian audiencia (assembly), who were in hiding from the mobs, along with the fall of the naval port of Tortosa to the rebels on 21 July, conspired to terminate that approach: people’s patience snapped. Although it may have been his intention from early days, in July Olivares decided officially to crush the revolt, fearing that, if it were allowed

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Iberian Revolutions and the Fall of Olivares  315 to go unpunished, the whole kingdom would be threatened. His policy was supported in the Royal Council, although minority voices continued to urge compromise. Olivares’s political authority in Spain rested on the restoration of the king’s rule in Catalonia. In Barcelona and Catalonia the first uprising had been a spontaneous social revolution, but in the end the leaders of the established political class in Barcelona took control after the mob’s energy had run out. Olivares’s policy pushed Catalonia into the arms of France. Tactical flexibility, which would have brought greater rewards, was not in the man’s nature. The rebel militia retreated into the town of Cambris, which was then besieged and stormed. Subsequently 700 of the militia were garrotted and the townspeople subjected to rape, murder and plunder following normal rules of war. The brutality had the desired effect because the important port city of Tarragona, which had been occupied by a small French force under d’Espenan, surrendered to the advancing Royal army. Under pressure from this setback, a full-blown treaty of alliance with France was signed within a week. Barcelona was now effectively a French protectorate owing fealty to Louis XIII, as the ‘Count of Barcelona’. Control of the province of Roussillon was for practical purposes conceded to France, although Spanish troops still held Perpignan and other key strongholds such as Rosas. Hope was restored in Barcelona when part of Richelieu’s navy and a 13,000-strong expedition arrived. The key to the defence of Barcelona was the heights to the south of the city called Montjuïc; here the allied command, consisting of Generals Francesco Tamarit, de Sevignan and George Stewart, posted 6,000 troops in strongly entrenched positions to fend off an attack by 23,000 Spaniards. The Spanish attacked from the south-east, east, and north-east, but the plan was bungled when the north-eastern prong of the advance opened up a flank to the defenders in Barcelona who sallied in strength against it; turning to face the threat, another gap opened which occasioned another counter-attack from the city’s garrison on the open flank of the advancing Spanish tercios. The tercios fled. The whole Spanish army was thrown into flight, losing over 1,000 men to the defenders’ fifty. Given the large numerical advantage enjoyed by the Spanish, it was a particularly shameful defeat and retreat. Any hope of a quick subjugation of the revolt was now over. With more reinforcements arriving, the revolutionary junta was able to consolidate its gains. The confrontation was testament to declining efficiency in Spanish arms, caused by a shortage of recruits in the key regions of Castile and a paucity of competent commanders. ‘They have not one man of quality fit to command an army,’ 7 observed the English ambassador. A decisive moment in the war was now reached. Without consulting Vienna, Olivares sent an emissary to France in June to sue for peace. The Habsburg alliance and dominion in Europe was crumbling. The end of the Habsburg

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316  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Imperium was in sight. Olivares informed Philip IV in a letter dated 14 June that negotiations and peace were necessary. By 11 August Olivares was telling his ministers that ‘we should have to abandon all our allies in order to make peace, however infamous this might be’.8 Olivares’s rule limped on. A catastrophe for Spain, the strategic consequences of the revolt for the Emperor in Vienna were dire; Spain was their main ally. As a French agent noted, Our affairs (which were not going well in Flanders, and still worse in Piedmont) suddenly began to prosper on all sides, even in Germany; for our enemy’s forces, being retained in their own country and recalled from elsewhere to defend the sanctuary [Spain], were reduced to feebleness in all other theatres of war.9 With the instincts of a shark to carrion, Richelieu decided to switch the main French army to the southern front to snap off the province of Roussillon and shore up the military capacity of the Catalonian rebels. Ruthless as ever, the Cardinal saw a chance to finish off Spain and the Habsburg alliance.

The secession of Portugal, December 1640

Already in November 1640, before the final outbreak of the Portuguese revolution, a despairing Olivares was writing, ‘There cannot have been a more unlucky year than the present one …. I propose peace, and more peace … which, even if it is not good, or even average, would be better than the most advantageous war.’10 Catalonia’s revolution inspired unrest around the Spanish territories. Already in August, the governor of Sicily, Francisco de Melo, was reporting ‘evil humours and intention’11 amongst a restive populace. But it was in Portugal that the virus of revolution first broke out in a secondary phase following the Catalan example, which should hardly have been a surprise after several years of low-level unrest amongst a populace that was culturally proud, independent minded and Atlantic facing. In Madrid, the rush of dire events led to an accumulating ripple of errors that would cause a perfect political storm. In assembling the army to crush Catalonia, Olivares compounded his mistakes over Catalonia by insisting on Portuguese participation, as well as new tax contributions. He had little choice given the chronic financial situation, but he was effectively asking for subsidies for a war with France which did not involve any Portuguese interests. Spain’s tutelage, never popular, developed into revolts and serious disturbances after 1630 over consumption and property taxes and conscription. Exactions on the Portuguese had been high, including 610,000 crusado for Philip IV’s visit to Lisbon in 1619, and there were escalating war costs after 1619 due to the end of the Dutch truce; for example, 300,000 crusado to Flanders in 1629; subsidies for war costs for the Estado of 400,000 crusado in 1622/1624; 1,160,000 crusado in 1630 alone including forced loans of 500,000.12 The constant drip of Spanish

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Iberian Revolutions and the Fall of Olivares  317 demands for the Spanish war effort unconnected to direct Portuguese interests steadily undermined the willingness of the Portuguese elite to continue the relationship; for example in 1633, twenty galleons commandeered for transport of mercenaries from Italy and 2,000 men from Portugal; 1636 70,000 crusado to send eighteen frigates to Dunkirk; also demands for a further 1,500 conscripts at a time of labour shortage.13 When, in June 1640, Olivares tried to impress 6,000 more Portugese for service against the Catalans, anti-Castilian riots broke out in Lisbon as they had done in impoverished Evora in 1637, which had been hit hard by low wine and olive prices.14 Angered by Olivares’s impositions, which undermined the constitituional arrangements for autonomy made in 1580, the fidalgo class felt increasingly alienated. The nation was ripe for revolt but, unlike in 1637, the aristocracy supported and led the popular revolt in 1640. Tension and street protests mounted until the Spanish viceroy, Margarita of Savoy, was arrested in a coup, then exiled, while her chief minister Miguel de Vasconcellos, cast as a collaborator, was defenestrated and horribly mutilated on 1 December 1640. Events moved swiftly even though the leading nobleman, the Duke of Bragança, was cautious. He may, as Olivares claimed, have been ‘stupid, and drunk, without a glimmer of intelligence’15 but to take on the mighty Spanish neighbour required some courage. Lacking in charisma perhaps, he had a solid and cautious character suited to the long hard road of independence; most importantly, he was a leader who uniquely enjoyed the aura of legitimacy (something the Bohemian revolt had lacked). Having initially refused to lead a revolution in June, Bragança eventually submitted to overwhelming pressure and allowed himself to be made king. Instead of going to the Catalan front as commanded, Bragança proclaimed himself King Joăo IV, usurped Philip IV’s Portuguese throne, and dissolved the Union. Guerreiro Bartolomeu published a hagiography of the House of Bragança, praising in one passage its significant place in the kingdom. It refers to the ‘magnificence of the House of Bragança’.16 Bragança filled the exact role played by the House of Orange in the revolt of the Netherlands. Olivares and the Spanish government must have been well aware of the parallels. The power of their legitimacy and the unity of the Portuguese at home and overseas gave great strength to the drive for independence. Again, the ‘contrary’ comparisons to the failed Bohemian revolution are palpable. Strongly supported by the mob and the lower clergy, Braganza also had the backing of Portuguese Jesuits, an order that had a long and uneasy relationship with the unpopular ‘Inquisition’.17 News of the Portuguese revolt arrived by despatch in Madrid in time for Christmas on 7 December 1640, another devastating blow to Olivares’s prestige and confidence; a cyphered despatch from the English ambassador also noted on 3 February 1641 that Olivares’s ‘secretary hath said he believes it will either break his heart or drive him to a monastery’.18

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318  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 The main reason for the Portuguese revolution was raw calculation by the ruling elite that, on the balance of economic, political and military advantage, they were better off looking after their own interests and defences rather than being tied to a rapidly declining giant. With the people and the Jesuits behind them the fact that the culture, history, language and economy were so distinct made the choice quite easy. Moreover, risks were much reduced. The Bragança coup was perfectly timed because Spain was too pre-occupied with Catalonia to mount a serious reconquest attempt on Portugal. Catalonia was the priority, not least because the French, now the main Spanish enemy in the war, were embedded there. With the virus of revolt spreading to Napoli and Sicily, the Habsburg Imperium was falling apart. So desperate was Spain’s financial and military outlook, it took a year before Spain could attempt the recovery of Portugal. Even then it was a feeble effort by 7,000 troops. No further substantive attacks were made until 1644, although both sides tore up each other’s border areas, around Extremadura, Alutajia and Galicia, in murderous raids conducted by militia and mercenaries. Attrition in war works in two directions. Attuned to the Spanish troubles, Richelieu was equally aware of the dangers of collapse for his own country. In an insightful letter dated 10 October 1641, he wrote to his financial experts: If the council of finance continues to allow the tax-farmers and bankers full liberty to treat His Majesty’s subjects according to their insatiable appetites, France will surely fall victim to some disorder similar to that which has befallen Spain … by wishing to have too much, we shall create a situation where we shall have nothing at all.19 (emphasis added.) Nevertheless, his strictures were not heeded, least of all by himself, because the exigencies of existential war against the Habsburgs prevented any thoughts of reforms, let alone time or settled political space in which to consider or enact such reforms. Revolution would be infectious.

Spain’s economic problems 1640s

By April 1641 the English ambassador to Spain, Sir Arthur Hopton, wrote a well informed and perceptive report to his monarch on the rapid spiral of economic decline in Spain from the end of 1640, which had precipitated the revolts, and compounded the chronic problems caused by twenty years of attritional war across Europe and the globe. Hopton wrote, ‘Their trade must of necessity fail through the daily new burdens that are laid thereon, and the molestation of merchants … by great sums of money are daily extorted from them.’20 It depicts the chronic effects of an overly regulated economy, dysfunctional exchange markets, abuses of the currency and arbitrary/penal taxation. The Spanish revolts compounded the chronic financial problems being felt in Spain. If for no other reason, financial constraints made it imperative for Spain to seek peace. By 1643 Spain had mortgaged its future receipts six years ahead. Bullion receipts

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Iberian Revolutions and the Fall of Olivares  319 which acted as collateral for loans were plummeting as shipments from the New World fell. The fall was caused by increasing defence costs in the American empire and declining production from the Potosi mine in Bolivia. The Crown’s share of imported bullion collapsed from 5 to 6 million pesos per annum in 1600–1604 to 2 million pesos in 1646–1650. The Castilian economy could support no more. Its towns and cities were in ruins. A few years later in 1646, the government only had income to cover 3.2 million of the 12.7 million ducat annual budget, a running budget deficit of -400 per cent. In 1647, the government declared bankruptcy again. ‘The century of Spain’s Imperial supremacy – from 1560 to 1660 – collapsed under irretrievable debt.’21

The fall of Olivares, January 1643

Richelieu was desperately ill, but after the floundering strategy of the French armies since 1635 he pounced on the weakness of the Spanish by redirecting the bulk of France’s soldiery to the Languedoc front from 1641 to 1642. On 9 September 1642 the French captured Perpignan, the main city of the transPyrenean province of Roussillon. This was the beginning of a run of Spanish bad luck. A Franco-Catalan army of 8,000 crushed a small Spanish force of 4,500 on 28 March 1642. A Spanish army of 20,000 troops, including 5,000 cavalry, was defeated again at Lerida on the border with Castile, where the hapless Spanish General Leganez, a favourite of Olivares, lost 5,000 of his troops against a numerically inferior French army of 13,000 (4,000 cavalry) under Philippe de La Mothe-Houdancourt. French losses were just 1,000. Lerida fell, and would become the focal point for the war in Catalonia. In January 1643 the King sent a letter to Olivares dismissing him from his service; he would head the council himself. In trying to retake the Netherlands, Olivares had lost Catalonia and Portugal and much else besides. For the French, having taken Catalonia, the emphasis of the war was now defensive and the focus of a collegiate government including Olivares’s nephew, the influential Count Haro. Meanwhile French effort switched back to Germany and Flanders; in consequence, the Spanish recaptured Lerida on 13 July 1644 and Monzon in December. Lerida had been defended by 3,600 French troops and 2,000 Catalan militia. It was a signal defeat that marked the zenith of French power in Catalonia.

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Chapter XVIII

Origins of Peace Origins of the Peace of Westphalia, 1640–1643

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he origins of the Peace lie within the internal dynamics of the individual participants and the interplay of those dynamics with their foreign policy, political-religious, territorial and economic objectives. The nature of the war, the Emperor’s fixed theological and ideological mantras, made peace difficult: ‘Tragically but predictably, the greater the moral investment in war, or the more altruistic war becomes, the less moral or restrained it becomes, the higher the goal, the more intense the conflict.’1 Peace is a complex matrix with just two participants, but the Thirty Years War featured seven primary participants: Austria, Spain, Bavaria, on one side and Sweden, the Dutch Republic, France and Hesse on the other. Undercurrents of conflict and variances in objectives within the two groupings added to the complexity. Diplomacy rarely stops during a war; it is nearly always there in some proportion. Talks between Sweden and the Imperialists had begun in the midthirties. In 1642, after twenty-two years of war, the parties were financially exhausted, their populations worn down by thieving soldiery, ‘contributions’, taxes, and death. There was a general mood for peace which was forcefully pleaded by the diet of Regensburg to the Emperor in person in 1641. Under pressure, the Emperor, for political convenience, entered a dialogue with the enemy. A catalyst was the political meltdown in Spain; beset by revolution, the Spanish needed peace. Facing the prospect of losing their key ally, the Austrian Habsburgs also needed to consider the peace option, while waiting on better battlefield fortune. In addition, there were outside pressures for peace from the Papacy, which was particularly intent on stopping the fighting between the Catholic powers. If Spain and the Empire could strike a peace deal now, the Habsburg Imperium, though diminished, would remain intact in structure. Another mediator, Venice, was concerned about the re-awakening of Ottoman aggression in the Mediterranean; they needed to refocus Vienna on the traditional enemy. In the course of 1641–42 preliminary negotiations on the setting up of a peace conference were conducted in Hamburg, Cologne and Lubeck. Questions of protocol rather than issues of substance were the subject for the talks. Within these arcane struggles there were some issues of substance. Most notable of these was the right of the French to negotiate en bloc with its unified coalition, to try to prevent separate peace deals, and the right of individual members of

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Origins of Peace  321 the Estates to separate representation, a question vital to many, especially to Hesse. Eventually, it was agreed that the conference would commence in 1643 and would divide into two parts, with the French being based at Münster and the Swedes at Osnabruck some thirty miles away. Another reason was the blank refusal of the Pope’s representatives to sit down with the Protestant powers: they would only deign to mediate between the Catholics. Cynical, worldly, and outrageously nepotistic, Urban VII of the Florentine Barberini had taken advantage of the chaos of war to launch some ‘temporal’ attacks of his own. Urbino, an attractive hilltop city state in Marche, had been invaded and snapped off by the Papal army in 1626 while Italy was pre-occupied by Richelieu’s first invasion. Venice had also intervened in the Mantuan war against the Imperialists and in the Valtellina. With spectacular irony, when the two peace mediators were chosen for the Westphalian congress, they were at war with each other – The War of Castro 1641–43. Arguing that he was their political representative, the Emperor resisted for a long time the participation of the German states. When it was conceded at last, the treaty agreeing the structure, participation and terms of reference for the Westphalian congress was signed on 25 December 1641. ‘The Treaty of Hamburg confirmed France’s two most important demands: participation of all its allies, and the unity of the coming Peace conference. In other words, it was to be a single universal Peace conference.’2 Dutch participation was envisaged from the start, but this involved considerable internal negotiation between the eight provincial Estates. Despite the ascendancy of the peace party led by Adrian Pauw in Holland, negotiations on a common platform took so long that Dutch delegates did not arrive until eighteen months after the conference had started. The main holdout was the militant state of Zeeland, whose merchant elite, as major shareholders in WIC, had much to gain from the continuation of the war with Spain and Portugal. Eventually they agreed only when the other Estates promised to subsidise a major fleet to relieve Recife and recover territories lost after the countryside revolts in 1645 in Brasil’s Pernambuco province.3 There was no truce pending settlement because all the parties believed that there was a decisive victory or change of fortune ‘just around the corner’. As Parker writes in the European Crisis, working out details on the outstanding issues – most of them concerning France and Sweden – only took so long because, in the cynical phrase of one delegate, ‘In winter we negotiate, in summer we fight’: as before, the changing fortunes of war constantly affected the bargaining strength and inclinations of the leading participants.4 None of the parties wanted a truce. Who wanted peace more and why was there not a truce? The irony of the peace talks is that few of the major participants in the European war especially

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322  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 wanted peace apart from Spain, and to some extent Bavaria. France under Richelieu and Mazarin, and Sweden under Oxenstierna, only wanted peace on good terms. They felt that the war was going in their favour particularly after the 1640 revolutions in Spain. Even though domestic pressures were building up, Richelieu, and then Mazarin, still hoped for decisive victory. Nevertheless, the wish for peace on terms was genuine; in February, Servien was advised by one of Mazarin’s officials that the Cardinal ‘does not want the King’s affairs to be obstructed for the sake of bagatelles’.5 For Austria there was the realisation that the war could not be won on the terms originally envisaged, i.e. a peace dictated by the Emperor with a considerable reversal of the Augsburg settlement of 1555 and the confirmation of the Edict of Restitution. Under the terms of the Peace of Prague, which the Emperor had hoped was the definitive settlement of the war, Austria would have considerably augmented its powers in the hereditary lands while compromising on certain aspects of its constitutional and religious position in the Empire. However, as Wallenstein had understood with considerable prescience, there was no hope of the war being settled on German terms alone. The foreigners, notably the French and the Swedes, would need to be accommodated to some degree; as to what degree, that would depend on developments on the battlefield. Wallenstein had understood that this was a European war and an unbalanced settlement with Germany alone would fail to end it. Power in the negotiations and the extent of gains would largely be a matrix of military might, territorial control and willingness to continue fighting; by the war’s end, Sweden, France and Hesse garrisoned respectively 127, 52 and 43 Imperial strongholds.6 The question was how terms could be settled while the fluid dynamics of war continued unabated. ‘War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse, with a mixture of other means.’7 Never was von Clausewitz’s dictum so apposite as in the years 1641 to 1648 when peacemaking and war making were so intertwined Delegates were constantly in direct contact with their armies, even giving them orders on occasions. Everyone was alive to the potential for radical swings in negotiating power and diplomatic fortunes depending on a decision in battle.

Sweden’s negotiating issues, pressures for peace, 1636–1642

Despite broaching peace talks in 1635, for Sweden peace was realisable on reasonable terms at any time after the battle of Wittstock in 1636. Sweden’s position had hardened since Baner’s extraordinarily risky battlefield manoeuvre resulted in the decisive defeat of the Imperial-Saxon army and the reestablishment of the Swedish hold on Mecklenburg, Pomerania and parts of Brandenburg. However, Swedes were already locked into the French alliance, the terms of which precluded a separate peace. Breaking the agreement would be risky; Oxenstierna, commenting in a memorandum in 1640, had no love for the French: ‘There are many arguments to dissuade me from the French

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Origins of Peace  323 alliance … . Our late King tore his hair at the impertinences he had to put up with … . But what could he do? Necessity is a great argument.’8 The Swedish chancellor was perfectly aware of the essential contradictions in the alliance: ‘The war which Sweden is waging is decided in Germany due to the issue of Austria: France regards [as the main enemy targets] mostly Spain, Italy and Flanders.’9 Sweden’s basic demands were for security by the restoration of the independence and rights of the German states, including religious rights of the north and south German Protestant states. Sweden wanted buffer states in a constitutionally weak Empire. However, Oxenstierna was painfully aware about how much in treasure and emotion had been invested in the German wars, so he was determined to get securitato plus some hard territorial satisfactio on top. Possession of Pomerania, including the port of Stettin at the head of the Oder river, would be their key territorial demand. Sweden’s Rad was keenly aware that demands for satisfaction in Pomerania would stir up a hornets’ nest and was, in Salvius’s view, ‘bound to provoke all sorts of cabals and conspiracies against us in one place or another’. As for monies to pay off the army arrears and as general monetary compensation, the Council in 1636 had proposed a figure of 6 million Reichsthaler. The improved military situation in 1642 allowed for much more expansive demands: 2 million Reichsthaler for every year of conflict, making a grand sum of 26 million.

Dutch moves towards peace, 1640–1646

The Dutch Republic, the most ‘democratic’ of all the governmental models involved in the war, was also perhaps the most warlike and aggressive of all the major powers; they were the most difficult to satisfy, and peace would only be agreed in principle in 1646 by a 6:1 vote in the Estates General. Dutch business elites who controlled the political system had done well out of the war while some councillors had been bribed by Richelieu and Mazarin to continue it. Ending of the European war was also a question of resolving the eighty years’ war with the Spanish. Many of the Dutch elite saw war as a positive good. VOC shareholders who counted much of the regency and merchant elite amongst their ranks had enjoyed a 600 per cent increase in share price since 1602, most of the gains coming after entry into the war in 1621, plus dividend payments which paid out 5 to 8 per cent annually on a moving average basis until the 1640s. However, strong domestic pressures were building up: in the city of Leiden, taxes accounted for 60% of the price of beer and 25% of the price of bread …  . Between 1618 and 1649 the debt of the central government doubled from 5 million to almost 10 m florins, while the states of Holland soared from under 5 million to perhaps 147 million.10

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324  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 The Dutch wanted recognition of their independence and a free hand to pursue their commercial interests globally. After the revolution in Portugal, giving away bits of the Portuguese Empire was something the Spanish would be more ready to concede.

Spain sues for peace, 1640

The first priority of Spain was peace with the Dutch in order to end the twofront war in Flanders against them and France; second, they wished to help the Austrian cousins resist French demands on Alsace and Lorraine on the Rhine in the hope that the ‘Spanish Road’ could be kept open. Keeping Lorraine out of French hands became a particular ‘red line’ for the Spanish. The Spanish were also intent on peace with France as a secondary objective, but if they could split the Dutch away from France’s grand alliance then the temptation to continue the war would increase. Spain was hopeful of a better outcome as France’s internal problems mounted due to onerous taxation and noble unrest under Mazarin’s regency government: besides, Anne of Austria was Philip IV’s sister, so some political re-alignment in favour of the dévots was hoped for.

Bavaria’s need for peace, 1636–1640

Bavaria had for some while been in favour of peace, realising the need to accommodate the foreign interveners. As a major winner early on in the war with the acquisition of the Upper Palatine, as well as gaining the Electoral title from Frederick, Maximilian had been ready at any time for a general peace. Understanding that the balance in the war was drifting away from the Habsburg camp, he argued realistically that ‘that which has not yet been lost in the empire, can only be saved by sacrificing that which has been lost’.11 His negotiating position was always underpinned by the continued desire of the French for an alliance; however, if he misused this trump card the tactic might backfire.

The Emperor considers peace

Ferdinand III had also to consider peace. The war in the north-east of the Empire was deadlocked, while the French had made dangerous inroads along the Rhine. Peace overtures to political holdouts in northern Germany had been only partially successful with the defection of the Guelphs. Bavaria was reliable for now, but there was always the threat of accommodation with France. However, the single most important reason to seek peace was the change in the international situation. With key dynastic ally Spain rent apart by revolution and seeking a way out of the war, Ferdinand faced the prospect of fighting alone. If peace came now, he could at least reasonably expect to benefit by consolidating his primary interests in the Habsburg hereditary lands, even if that meant jettisoning some of his wider imperial ambitions in the Empire as a whole, and conceding some territory on the fringes.

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Origins of Peace  325 Maintaining the close Habsburg alliance was an essential priority; for Ferdinand III as with his father, a separate peace could not be contemplated.

France: Peace talks and revolt 1636–1639

Richelieu orchestrated France’s moves towards peace before his death; peace had always been his goal, however much the war helped him to maintain his grip on power. His objective was to secure France’s eastern and southern borders by restoring a balance of power in Germany through the pro-French alignment of client states such as Bavaria, Hesse and Brandenburg. He aimed at a Christian universal peace, as opposed to a Habsburg one. In the meantime, France was also beset by chronic financial problems resulting in a tripling of taxes and extensive peasant unrest. There were significant revolts, notably the nu pieds and croquants rebellions of 1636, 1637, 1639 and 1643. These required the diversion of troops away from critical war fronts. There was organisational flair and armed resistance in the Caen revolt in 1639 that developed quite sophisticated programmes and published supporting manifestos. In one such, foreshadowing the French revolution in 1789 and 20th century communist polemic, bitter complaints were made against the rich in one nu pieds manifesto from Caen in 1639: ‘So, the rich may become richer with their taxes, continue to oppress the public with their conspiracies. At our expense, they don satin and velvet. I defeat their ambition. Firmly pushing back against taxes, salt levies, which all hope to see reduced to nothing.’12 Reports of ravenous packs of wolves eating villagers were commonplace in the 1630s and 1640s. Such hair-raising episodes seem to encapsulate the chaos in civil life caused by the tax farmers, the aristocracy, Richelieu and Mazarin.

Hesse and German supplicants at Westphalia

One of the most complex and difficult aspects of the peace congress would be the demands of Hesse, both the private settlement of the mini-civil war dispute with Hesse-Darmstadt as well as the wider religious and constitutional issues. Demands from Hesse focused on constitutional changes, including an overhaul of the mechanisms of the Imperial courts as well as formal recognition of the Calvinist religion. Like other German states Hesse’s vital concern was to be represented by itself rather than by the Emperor. Even as late as 1644 the question remained unsettled. Amelia wrote to her delegate at Münster a letter of instruction on 27 December 1643: ‘Both crowns of France and Sweden should endeavour that the princes and estates of the empire are included in the universal negotiations’13 and, most importantly, ‘the princes and estates of the empire should have the right of peace and war in common with the emperor.’ Other key interests touched on in Amelia’s letter were the need for a general amnesty, i.e. to pardon Hesse’s ‘rebellion’, and religious equality for Calvinists under Imperial law. Hesse wanted the restoration of Marburg, reform of the

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326  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Imperial judicial system to make it more balanced between the religions, and general recognition of the Reformed Church, so correcting what was missing from the Peace of Augsburg (1555). Hesse’s position was supported by widely publicised, powerful polemic and legal arguments made by von Chemnitz, army officer turned political theorist.

Other interests at Westphalia

Charles of Lorraine had proved an inveterate military irritant to the French cause, fighting in innumerable battles in the war in Alsace and Lorraine, France and Germany. He understood that the independence of his realm was at stake; Spain strongly supported him because of his strategic position along the Rhine. Savoy still had ambitions to occupy Montferrat and Casale. The Swiss confederation, including the Grisons, who were represented at the conference, wanted total independence from the Habsburgs with the notional medieval ties of fealty being finally severed.

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Chapter XIX

Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion Mazarin, the gambler

M

azzarini, better known as Mazarin, was only 16 years old when the European war started. He was born in July 1602 to Roman parents, although his father was originally from Palermo; he was a minor relative of the powerful Colonna family. Mazarin’s entire career depended upon the workings of patronage. His father ran the household and administration for Filippo Colonna, grand constable to the King of Naples, a Spanish satellite possession, so Mazarin was able to tap into the Italian networks of power and privilege. Poor relations, the Mazarin family were nevertheless secure and relatively well off. Access to a good education and patronage would give the sons a chance to make good. However, Mazarin would no doubt have been made very aware of his father’s dependence on the goodwill of his wealthy relatives; how to ingratiate and exploit those connections was the family craft. Mazarin was sent to the best school in Rome, the Collegio Romano, a Jesuit school, where he proved himself extremely academically gifted. He studied the normal curriculum for the properly schooled early modern man, including Latin, theology, and geometry, not to mention rhetoric, at which he excelled. He was naturally charming and gregarious, becoming the firm friend of his family’s patron’s son. His sexual charisma was to become notorious. Fellow diplomat Servien would write to him teasingly on 1 May 1632: ‘a very emotional lady with heartfelt entreaties told me that she has not yet received your letters, but I believe that she would not give up the honour of the sentiments you have shown her.’1 Mazarin was a dandy but not an inconsequential one; always elegantly clothed and dressed, his beard and moustache were styled in rakish modern fashion, the beard finely groomed, cut narrowly and pointed. His moustache was turned upwards with a twirl; long, curly black hair fell to the shoulders; he exuded an air of bright and affable intelligence; soft eyes and a sensual mouth combined with his lively wit and good humour. In Rome Mazarin intended to study canon and civil law, then resolved to make his career in the army. He served in the Valtellina, in the papal mediation and peacekeeping role from 1623 to 1627, as an early version of a UN blue helmet, prior to the Treaty of Monzon 1626. In 1627 Mazarin secured a new

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328  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion  329

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330  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 1 Venice attacks Gradisca to stop Uskok attacks from Hapsburg land 1616. 2 Savoy-French attack on Genoa and Spanish relief 1626.

2

3 French invade Savoy 1628. Capture Susa.

2

4 French capture Pinerolo 1629 and go to the relief of Casale. 5 Spinola attacks Casale 1629.

6 Imperialists besiege and capture Mantua 1629. 7 Venetian intervention fails 1629.

8 Imperial attack defeated by de Rohan’s French-Swiss army 1636.

9 Spanish attack & defeated by de Rohan’s French-Swiss army 1636.

10 Saxe-Weimar wins battle & siege of Rheinfelden late winter 1638. 11 French capture Leucate 1637.

12 French army takes Salces July 1639.

13 Spanish army re-capture Salces 6th Jan 1640. 14 French reinforce Catalonian Revolution 1641.

15 French-Catalan army defeats the Spanish at Monjuc Jan 1641. 16 Tortosa lost to rebels July 1640 but recaptured Oct 1640.

17 French attempt to capture Tortosa and Tarragona fails 1641. 18 French defeated at sea outside Tarragona Aug 1641.

19 French naval victory outside Barcelona June 29th 1642.

20 French army with Louis XIII capture Perpignan Sept 9th 1642. 21 Harcourt defeats Spanish at Llerida 7th Oct 1642.

22 French capture Llerida but then recaptured in 1644.

23 Spanish defeat Harcourt’s French army at llerida 1646.

24 Harcourt and Condé fail recapture Llerida, two sieges 1646-47. 25 French expedition fails to capture Orbitello 1646. 26 French fleet captures Piombino and Elba 1646.

position as secretary to the papal nuncio of a powerful Florentine family, the Sacceti, whom he had befriended. With some training in the arts of diplomacy and negotiation, he was employed as a spy and, through information gathered in the Lombardy region, ‘I made myself important at the time more through my handling of affairs than by my actual post’, 2 remembered Mazarin. The Mantuan war was a piece of good fortune for Mazarin because his knowledge of Lombardy, plus his military experience, qualified him to handle delicate diplomatic missions to the Habsburg commander Spinola, and Crequi

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2

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   331

27 French 27 admiral French admiral Breze naval1646. battle 1646. Breze killed in killed naval in battle 16. land 1616.

36.

1636.

638.

1.

28 Spanish 28 Spanish recapture Napoli and suppress revolution recapture Napoli and suppress revolution 1648. 1648.

War of Papal Castro. Papalfight states fightand Venice and 1639-49. Parma 1639-49. of Castro. states Venice Parma 29 War 29

A

A = Revolutions = Revolutions

A - Croquant A - Croquant and nupieds and nupieds peasantpeasant revolts 1623-1648 revolts 1623-1648

B - Constant B - Constant peasantpeasant uprisings uprisings in the Languedoc in the Languedoc 1630-48 1630-48

C - Revolution C - Revolution in Barcelona in Barcelona and Catalonia and Catalonia May-June May-June 1640 1640 D - Revolution D - Revolution in Palermo in Palermo 1646 1646 E - Revolution E - Revolution in Messina in Messina 1646 1646 F - Revolution F - Revolution in Napoli in 1646 Napoli 1646

[Note: Other [Note:revolts Other in revolts Bohemia in Bohemia 1618, upper 1618,Austria upper Austria 1631, 1631,

Ireland Ireland 1630s, 1630s, Scotland Scotland 1638, England 1638, England 1642, Portugal 1642, Portugal 1640, 1640, France 1648] France 1648]

2.

7.

on the French side. The Pope was anxious to prevent a full-blown war between the main Catholic powers, which would only help the Protestant cause. Mazarin was perfectly suited to deal with Savoy, which was part of the Byzantine nexus of the Mantuan war. For thirteen years from 1630, Mazarin would become the diplomatic genie in Savoyard-French relations. Richelieu, who had a sceptical indifference to the normal clutter of courtiers, noblemen, and fools, was nonetheless attracted to people of great intelligence, capability and usefulness. He kept a menagerie of talent, scholars, artists,

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332  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 propagandists, diplomats. At their first meeting in Lyon in January 1630, Richelieu was captivated by the charm and humour of the young papal diplomat; Mazarin was marked down for special attention. They became immersed in a three-hour private conversation to discuss papal attempts to settle the Mantuan affair. Apparently, Mazarin could make Richelieu laugh; surely a very rare talent – most people would have been too frightened to try. This visit to Lyon, in January 1630, started the process by which he was propelled into the limelight. Meeting Louis XIII at Chambery in May 1630, the king was as struck by Mazarin as was Richelieu, noting ‘his youth, his good looks, his vivacity and his sweetness, intelligence, which shines throughout his person and his sincere wish for peace’.3 Mazarin was invited to visit Paris where Richelieu introduced him to Queen Anne, remarking with mischievous humour, ‘Madam, you will like him a lot, he has the demeanour of Buckingham.’4 Mazarin literally rode into history. He first came to international fame, in his uniquely flamboyant style, having found out that the peace Treaty of Cherasco had been signed, just as the Spanish and French armies squared up against each other outside Casale. Dressed in black with a billowing red-lined cloak, Mazarin galloped dramatically between the lines as if to impose his body between the pikes and the occasional whizzing musket balls crying, ‘Pace! Pace!’ (Peace! Peace!) while waving his hat. The drama was celebrated in the flysheets and etchings of the day, a display of gallantry, the embroidery of which only increased his allure to women.

Mazarin’s progress to power 1634–1639

Mazarin returned to Rome in November 1636, effectively as Louis XIII’s representative at the Papal court. It was around this time, realising that it was impossible to sit on the fence, that he started to take personal leave of his peaceorientated policies by working actively for the defeat of Spain. Not surprisingly or coincidentally, this ‘conversion’ happened as France declared war officially. Mazarin amused Richelieu who dubbed him ‘Monsieur Coupe-Chou’.5 However, he was taken seriously enough to be backed for election to the papal college in January 1639, duly receiving his red hat ‘for important services … to the public in diverse negotiations, treaties and affairs concerned mainly with peace and tranquillity among the most powerful princes of Christendom’.6 The citation is unusually accurate. It is important to note that Cardinal Mazarin was never, unlike Richelieu, an ordained priest, nor did he have any profound interest in theology. His interests, gambling, exquisite possessions, theatre women and high culture were more materialistic and hedonistic. Modern and secular in focus, Mazarin was symbolic of the move from the medieval world to the new world of realpolitik, rationality and secular enlightenment. His one abiding belief was peace, but no romantic idealist, he viewed war and diplomacy as a matter of practical and necessary Machiavellian politics; a means to a peaceful end.

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   333 In November 1639 Mazarin was officially invited to come to France. Papers of citizenship were drawn up. Richelieu had decided to bring this talent into his inner cabinet; with Richelieu in increasing pain from debilitating illnesses and distraught after the death of Father Joseph, he needed the brilliant young Italian’s talents at close hand, along with his humour and soothing charm.

Savoy: a small state’s struggle for survival, 1635–1640 and the war in Italy

After a visit to the Savoyard court, Mazarin reported to Urban VIII that ‘this court is riven by intrigues, with different parties in opposition to one another. It is impossible that something terrible will not happen, since everyone follows his own interests without any regard to the service of his highness [Vittorio Amadeo].’ 7 So poisonous was the atmosphere that opposite factions denounced each other to Mazarin with tales of witchcraft and devil worship. Contenders for power included the sinister Cardinal Maurizio, second brother to Amadeo, who was a caricature of the scheming, renaissance Cardinals, a figure taken straight from the pages of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi or Shirley’s The Cardinal. The Italian front during the Thirty Years War was forever the Cinderella of the campaigns for both sides; as in the Second World War, Italy developed into an underfunded forgotten campaign, despite the high prominence and strategic significance which had supposedly underlain the Mantuan War.8 Mazarin’s frustration with the apparently fruitless Italian campaigns was typical. ‘It is next to impossible that arms of the King can make any considerable progress in Italy,’ opined Mazarin, the next campaign will be the tenth since the declaration of war, yet we are still starting on the state of Milan, the places of which are so well fortified … that even supposing all prosperity for our arms, it would be a great deal to capture one every year, with enormous expense.9 A not untypical example of underfunding was the 1640 Italian campaign when Harcourt, the French commander, received only 25 per cent of the required budget. The main issues of the war in Italy revolved around the French wish to disrupt the Spanish Road from Genoa to the Valtellina. Secondary, more distant goals were the expulsion of the Spanish from Milan, and the liberation of the Kingdom of Naples from Spanish control. The advantage held by France was the occupation of key fortresses on the Savoy side of the Alps at Pinerolo and Susa. These forward logistical bases enabled France to overawe Savoy in matters of alliance and policy. In addition, the ability of the French state to store food and supplies at Pinerolo and Susa meant that the French army could project its power in Italy more effectively. The Savoyards under Vittorio Amadeo were nominally in command of the French operations in Italy when the war opened in 1635, but the supporting

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334  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 commander, Marshal Crequi, was French. After some opening success, both would die after a celebration banquet; this opened up a pandora’s box of intrigue and political difficulty for Richelieu.

Savvy Christina of Savoy and the war in Italy 1638–1641

Christina had been given away by France in a diplomatic marriage to the much older Victor-Amedeo, Duke of Savoy, in 1619. She was only 13. She had eventually delivered on her primary function by giving birth to a son in 1632.10 A second son, Emanuele, followed two years later. Thrown into the snakepit of Italian politics by the death of her husband, then traumatised by the sudden death of her 6-year-old firstborn son a year later in October 1638, she described herself to a courtier as ‘the most afflicted princess on earth this day’.11 Her popularity was soon compromised by the well-publicised romantic connection with court heartthrob and poet Philippe d’Aiglie, scion of another powerful Savoyard dynasty, a fact which only served to sharpen the courtly infighting and hasten the outbreak of civil war. Tied to a much older man since an early age, it is hardly surprising that Christina could not contain her emotions, even admitting in a letter to Mazarin that ‘there is no need to tell you how much I love them [Philippe and his family]’.12 Despite the melodrama, Christina proved to be a tough defender of Savoy’s interests and her own. Mazarin, who became involved again on behalf of France in the problems of Savoy, astutely secured the subservience of the Savoyard army to French command. 1638 saw the culmination of French problems and misfortunes in Italy, as the Spanish army took the offensive against a weak and underfunded French military establishment. Richelieu decided to remove one other complication by taking a pawn for future negotiation. He kidnapped Phillipe d’Aiglie, Christina’s lover. Despite the unfortunate distraction from the main fronts, Savoy was a key strategic ally; it had to be rescued. Writing to La Valette on 17 May 1639, Richelieu warned I do not doubt that Prince Thomas will do all he can to ensure that his journey to Piedmont brings the greatest possible benefit to Spain and will try to intimidate Madame [Christina] into helping him … but I consider this princess too intelligent to be caught off her guard …  . If Madam should make any mistakes, we would have no other choice than to act on your proposal by arresting Prince Thomas and occupying Savoy.13 Before the plan could be enacted, Tomascino rebelled against Christina in July 1639, together with his brother Cardinal Mauritzio. Christina soon found herself besieged in the Citadel of St Valentin in the centre of Turin. This was the background to the sending of reinforcements including de Campion’s Normandie Regiment, to Italy and the general abandonment of the campaign for Roussillon on the Spanish border in favour of the more urgent priority.

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   335 Christina was forced to flee for safety to France and throw herself on the mercies of Cardinal Richelieu. On 23 September Richelieu met Christina at Grenoble where he harried her for more concessions to French power. After three more cities fell to the Spanish she partially agreed to his demands, handing over four cities, including Cherasco and Revello, to French control in return for a promise of more aid. It was the best she could do in the circumstances. The Comte d’Harcourt started what was to be a brilliant and underrated military career by the defeat of a larger Spanish-rebel Savoyard force at Chieri in late 1639. Venturing out of Turin as Leganez came up with another army to join him, d’Harcourt ambushed and destroyed Prince Tomascino’s army, having feigned a retreat into the hills. An extraordinary success for d’Harcourt, however, much of the glory was due to Calvinist general Turenne, who had been sent as his deputy, after emerging from his political purdah at court following the arrest of his rebellious brother, the duc de Bouillon of Sedan. That Casale and its French garrison sat astride their ‘road’, after Richelieu’s previous interventions in the Mantuan war 1626–1629, was intolerable for the Spanish state. Harcourt, realising its importance, attempted a relief of Casale, despite a Spanish army under Tomascino operating in his rear. Arriving at Casale, Turenne soon discovered that the lines of contravallation were not complete; he relieved the besieged city and brought in supplies. With a joint Franco-Savoyard army, Harcourt achieved victory by driving off the besiegers, causing consternation in Spain. Harcourt’s 10,000 men had defeated an army of 20,000, partly thanks to Turenne’s bluff as to the number of attackers. He later turned the stratagem into a maxim: ‘If your army is small you must give it more front and less depth; and let the same troops pass in the sight of the enemy several times; widen your intervals, let your drums beat and your trumpets sound out of sight of the enemy, where you have no troops.’14 For Olivares it was a crushing blow, compounded by the loss of Turin, the struggle for which started on 30 May 1640. Harcourt, who had received only 1,250,000 livres of the 4,152,215 livres required as military budget, was pessimistic of his chances of recapturing Turin. It was one of the more remarkable sieges in history, in that it encompassed three sieges in one. So remarkable that it was analysed by Napoleon in later times, who wrote: The siege afforded an extraordinary spectacle; the citadel (Piacotto) occupied by the French was besieged by Prince Thomas of Savoy (12,000 Piedmontese), who was master of the city, but he was himself besieged by the French army (Harcourt with 10,000), whilst the latter was besieged in its lines of contravallation by the Spanish army (of 18,000) under the Marquis of Leganes.15

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336  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 During the struggle Leganes used bizarre methods to try to supply Prince Thomas and to keep up communications, by firing ‘filled mortar bombs with flour, musket balls and every kind of food and ammunition. There was one bomb which contained a load of fat quails, together with message from a Spaniard in Leganes’s army to his mistress who lived in the town.’16 Aiming to break the siege, Prince Tomascino suddenly launched a surprise attack with his entire army against the surrounding French redoubts ‘half an hour after daybreak’. The French gathered themselves for a counter-attack but not before the redoubts were overrun; ‘I put myself at the head of thirty musketeers,’ recalled de Campion, who fought his way in through an opening and captured the redoubt; his ensign was killed beside him. Leaving men to guard the place, he moved on to attack the next fortification. He charged with the regiment only to be met by a ‘furious volley’ from 500 Spanish musketeers, which felled many including ‘his commander du Repare and a lieutenant Serisi … we climbed up the sides of the redoubt despite the efforts of the enemy, and after having come to grips with them, they asked for quarter because of our overwhelming numbers. Their commander surrendered to me personally.’17 Quarter was given, but the mass of French soldiers following on had no such intention despite his entreaties. One blood-spattered enemy soldier was seen to stagger about in the melee; the duc d’Harcourt who had given orders not to take prisoners, except officers, rode up to the helpless soldier and ‘lopped off half his head’. It disgusted de Campion and other officers who described it as ‘pure cruelty’.18 Luganez’s attempt at relief was not co-ordinated and failed. Without forage and short on supplies, Prince Thomas surrendered Turin the next day under terms. His 1,500 cavalry and 4,000 infantry marched out bearing arms on 25 September 1640 after six months of siege. In August 1640, a three-month truce was accepted, which allowed both sides to consolidate and prepare for the next round of fighting. Richelieu accepted it ‘because it would be as difficult as ever to send the number of troops which you need’.19 Tomascino would soon reach an accommodation with the French, a face saving settlement for the prince, whose Spanish allies, notably Leganes, had been lacklustre in helping his cause.

De Campion’s transition into high politics and misdemeanours

At the end of the 1640 campaign Henri de Campion returned to Paris and alternated that with visits to his family’s estates in Normandy which he had not seen for several years; Normandy was the base of the Vendôme faction, which was the origin of the de Campion family connection. Still pining for Madame de la Fontaine, he discovered that she had transferred her affections to another officer whose prospects were better. Disappointed in love and in his failure to advance in the army, Henri de Campion started down a course which would involve him in historic events, high affairs of state and court politics. He resigned his commission in the army.

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   337 In 1641 Henri was offered the command of a regiment in de Soissons’s rebel force, but having not yet extricated himself from his position in the French army, he declined. After de Soissons’s absurd and untimely death, following his victory over de Châtillon’s army with his joint French-rebel-Spanish army, Henri’s brother, who became involved with the Duchess, moved his Machiavellian loyalties and ambitions to the duc de Vendôme, his son the duc de Beaufort and the importantes faction. They were gearing up to seize power following the anticipated death of Richelieu whose illnesses were becoming ever more apparent. The Vendômes were not the only ones involved in this game; picking up the mantle from de Soissons, Gaston was once more plotting with the Spanish in tandem with the king’s favourite, Cinq Mars, but the Campion brothers played no part in this plot. Another plotter, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, was fixing one of her politically-charged amorous gazes on Châteauneuf, another outof-favour former player in Richelieu’s menagerie. It was the weakness of the various plotters; in competition with each other, they all played their own game and seldom joined forces, both because they jealously pursued their own narrow ambitions and because Richelieu’s spy system meant that plots had to be held close. Olivares’s excellent spy system and particularly the aid he received from his best agent, Chevreuse, allowed him to recruit at will from the seething pot of aristocratic resentment. Soon the king’s brother Gaston was established on a secret pension from Spain of 10 million ecu per annum, some 14 per cent of the Spanish defence budget. Under the influence of his brother and generally embittered with life, Henri de Campion threw in with the Duc de Beaufort faction and his father the Prince de Vendôme. Clearly associated now with his brother whose part in the Soissons revolt had come into the open, he was forced to take exile in England having escaped from his family estates in Normandy. De Beaufort and a large gaggle of noble exiles warmly welcomed him; there followed a ‘playful and hedonistic interlude’ in exile in 1641 to 1642, with women and card games aplenty. De Campion used the time well; having improved at gambling over the years on campaign he won a small fortune at cards from both the English and French aristocracy. Perhaps his fortunes in life had changed.

The Cinq Mars affair, usual suspects, and the Death of Richelieu, 1642

The last eighteen months of Richelieu’s life were an agony, both spiritual and physical. He had suppurating boils all over his body; the pain was constant. He informed his colleagues about ‘A new abscess on my arm and the old incision … have reopened and released a great deal of pus’.20 (6 May 1642). However, the worst of his sufferings was from the stress induced by the last great plot of his rule, which came near to toppling him. Richelieu had always had a close eye to the management of Louis XIII and his various needs, one of

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338  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 which was for attractive male favourites. In his youth Louis had been drawn to the company of older men, father figures, but as he aged the process reversed. Richelieu had seen to it to provide a succession of suitable young courtiers. The last one, Cinq Mars, was a character who turned out to have all the qualities of a Duke of Buckingham, young, vain, and impossibly arrogant. The doting king showered riches and honours on him and his family, but he wanted more. His closeness to the king and his great charisma and charm gained a following in the court, as did the ageless process of power and sycophancy. He also played on the king’s emotions, sometimes arguing violently and treating him with contempt. It only increased the ardour of the ageing king for the young man. In a letter to the king in 1642 Richelieu admitted to flaws in the strategic focus on Flanders which reduced the possibilities for more effective indirect campaigns elsewhere. Exceptionally, in 1642, the main French campaign was directed at conquering the Spanish territory of Roussillon, protruding north of the natural barrier of the Pyrenees, with Perpignan as the prize object. Obviously, the idea was to capitalise on Spain’s distraction from revolts in both Catalonia and Portugal. If Perpignan could be captured the major fortress city would become a non-negotiable French asset in any peace talks. For some time Cinq Mars seemed to make progress in detaching Louis from Richelieu. On the long journey south and at the siege, the courtiers around him influenced the king. On occasions, the neurotic king openly acquiesced in Cinq Mars’ snide verbal attacks on Richelieu. This concession was not made exclusively to his favourite because Mademoiselle de Montpensier and others were also indulged in this way; ‘when he was in a good humour,’ she remembered, ‘he would allow us to talk with much freedom against Cardinal Richelieu and … he would often join in himself.’21 Louis’ complex psyche sometimes lived uncomfortably in the Cardinal’s shadow; he needed and admired Richelieu while resenting his brilliance. There was also an element of competition in the relationship which accounts for the tacit encouragement of sword fights between their respective musketeer guards, reds and blues. (Football had yet to be introduced). A plot to overthrow Richelieu was formed amongst some of the many young courtiers and great nobles in the dévot peace party. Cinq Mars and the disaffected courtiers duly exploited their chance to work on undermining Richelieu’s reputation. However, from Arles, Louis suffered some guilt about being influenced by his young ‘companion’. He became subconsciously anxious about breaking his golden rule to never mix private relations and public policy, so he sent Richelieu a letter from Arles saying, ‘I love you more than ever. We have been too long together to be separated.’22 The plot included Monsieur Gaston and great nobles such as the duc de Bouillon of Sedan, the older brother of Turenne who had recently apostatised from Calvinism to Catholicism. It even touched on the Queen. Fatally, Cinq Mars, via his equerry de Thou, sought Spanish help by sending agents to Spain

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   339 to negotiate a treaty. Gaston’s real aim, of course, was to install himself either as king or at least as the power in the land. Richelieu was to be assassinated, followed by a coup. For Olivares it was a desperate attempt to catapult a peace party into power. In a letter to Gaston, Philip IV of Spain wrote on 13 March 1642, ‘I have noted with great satisfaction the proposals which were made to me on your royal highness’s behalf for the peace and prosperity of Christendom and the conclusion of a lasting peace.’23 As usual Richelieu was not unaware of the plots. The court was full of paid spies and informers, including Anne of Austria herself who must have been concerned as to the activities of Gaston and the possible dangers for her son’s succession. Since becoming a mother in 1638, and again in 1640, her two sons had become paramount in her life:24 Richelieu was a patient and subtle spymaster. Biding his time, he gathered enough evidence of the conspiracy to present to the dumbstruck king. For conspiring with Spain in time of war there could be only one outcome. The truth was extracted from the plotters by extensive cross-examination rather than torture; Mazarin’s lawyerly skills were used to ‘interview’ the suspects. Mazarin enhanced his reputation in his interrogation and negotiations with the duc de Bouillon, who was arrested while in camp with the French army in Italy: he escaped death and was banished instead, on pain of handing over the strategic fief of Sedan to the king. Further, Richelieu wrote of Mazarin, ‘M le Cardinal de Mazarin has negotiated so cleverly that M de Bouillon has said enough to make our proof complete.’25 Sedan was a major strategic prize for its river crossing on the Meuse, as well as giving access to Luxembourg and Westphalia. Cinq Mars admitted to the plot, asserting six reasons for his hatred of Richelieu including the implied accusation of cowardice at the siege of Arras, the blockage of a dukedom and Richelieu’s refusal to allow Cinq Mars admission to the royal council.26 Gaston was given permission to go abroad on an extended trip to Venice, to return to France at the King’s pleasure. De La Riviere, his master of the bedchamber, would be spared and went with him; he had probably been suborned into being an informer. Under interrogation by the Cardinal in person, de Thou maintained his position adamantly, and hopelessly; he may have believed it. Like Cinq Mars, there may have been wishful thinking resulting from Louis’s accommodation with the general disparaging and anti-Richelieu sentiments in which he indulged the favourite and his cronies. They were duped as others had been before. When the plot was discovered, the king wrote to Richelieu, ‘I am always well after seeing you. Following the arrest of monsieur de Bouillon, who was part of the coup, I hope that with God’s aid all will be well; and it all leaves me in perfect health; that is what I wish for with all my heart.’27 Whatever he might

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340  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 say and suggest over dinner with his cronies, Louis knew that it was Richelieu who watched over and protected his regime. In due course Gaston would ask for mercy and it would be given. With odious hypocrisy, Gaston was writing to the Cardinal on 7 July that he ‘could not express enough regret for having made contact and corresponded with the enemy … I protest before God and hope that the Cardinal believes that I only have the greatest respect for him … etc.’28 Most of the guilt would be pinned on Cinq Mars. He would be executed. He faced his death bravely and refused a blindfold. The stroke was not clean and the executioner had to hack off pieces of skin and blood vessel; the victim’s eyes were open and his face continued to twitch for some time. Louis did not shed a tear. Some oppositionists escaped the net. Abbé de Retz, perhaps shaken by the failure of the Soissons rebellion in 1641, had since then sidled up to the court and Richelieu in a bid to further his church career; he was approached to join the conspiracy but had doubts as to Cinq Mars’ character. De Retz confessed that ‘I was indeed importuned by my friend M. de Thou to join in that enterprise, but I saw the weakness of their foundation, as the event has shown, and therefore rejected their proposals.’29 He became a cardinal not long after; it is quite possible that this crafty and ambitious character informed on the conspirators to Richelieu and then snapped up his reward on earth rather than in heaven: a cardinal’s hat. Mazarin also obtained his reward: significantly, it was his handling of domestic political affairs that triggered his promotion rather than his skills in foreign affairs. He was no longer a mere policy ‘sherpa’ specialising in Italy. Louis accepted Richelieu’s advice to place Mazarin on the Royal Council with responsibility for foreign affairs. The king attended and spoke in private with Richelieu on the day before his death, 4 December 1642. It was an emotional interview, with the king feeding the dying Cardinal egg-white with a spoon: so ended the great ‘duumvirate’ of French history.30 On 20 November 1642 the king in a memorandum confirmed Mazarin in office and reiterated his terms for peace; no doubt in similar terms to those recommended to him by the Cardinal: ‘there can be no question of us restoring Lorraine or giving up Arras, Hesdin, Bapaume, Perpignan, Roussillon, Breisach and the strongholds in Alsace … the acquisition of Pinerolo was entirely legitimate and I would never consider conceding it.’31 On 3 July 1642, after her long sojourn in exile, Marie de Medici had passed away, a few months before her nemesis. It was a miserable death. Fetching up in the staunchly Catholic Electorate of Cologne, with her leg growing gangrenous from abscesses, she was faced with the prospect of amputation, an ordeal at any age, with or without anaesthetic; but she was old and there were no painkillers. Recently uncovered evidence suggests that she committed suicide by poison

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   341 rather than face the horror. The matter was covered up because of Christian strictures against suicide.32

French military and political triumph in Savoy 1641–1643

The rebellious brothers Prince Tomascino and Prince Maurizio were persuaded by Mazarin to make peace. Meanwhile the war proceeded; Turenne’s role was theoretically as a subordinate to d’Harcourt but in practice he commanded the army and succeeded in his 1643 campaign in liberating a triangle of three towns in Piedmont – Trino, Alessandria and Asti. Turenne conducted the campaign with great gusto and guile, feinting at Alessandria then besieging the weakened Trino. He had already captured Asti but the counter-feint by the Spanish, who had been unable to breach his siege lines at Trino, failed because Turenne had reinforced and re-supplied Asti for just such an eventuality. Trino was taken and Mazarin sent Turenne his marshal’s baton. He was posted back to Germany following the emergency brought on by the death of de Guébriant at the siege of Rottweil, followed by the destruction of his army near Tuttlingen. These were the first decisions of Mazarin as war leader in succession to Richelieu. He would re-focus French strategy on Germany. With France’s position in Savoy both stabilised and then enhanced, the target of Mazarin’s policy in Italy would shift southwards towards Napoli and stirrings of revolutionary ferment in another Spanish possession.

Interregnum, death of Louis XIII, Mazarin and Anne of Austria consolidate power

The interregnum between Richelieu’s and Louis’ death was been well spent by the dutiful and dying king who showed some talent in preparing for the regency interregnum that must shortly arrive. He brought various rebellious elements into the system. Princes Condé and Gaston were brought onto the Royal Council, the former becoming head of the Council. Military command in the main northern army was given to Gaston. He was created lieutenant general while the very young son of Prince Condé was appointed to command in the Champagne. The incorrigibly rebellious Vendômes were excluded from power. Louis XIII died a few months after Richelieu on 14 May 1643. One of his last dying commands was that the Duchesse de Chevreuse should be banned from the court in perpetuity. Even in his final moments of fevered derangement his last thoughts fixed on the evil siren; he sat up and exclaimed, ‘Voila le diable, celle-la! Voila le diable!’33 (‘There is the devil, that one! There is the devil!’) Behind his dying shriek was the fear of instability, even civil war. There was much to be worried about; the three senior personages in the regime would be his sometime wayward and treacherous wife, Anne of Austria, the treacherous egotist his brother Gaston, ‘Monsieur’, and the insatiably ambitious, politically unreliable Prince Condé, third in line. With friends such as these the regime hardly needed the Vendomes, the Bourbons and the Guises. Louis XIII’s death

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342  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 happened just as the Westphalia Peace talks were officially due to get underway on 25 March 1643 after the signing of the Treaty of Hamburg in late December 1642 (the treaty to agree the terms of the conference). The outcome of any power struggle would have a dramatic impact on war and peace. Given that Anne of Austria was the sister of Spanish King Philip IV, there was every expectation of a diplomatic volte-face as dozens of exiles including the Queen’s old friend, the Duchess de Chevreuse, started to flood back to court in what was in effect a general amnesty. Philip IV asserted confidently on 28 May 1643 that: the death of Louis should be enough to procure all that we desire in the making of an honest peace, since [among other things] France’s allies will no longer be certain of her assistance, whilst I can offer myself as custodian, to defend the new King against any challenge to his authority which may arise within the kingdom. He counted on Anne’s ‘loyalty’. Regency, especially in France, was a dangerous and unstable political system. Anne did have one point going in her favour, and that was popularity; as de Retz acidly remarked, ‘The Queen was adored much more for her troubles than for her merit.’34

Anne of Austria

Anne of Austria was brought up in the Spanish court, the first daughter of Philip III. Surrounded by the stultifying Catholic black-and-white ‘puritanism’ of early-seventeenth-century Spain, there was little indication of what she was really like as a person. Her early life in Spain as the infante was all about devotions to the church, visits to nunneries, prayer, piety and good works, especially with wounded soldiers. Remarkable for her blonde-haired beauty, she was said to be charming and spirited. After her engagement as a minor by a contract signed in 1613, Anne travelled to France with a large retinue of Spanish ladies-in-waiting. From a world of drab and black she was suddenly married and thrust into a world of colour, gaiety and danger; by a chance of history she would be thrown in the way of one of the greatest sirens of history, the remarkable and amoral Duchess de Chevreuse. Detaching Anne from the king’s affections was only a part of de Chevreuse’s great scheme of malevolence as she sought to destabilise the regime. Anne was entertained and amused by the intoxicating charisma of the woman; her wicked wit, spark and practical jokes enlivened Anne’s dull seclusion, giving her a taste of the playful youth that she had never experienced. De Chevreuse, with her irreverence, her affairs and disregard for conventional mores, showed Anne the sinful world of the female libertine. In a loveless marriage, the Queen took on some of the attitudes of her friend; she became a coquette; lacking love, she played at it instead. De Chevreuse also

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   343 introduced her to the world of the importantes and the political opposition on 14 May 1643; surrounded socially by Richelieu-haters, it was hardly surprising that she was cognisant of the plots and politics of the era even if she was not an active conspirator. Her silence implicated her. Gallants of the court, such as de Rochefoucauld or de Beaufort, and others took on the role of her ‘protectors’, flattering her ego and boosting Anne’s self esteem as much as their own. She was receiving an education in politics of sorts, the vicious and deadly world of court and salon intrigue. She became both a political pawn and an icon of esteem in the tradition of an age dripping with sentimentality, melodrama and deep-rooted concepts of friendship – amitié.  Pitied and loved by turns due to the brutal treatment of the king who mainly ignored her while humiliating her with his affairs, she attracted many of the great gallants of the age. Famed poet Theophile de Viau and the duc de Montmorency caused a scandal by dedicating a love poem to her. She would also become the object of a ‘courtly love’ romance by de La Rochefoucauld, the great melodramatic storyteller of the age, whose writing informs the heavily embroidered doings of Dumas’s three musketeers. It was all a throwback to the chivalric traditions of yore but now tinged with new concepts of amitié (the cult of friendship) as well as a decidedly libertine tinge, exemplified by Condé and Chevreuse. For de Rochefoucauld and others of the same ilk, the Queen was ‘unhappy and persecuted’; he would be her champion. Like de Chevreuse he threw himself wholeheartedly into the opposition camp, he spoke broodingly of ‘blood spilt and fortunes destroyed by the odious ministry of Richelieu’35  in an age following the rule of Marie de Medici which ‘passed from liberty to servitude’.36 Exposed to the sinister malcontents or melodramatic romantics around her, the Queen took on many of their attitudes; when her Spanish entourage was removed following the dispute with Spain over the Valtellina Pass, her hostility to Richelieu increased still more. Controlled and manipulated by Richelieu she recognised in him the deadly enemy of Spain and of the Habsburgs; surrounded by enemies of the Cardinal she fell into the world of the disgruntled opposition. When caught corresponding with de Mirabel, the Spanish ambassador, ‘the queen had committed a crime against the state, as a result of which she faced a sort of persecution … many of her servants were arrested’.37 She was subjected to sinister and dangerous interrogations. But then a miracle happened; a rare conjugal visit led to pregnancy and the birth of an heir in 1638. A son was a major prize, strengthening her hand in court politics; she was now mother to an heir and a potential regent. Her son Louis had a patrimony that had to be protected.  From this point on, a mother’s instinct for preservation and protection would begin to align her more closely with the requirements of her adopted state. While Richelieu could only ever be a sinister ally at best, his understudy, Mazarin, was witty and gay; he also came bearing expensive

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344  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 gifts from Italy. This was the emotional battleground around which the first months of the battle for power and policy would play out after Louis XIII’s death. The results of these psychological battles, from the emotional instincts of a conflicted mother with a proud Habsburg heritage, with two decades of humiliation to repay, were unpredictable. The Queen’s decision on who would be first minister would determine the fate of Europe. 

Power struggle at court

After Louis’ death the political battle between Mazarin and his former sponsor, the Comte de Chauvigny, was joined in earnest. The latter had been so obsequious in his devotion to Richelieu that there were rumours as to his being the Cardinal’s bastard son. However, the elegant Mazarin had long endeared himself to the queen. He knew how to flatter and charm her, although their alignment had already been made before his letter that unctuously swore fealty to the new Regent: I will never obey any other will but that of the Queen. I hereby desist immediately and wholeheartedly of all the enjoyments conferred by this declaration [testament Louis XIII], that I surrender unreservedly, all interests, to the unparalleled kindness of her Majesty, acting humbly, obedient and ever faithful and grateful subject, Jules, Cardinal Mazarin.38 The Duke of Beaufort, of the Vendôme faction, who accompanied the Queen and Louis XIV back to Paris seemed to be especially marked out for favour; he was stupid but a war hero; he cut a splendid figure for the Parisian mob; he fronted the hopes of the former exiles, grandees and oppositionists to Richelieu policies. The death of Richelieu and Louis in fairly short order was like blood in shark-infested waters, setting off a flurry of intrigue and plots amongst the contending cabals. The Vendôme supported de Chavigny and were using the young Duke of Beaufort’s charms to win over the queen: Prince Condé and Gaston, the incumbent powers on the council, did not appreciate each other but coalesced in opposition to the Vendôme by supporting Mazarin, who like them saw his interests best served by the continuation of the war. More than personal factors with Anne, there was political calculation and predisposition for choosing Mazarin. Even before the king’s death, she wrote: I am persuaded that Cardinal Mazarin is my servant. It would be reassuring to have someone who could inform me of any intentions the king may have at his death so they can be followed. For I wish to avail myself of a person who is not in any way dependent on ‘monsieur’ [Gaston] or the Prince Condé.39 An important first political manoeuvre made sure that Anne’s legal position as regent was secured quickly with a legitimising declaration by the Paris Parlement

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   345 in a lit de justice on 18 May 1643. She would enjoy ‘the freedom to administer, absolutely and entirely the affairs of the kingdom during his (Louis XIV) minority’.40 One unforeseen effect of this tactical deference to the Parlement of Paris was that this body would now feel that they had a stake in the regime and a right to push for greater powers, over and above the restoration of their traditional privileges. Immediately upon registering/notarising the declaration, the Advocat General of Parlement reminded the new regime of the parlement’s tradition rights, ‘suggesting’ that they encouraged the Queen Regent ‘without hindrance, to support and increase the respect of her majesty for the observation of the fundamental law and the re-establishment of the authority of this institution (Parlement), dissipated over a number of years under the ministry of Cardinal Richelieu’.41 This was a sharp reminder to the regime and a barelyrestrained attack on Mazarin, Richelieu’s successor. To the consternation of the court, she announced on the same day as she received Parlement’s legitimisation that Mazarin would take over as President of the Royal Council. A close observer, de Motville, noted that ‘this insinuating process was so easily carried on in the soul of the Queen that the Cardinal became in short time the master of the council’.42 Apart from her emotional gravitation towards Mazarin, there was the further issue of ‘her natural indolence (she rose very late, towards six or twelve o’clock) and she was ignorant of matters of state’.43 But the battle was not over. Mazarin was well versed in Spanish and familiar with her country from his sojourn there as a student. It was perhaps inevitable that these two outsiders drew close to each other. It is not established whether he became more than that, even though he would frequent her bedchamber at night.44 The Venetian ambassador commented in 1648 that Anne ‘depends on the will of her favourite with such absolute resignation that she does not hold other opinions, does not speak with other voices, does not profess other counsel unless they are established by Mazarin’.45 Despite Mazarin’s upper hand, Anne still harked after old friends and loyalties in the dévot faction. It was an impossible duality that was riven by bitter history. In the end she would have to choose. Chateauneuf, an old dévot oppositionist, hovered around the court. Ominously, on 14 June, the rebellious, sinister and compulsive plotter, de Chevreuse, returned triumphantly from exile in Brussels at the queen’s invitation with a party of twenty coaches swelled by a clique of aristocrats with de Rochefoucauld sycophantically in the lead. At court ‘the Queen greeted her like a long lost friend’, which indeed she was.46 They soon re-established their former intimacy, and ‘La Chevrette’ ‘received so many tokens of affection from the Queen’.47 To seal her malign intentions against Mazarin’s rule, she soon became Chateauneuf ’s mistress, to further her political agenda. However, much time had passed since de Chavreuse’s exile in Spain twelve years earlier; Rochefoucauld claimed that the Queen ‘spoke to me of it [de Chevreuse’s return] coldly’.48

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346  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Still plotting, of course, de Chevreuse threw in her lot with de Beaufort’s Vendôme faction, which was bitter at exclusion from the new Royal Council. So confident was Beaufort that, according to de Retz, he ‘pretended now to govern the kingdom, of which he was not so capable as his valet de chambre.’49 Her focus was specific; it aimed at policy, not personal matters: ‘Madame de Chevreuse has it told to the Queen from all sides,’ noted Cardinal Mazarin, after being given information from his spies, ‘that I do not want peace.’50 Despite appearances, in reality the outcome was probably not in doubt, not least because Beaufort was, in the opinion of contemporaries, ‘shifty and inspired little confidence,’51 but also due to his famous lack of brainpower. Sinister oppositionist Cardinal de Retz exclaimed in despair, ‘of all the idiots I have known, he was the most idiotic’.52 De Motville noted likewise that he was stupid, but that is hindsight because the threat was real, the plotters very numerous and confident of success. At stake was France’s foreign policy and the course of the European war: the Duchesse had promised the Spanish that the Swedish and the Dutch alliances would be terminated. Presumptuously, Beaufort promised patronage to all the returned exiles and supporters. Writing from the front to Mazarin, the chief minister, Condé confirmed that his troops would be marching against the enemy in Rocroi, not to Paris to overthrow the government. Condé wrote to Mazarin on the 16th May ‘I hope the enemies of this estate will not prevail, and I assure you that this army will aim directly at those enemies on the inside. Tomorrow I will march on Rocroi that the enemies have besieged since yesterday, and I will be there the day after tomorrow.’53 Mazarin’s policy in council would henceforth consist of balancing off the Condé and Orleans faction; as de Motville shrewdly noted of the canny Italian, ‘The enmity of those two important personages pleased him much more than their union.’54 Mazarin’s confident and pragmatic approach to his new role as chief minister and commander in chief, was characterised by the practical comments in this note to his military commander, ‘I write this from afar … you who are on the spot and closer to events can be informed both better and sooner than me.’55 An expert in the Byzantine world of foreign affairs, diplomacy and war at a time of delicate peace negotiations just starting in Westphalia, Mazarin seemed indispensable. Now in power, the easy mantras of the dévot opposition no longer seemed as alluring for the Queen; she gravitated to Mazarin’s knowledge and expertise as the government insider; soon the Queen’s old confidants were being sidelined. De La Rochefoucauld noticed that ‘She did not talk to me about business anymore; but she endeavoured, nevertheless, to always give me assurances of her friendship’.56 His doting, although in the chivalric tradition, was of course not untinted by the search for patronage; his quest was failing. Mazarin kept a tight grip on ‘favours’ and would not waste them on suspect court dandies. De La Rochefoucauld would remain unrecognised in his own lifetime, though in later centuries Alexander Dumas would bring his court tittle-tattle

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   347 to life; further accolades awaited in 1920s French Indo-China, where he would be canonised at Tay-Ninh (Cochinchina) into the Cao Daist religion alongside Victor Hugo, Sun Yat-Sen, St Joan of Arc, St Bernard and St John the Baptist. Beaufort and the importantes believed that Mazarin’s reign would not last long; he wallowed in self-importance, accepting the accolades of place seekers and sycophants. De La Rochefoucauld noted that ‘She [the queen] was beginning to fear the hard and haughty mood of the Duke of Beaufort.’  De Chevreuse was also beginning to overreach herself: ‘She often showed her bad satisfaction to the Queen, and in her complaints she always mingled something piquant and mocking against Cardinal Mazarin’s personal faults.’57  Her demand of patronage and favour for her party were soon becoming irritating. In addition, Mazarin inherited Richelieu’s network of spies; so, armed with this intelligence, he was always able to remain one step ahead of his rivals and enemies. Control of the Musketeer guards was also essential in warding off assassination and coup d’état, though the absence of the Cardinal’s regiments at the Italian front left Mazarin vulnerable. As for de Chevreuse, De Rochefoucauld put his finger on it: the Queen ‘told me that she still loved her [La Charette], but that, having no more taste for the amusements which made their connection in their youth.’58 Views on Mazarin are biased but not necessarily wrong or altogether lacking in objectivity: ‘His mind was great, laborious, insinuating, and full of artifice;  his mood was supple.  He had small views, even in his larger projects; …  He concealed his ambition and his avarice in an affected moderation.’59 The rebellion, when it came, included the duc de Beaufort, who was popular with the Paris mob and the Duchess; various plots were hatched to have Mazarin assassinated as he left the Louvre in the evening to return to his residence. According to Beaufort’s aide and supporter Henri de Campion, whose brother Alexandre was La Chevrette’s new ‘toy boy’, Beaufort went into a funk about the plot; then ‘he went to find the duchesses de Chevreuse and Montbazon, who assuredly inspired him with the idea of the enterprise … because he returned so animated against the Cardinal that he declared to me that he could wait no longer’.60 On the night of the 31st, a large group of men gathered at the Deux Anges tavern on the quayside by the Louvre. They were armed with rapiers, a practice that was not unusual per se because that was the fashion of the time for young men, but the large number of them must have drawn some attention. No doubt there were also pistols secreted about their clothing. The tavern was adjacent to the exit that was used by Cardinal Mazarin for his drive back to his palace in the Marais. They were Beaufort’s gang of retainers and supporters, an assassination squad intent on ambushing and killing the queen’s chief minister in a coup d’état. Mazarin knew all the details from his spies and with an air of sangfroid recorded in his carnet, ‘Madame de Chevreuse confers with the brothers Campion. Some plot is certainly being concocted. It is rumoured I am to be

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348  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 attacked in the rue Faubourg St Germain. Plessis-Besancon has told me that there were forty armed men around the hotel Vendôme.’61 The Cardinal did not leave the Louvre as was his ritual, but stayed overnight. Eventually the putative murder gang was ordered to disperse around midnight, and the next day, with rumours ripping around Paris, it was obvious that the plot had been rumbled. Obvious to everyone that is except Beaufort who, despite plentiful advice, maintained his appearances at court in a fog of ostentation and self-delusion. When Mazarin eventually emerged, it was with an escort of 300 of the King’s musketeers. Fence sitters, political scavengers and bit-part plotters rushed to support the regime. Mazarin exploited the attempted coup to gain full powers from the angry and frightened Queen Regent who, according to Madame de Motville, exclaimed, ‘You will see before forty-eight hours have passed how I shall avenge myself for the evil turns these wicked friends of mine are doing me.’62 It was a re-run of the ‘day of the dupes’. The Duke of Beaufort attended the Queen at court and was cordially received. He left believing that all was well but was duly arrested in the presence of the astounded Duchesse de Chevreuse.  he prince, without seeming astonished, said in a dazed fashion to the T captain of the guard, ‘Yes I am willing; but it is I acknowledge rather strange’ then looking across to Madame de Chevreuse he said ‘Mesdames, you see that the queen has ordered my arrest.’63 He was imprisoned. Chauvigny, Mazarin’s arch rival was also arrested, and Chateauneuf betrayed his mistress by being bought off with the governorship of the Tourraine. Chevreuse complained vigorously to the Queen about the treatment of her ‘friends’ but, in an audience, which was no doubt scripted by Mazarin, the Queen ‘advised her (Chevreuse), as she did me the honour to tell me,’ recounted de Motville, ‘to live pleasantly in France, not to mix herself in any intrigue.’64 It was the end of a great friendship. Given a chance by Anne to repent, the intransigent Chevrette refused, so she was exiled to Dampierre again with her beautiful daughter, where the indefatigable schemer would still not desist in her plots. About to be exiled again to Tours she bolted for the Brittany coast where her aristocrat network found her a ship bound for Dartmouth in civilwar-torn England. However, using her charm and her abundant contacts with Parliamentary grandees, notably the Earl of Pembroke, she secured passage to Dunkirk before beginning her third exile in Brussels. But this story is not just about parochial salon politics. The duchess’s overthrow and the definitive assumption of power by Mazarin was a major international political event, celebrated widely by the Protestant allies of France, while throwing her Spanish spymasters into renewed despair. A relieved Frederick Henry sent a message of congratulations via the French ambassador at The Hague, which ‘complimented her majesty on behalf of the Prince of Orange, on

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   349 the dismissal of Madame Chevreuse, saying that, by this action, she has shown the good intention that she has for the interests of her allies’.65 Beaufort’s fall was Mazarin’s masterclass in court politics; the grandees had been tempted into overreaching themselves and Mazarin had bided his time to perfection. The impact of the arrests of his principal enemies and conspirators was to strengthen considerably his power and authority; De Retz summed up the change with mordant humour: This bold stroke – at a time when the Government was so mild that its authority was hardly felt – had a very great effect … . When the world saw that the Cardinal had apprehended the man [Beaufort] who had lately brought the King [Louis XIV] back to Paris with inconceivable pride, men’s imaginations were seized with an astonishing veneration.66 De Retz secretly moved into the oppositionist camp without burning all his bridges to the court; his malice was fed by a powerful admixture of envy and xenophobia against Mazarin personally. The bitter prelate would quietly nurture his already substantial power base in Paris and wait patiently for the moment to strike. De Retz’s animus against Mazarin was the same as that which fed the dévots and grandees; his description of Mazarin in his memoirs is a masterpiece of polemical bile, ‘he was the first minister that could be called a complete trickster’. Mazarin’s instincts were absolutist. He had little time for arguments in council; he had to endure them and to some extent give due deference to the notables, though decisions were increasingly taken outside of the council. Mazarin’s views on government and the rebellious nature of the French aristocracy were clearly evinced in his private carnet; it is not hard to see where the future ‘Sun King’, Louis XIV, found his absolutist inspiration. Mazarin intoned that ‘The French of every class are interested in weakening the king’s authority … and this is why the parlement, the Princes, the governors of Provinces, the Huguenots, and the others want to undo … what was done in the time of the late King [Louis XIII] for the establishment of his absolute authority.’67 (Emphasis added.) Mazarin also enjoyed luck. Condé’s great victory at Rocroi had underpinned the new government. Mazarin followed the broad principles of Richelieu’s policies unwaveringly, not through lack of imagination or loyalty, but because he had for some thirteen years been privy to and an accomplice in working for policies which he believed in. However, there would be some variances in emphasis and strategies. In respect of the treaty negotiations which were still at a preliminary stage, Mazarin’s basic demands remained the same as those of Richelieu and Louis XIII, i.e. holding what they had gained militarily in Alsace, Lorraine, Artois and Roussillon, plus key strategic citadels such as Breisach, Pinerolo and Casale, as well as satisfaction for the liberties and interests of their Protestant allies. One of his first major policy decisions was to select the French delegates

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350  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 for the peace conference. The choice fell on prickly and cynical professional diplomat Servien, who had served Richelieu as both diplomat and minister for the army. He was a minor aristocrat with a small retinue. The other would be the avuncular d’Avaux, member of the Royal Council, a senior aristocrat with a large retinue. D’Avaux was a moderate dévot but his opposition to some of Mazarin’s policies in council after Richelieu’s death had caused irritation: shipping him off to Westphalia was therefore an astute political deployment. The odd couple were sent off together but not directly to Germany; firstly, they were ordered to stop in The Hague to try to negotiate a joint position with the Dutch Estates. There followed an uncomfortable period of negotiation between the parties, with the proud Dutch cavilling at giving up their right to negotiate separately and proposing only a truce; the Dutch still favoured the benefits of war and wanted to keep their options open. There was also increasing suspicion of France as they advanced through Artois into the Flemish heartland, increasingly viewed from Amsterdam as their future buffer state. For the French, for whom the Dutch alliance had been the bedrock of their anti-Habsburg policies, the idea that there might be a separate Dutch peace with Spain, leaving them to fight on alone, was anathema. The French would eventually leave for Westphalia with a weak compromise on their demands. Military strategy, with the focus on Flanders, remained unchanged, at least in theory, with one major exception: de Guébriant’s Franco-German army operating in North Germany in co-operation with Hesse and the Swedes was to be switched to an entirely different axis. Henceforth it would be operating in south-western Germany with the logistics base and magazines of Breisach and Phillipsburg at its back. Bavaria would now be the primary target in Germany. Attacking longstanding ‘putative ally’ Bavaria was breaking Richelieu’s ‘cardinal’ rule. While the Bavarian alliance was still a primary goal of Mazarin’s policy, the methods would now be more robust. Mazarin believed that Bavaria might have to be intimidated into alliance. Although Mazarin’s policies evolved very closely in line with Richelieu’s, he attached considerably more weight to the Hessian alliance and the campaigns in Germany. France’s best generals would henceforth be sent across the Rhine. He was persuaded by Amelia’s minister, Von Krosigk, that ‘the stronger the army of her highness the more efficient will be the diversion she will make, whether the enemies come looking for us, or whether we go looking for them’.68 If the axis of the campaign in Germany was to switch to the south, then Hesse would need more financial support and reinforcement by French-financed regiments under General Rantzau. Subsidies were raised by 50,000 Reichsthaler yearly, on top of the existing 200,000, then by a further 20,000 when more was demanded. Several new regiments had their start-up costs financed by France. The opening of a more active front against Bavaria in the south could not be done at the expense of control in the north-west.

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352  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Like other European monarchs and statesmen, the Cardinal would have heartily agreed with Turenne, ‘the fruit that one gets from battles is to gain a country in order to have quarters, and thus to augment one’s army and diminish that of the enemy by means which one takes from him, which with a little patience sends him to his ruin’.69 By stepping up economic targets, Mazarin’s policy was a thorough endorsement of modern total war. Mazarin’s continued desperate hand-to-mouth scrabble for finance was a necessary continuation of Richelieu’s system. He only spent time considering these issues in detail when the cash shortage was extreme. Following Rocroi, with his power secure, Mazarin decided to increase the stakes. His military ‘surge’, especially the beefed-up effort in Germany, would cost a lot of money. At the start of his regency regime in 1643 all revenues up to 1646 were mortgaged in advance to raise loans to fund spending which increased to 122.5 million livres in 1643 compared to 74.4 million in 1638.70 Mazarin intended to exploit the victory at Rocroi to land a knockout blow. Eventually it was the financial factors in consequence of a war of attrition that would prove to be the Achilles heel of the new Mazarin regime.

Massacre of the Tercios: Battle of Rocroi, 19 May 1643

With a large number of Spanish veterans in elite tercio, de Melo was confident of a repeat victory against a French army that suffered the instability of being repeatedly rebuilt after desertion and depletion of officers and men, as well as a humiliating string of defeats at Arras (1638), Thionville (1639), la Marfee (1641) and Honnencourt (1642). Despite these victories, Spain, following the crippling revolutions of 1640, was on its knees economically and militarily. However, the political situation was fragile in France, with Richelieu just dead and Louis XIII dying, and there was everything to hope for from a resurgent dévot faction, including the return to court of Spanish agent de Chevreuse. Desperate for peace, a Spanish victory now could perhaps salvage a reasonable treaty agreement. De Melo crossed into France over the river Sambre with a troop concentration of 28,000: a mixed Spanish, Imperial and Walloon army mustered from various garrisons in Artois, Hainault, the Meuse area, Luxembourg and the Dutch border. As he advanced on Rocroi, which he invested on 15 May, he made sure to protect his communications by detaching 5,000 men under Colonel Beck to guard the Meuse crossing some thirty kilometres further back. Rocroi was held strongly with 4,000 troops but there was not time enough to capture the place before Condé’s army of relief arrived. Instead of looking to manoeuvre De Melo out of position by threatening Beck on the Meuse crossing, Condé decided to attack head on. Any attack was risky because the approach to the battlefield, located in the plain around Rocroi, was over a steep pass through dense forest, which de Melo could easily have blocked or used for ambush if he had chosen. The two narrow access roads, according to count Gassion, little better than

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   353 paths, were ‘narrow and tortuous, they crossed very thick forests and led to swampy moors’.71 Even the main road is narrow and unremarkable. It winds up steeply from the Sonnon valley through dark forests in a still desolate region and debouches onto a plateau before the town; it is a billiard-table arena amongst the tangled forest, sharp hills, ravines and narrow valleys of the Ardennes. From certain high points in the road as you climb you can look back and see the waves of forested foothills on the far side of the Sonnon valley, in which CharlevilleMezière is located. The hills roll on to meet the sweeping open undulations of the Champagne some sixty kilometres westward. Of the approach to battle, the Maquis de Moussaye noted ‘nothing was easier than to defend the pass’,72 and ‘With six thousand men they could have defended this position and with the rest of their army take the town which would have surrendered on the evening of our arrival.’73 The fact that de Melo did not block the passage to the plateau demonstrates emphatically that he was seeking a decisive victory in battle by allowing the French army to come up and deploy on the plain in front of Rocroi. If Condé came through the defile and was defeated, then his retreat would be through an impossibly narrow wooded track, wholly unsuited to 20,000 soldiers and thousands of wagons retreating in a hurry. If Condé lost the battle his army would be utterly destroyed, and he would lose his entire artillery and baggage train as well. With both commanders wanting a decisive confrontation at a critical moment of the war Portuguese aristocrat de Melo was right to comment wistfully after the battle, ‘To tell the truth we used to regard war here as a pastime; but the profession of arms is serious and it gains and loses Empires.’ 74 However, with the supreme confidence of youth, Condé had a remarkably straightforward approach to fighting war, not unlike that of General Ulysses Grant: you find the enemy army and you attack. So, despite the dangers, not considering the possibility of defeat, on 16 May he marched through the upland defile with a force which was probably inferior to the Spanish one; 20,000 French, including 6,400 cavalry and twelve guns facing about 24,000 SpanishImperialists including 5,000 cavalry and eighteen guns. On the 17th, just before the battle, Condé received the news that King Louis XIII had died. Just before his death the king woke from a sleep to see Prince Condé by his bedside: ‘Monsieur de Condé, I dreamt that your son had won a great victory.’ 75 On the 18th Condé’s army advanced through the forest defile but, by the time they were in position in front of the Spanish army, it was late and the remainder of the day was taken up by fierce artillery exchanges and skirmishes without any attempt by either side to attack, as noted by Baron de Sirot: the town was behind them [the Spanish] within range of artillery fire, and the two armies were only at a distance of two musket ranges from each other; … if the enemy [Spain] caused much more damage to our army than they received from us … their gunners were more expert and more skilful

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354  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 than ours …, more than two thousand of our soldiers were either killed or wounded.76 The armies were drawn up with de Melo resting his left flank on lightly forested marshland to the west of the field. Intending to ambush and enfilade the French cavalry as they passed, on the Spanish left a unit of 1,000 musketeers was secretly positioned in a copse of trees. The French troops were drawn up in fairly small-unit linear formations as opposed to the Spanish with their deep boxes of hedgehog-like tercios. The Spanish were now the only army in Europe to use these formations as opposed to the more linear dispositions introduced by Swedish forces. De Melo made an emotional speech to his men that ended with a strangely discouraging cry, ‘We want to live and die for the King!’ 77 The battle started very early because Condé received information from a deserter that Beck, who had been guarding the Meuse, was on his way with 5,000 reinforcements for de Melo. Condé had to attack and defeat de Melo before Beck’s reinforcements arrived, so he hit him at first light at 4.00 a.m. De Melo by contrast, having sent for Beck, would stand on the defensive and wait for his reinforcements, before delivering crushing counter-attacks. On the French right Condé, with typical flamboyance, personally led a strong party of infantry and cavalry though the woods to attack and ambush the units placed in the woods by de Melo the night before. Surprised in the early morning, they were wiped out by the Picardy Regiment: ‘Even though they fought on ground that was naturally entrenched and advantageous to them, the attack was so strong that they were all cast down.’ 78 The main body of the enemy troopers were surprised: they were not yet mounted when the sound of gunfire stirred them to action. The battle started on the French left with an impetuous attack by the noble glory-hunter, which was brought to a standstill by Isenburg’s steady Imperial veterans who maintained their close order. De La Ferté had made the same mistake the day before of leaving a large ‘2,000 paces’ gap between the cavalry and the infantry in the centre. With horses wilting and separated from their reserves, the time was ripe for a Spanish counter-attack. It duly came: ‘The enemy charged them breaking them and putting them to flight. The troops took to their heels without offering any resistance,’ complained de Sirot. De Melo’s counterpunch plan seemed to be working: ‘thus the entire right flank of the enemy fell upon the reserve under my command.’79 Condé, commanding the place of honour on the right, proceeded to attack the Spanish left under the Alfonso de Albuquerque, whose troops had been caught unprepared and in the wrong position. Albuquerque had to re-adjust his battlefronts to deal with a flank attack and re-align his troops, but it was too late, as the Maquis de Moussaye noted: ‘Nothing however is more dangerous than to undertake important manoeuvres before a strong enemy on the point

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   355 of engaging in battle. Already shaken the squadrons [Spanish] were crushed by the first charge.’80 Gassion and Condé had agreed that Gassion’s first echelon would face right and make a circuit of the copse to attack Albuquerque in the flank and rear, while Condé’s second echelon held the main body of Spanish cavalry attacks. Meanwhile, the steadfastness of Sirot’s reserve force blunted the attacks of the Spanish cavalry on the crumbling French left flank, allowing the French cavalry and infantry to rally. Condé rode over to him and told him to hold on. With Albuquerque’s wing crumbling, Condé divided his cavalry squadrons, sending one to chase the fleeing Spanish cavalry and to capture the baggage train. The other echelon, supported by French infantry, crashed into the left flank of the Spanish infantry. Meanwhile Gassion’s echelon, employing a method that Cromwell used just two years later at Marston Moor, circled behind the tercio to attack Issenburg’s Spanish right-wing cavalry in the rear, so completing their defeat. Having been defeated on both flanks, de Melo’s infantry tercios were isolated and unsupported; moreover, they were hard-pressed by the veteran Scottish infantry of the elite Garde Ecossaise, a unit of about 4,000 men whose counter-attack in the centre had blunted initial advances by the famed tercios.81 Realising the gravity of the situation, de Melo joined Visconti’s tercio saying, ‘Here I wish to die with the Italian gentlemen.’82 Visconti was soon killed. Were it not for the hoped-for arrival of Beck, retreat was the obvious option. It was the choice eventually made by Walloon and German tercios who, retreating from the field, ‘withstood every charge made against them’ and retired in good order, with their general, de Melo. Beck never arrived, probably owing to miscommunication. Reaching its final and most bloody stage, ‘Only de Melo’s infantry was left. They were pressed together as one near their cannon.’83 Guns dragged up by the French could pulverise this dense mass of flesh and blood at will, and from a safe range. Unable to retreat or attack, unable to support one another, the tercios were mown down like threshed wheat, each blast of grapeshot scything down sixty or more men. Completely surrounded, the Spanish officers agreed to surrender. But there then occurred a typical misfortune of war. A volley was fired by the Spaniards in the mistaken impression that they were under attack again. This caused fury amongst the French troops who ‘believing it to be proof of Spanish dishonesty, …. charged at the Spanish from all sides without waiting for orders. The terrible carnage that then ensued was vengeance.’84 The Spanish infantry in their dense tercio formations were slaughtered by musket and cannon fired at point-blank range; their commander, the Comte de Fontaine, a highly-regarded soldier, who was incapacitated before the battle, was afterwards found dead in his sedan chair. The French battered away from 8.00 a.m. to 10.00 a.m. until the surrounded Spanish veterans ran out of ammunition. One tercio of 2,000, upon surrendering,

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356  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 was given free passage across France, but other tercios were annihilated. Amid the carnage, 5,000 Spanish veterans lay dead; a further 10,500 were captured or dispersed. In the retreat, de Melo could round up only 8,500 troops, including 4,000 cavalry. Professor Wilson’s estimate of casualties puts the score more evenly, just 3,862 prisoners, and 3,500 other casualties compared to a heavy toll on the French of 4,500 with 2,000 dead. Given Condé’s habit of wasting men on frontal attacks, Wilson’s figures may be preferred. Additional losses to the Imperialists came from savage attacks by the French after the battle with as many as 2,000 Spanish and others cut down in the forests.85 In a letter to Philip IV dated 23 May, de Melo wrote, ‘The defeat of Rocroi has given rise in all areas to consequences we had always feared. It was a terrible outcome.’86

Consequences

Rocroi is usually taken by historians to be a talisman for the decline of Spain and the rise of France’s military power. C.V. Wedgewood leads the romantic charge of history: It was the end of the Spanish army … without that splendid infantry which had been the strength of the army. … the veterans were gone, the tradition broken, and no one was left to train a new generation. In the centre of the fields before Rocroy today stands a little modern monument, an unassuming grey monolith: the gravestone of the Spanish army; almost, one might say, the gravestone of Spanish greatness.87 Poetic stuff, but not true. The Spanish had lost important battles before 1643 and were to win important battles against the French afterwards. Without the gaining of a town the victory would count for little at court. So, under orders from Mazarin, Condé moved on to the much-disputed strategic fortress of Thionville, the scene of a serious French defeat in 1638. Beck, who was left in charge of the Spanish army, shadowed the victors. De Melo threw 2,000 extra men into Thionville’s garrison once the direction of the French advance had been established. Reinforced, the fortress controlled the area north of Metz shielding Spanish interests in Luxembourg; it covered the entry to the Moselle valley. Thionville surrendered after a fifty-six-day siege on 8 August, after two failed assaults. The town gave in after Condé’s gun batteries had got near enough to smash breaches in the bastions: a tragedy for Condé who lost his amour in the assault. The Rocroi campaign had much more strategic significance than it receives credit for. Guthrie dismisses its importance. Firstly, the Spanish offensive from Flanders had been blunted and France’s eastern frontier was secured. Moreover, the strategic situation in Germany, which had been badly damaged by the defeat at the battle of Tuttlingen, could now be reversed. Spain was not to make another major attack again until 1648 because, with the Spanish Road closed and sea routes blocked, Spain was unable to send reinforcements to make up

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   357 the losses. So, Condé and some of his troops could be sent to the support of Turenne for the critical battles in the Black Forest in 1644. Condé had created ‘strategic space’, which allowed France to take the strategic initiative again in Germany. Without the levening of a core of veterans, the Spanish tercios were difficult to replace in quality even if numbers could be mustered. Reinforcements to the Low Countries could only be made in ‘penny packets’ by sea because of the Dutch naval blockade, which was strengthened after the battle of the Downs. An example of the difficulties in communicating with and supporting the Spanish Netherlands was the appointment of the talented Imperial general Piccolomini in 1644 to succeed de Melo after negotiations in Madrid. Piccolomini faced the daunting prospect of running the gauntlet of the Dutch naval blockade to reach his command in Brussels. Setting off in winter to try to avoid Dutch patrols, his vessel ended up being chased into the Cornish port of Falmouth to avoid capture. After swinging at anchor in this remote English port, he eventually reached Brussels on 1 May 1644, finding that the much-reduced Spanish forces under his command could only operate on the defensive. Disillusioned, he would resign in late 1647, intent on returning to the Bohemian estates granted to him as reward for the murder of Wallenstein.

Dutch campaign 1643

After the hiatus caused by the death of Richelieu and the squabbles of the previous year, Mazarin took up the slack to continue his former master’s policies. A new treaty was signed with the Dutch on 30 March 1643 which provided for 1.2 million guilders of subsidy, although only 852,000 were actually paid. Delayed by adverse winds, the Dutch army eventually plied its well-used route to Philippine on the coast of Zeeland to make an attack on Hulst. Easily blocked by de Melo’s army of 14,000, the Dutch retreated amidst wrangling and indecision. Meanwhile, the Stadtholder’s health was in decline. To salvage some honour after yet another lame effort, Frederick Henry launched a cavalry raid against Antwerp’s suburbs on 4 September. A clever ambush was set for 1,000 pursuing Spanish cavalry, which was successfully sprung, taking 600 prisoners for the loss of only fifteen men. However, it was a paltry return for the sums invested in the campaign. Nevertheless, pulling away Beck’s troops to reinforce de Melo’s army had made it easier for Condé’s to take Thionville.

The battle of Tuttlingen, military masterclass by Franz von Mercy, November 1643

After its strategic switch from north-west Germany in late 1643, the FrancoGerman army under the capable De Guébriant was operating in the Swabian hills to the south of Stuttgart. Mazarin had overturned Richelieu’s longstanding ‘hands off Bavaria’ strategy, bringing a new strategic direction. De Guébriant would operate with his back to France’s forward supply bases at Breisach and

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358  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Phillipsburg. This was part of a new twin-pronged attack whereby Sweden would advance southwards down the Oder and the Elbe, while the French advanced eastwards down the Danube in a grand strategic pincer on Vienna. In another innovation, Mazarin urged his generals to find winter quarters for French troops on enemy lands in Bavaria or along the Rhine. The French campaign in November 1643 suffered an unlucky blow when General de Guébriant was killed during the siege of Rottweil, where he was intending to take up winter quarters, so denying this area to the Bavarian army. Command was temporarily taken over by Colonel Rantzau, pending a replacement; Rantzau, a French court dandy and favourite of the Queen, sent the army of 11,000 men into winter quarters. Taking some risk, he spread them out in a fifty-kilometre radius from Rottweil to towns on both sides of the Danube around Tuttlingen, some forty kilometres to the south-east. Such wide dispersals were dictated by the need to graze thousands of horses. However, this decision should only have been made if the enemy had either definitely gone into winter quarters themselves or were both some distance away and being constantly tracked by reconnaissance. At the very least there should have been plenty of outlying pickets surrounding the winter quartering zone. It was a fatal mistake from a temporary general who lacked army command experience, because Franz von Mercy had not gone into winter quarters; instead, feigning retreat into them, he was secretly concentrating troops from the lower Rhine, including units from Charles of Lorraine’s command. Mercy did not attack the main French-German encampments at Tuttlingen directly from his base to the north. To avoid detection, he marched with 15,000 troops in a wide circle to the east; his initial move away from the Franco-German army did indeed convince Rantzau that he was retiring into quarters. Abruptly changing direction, Mercy then dropped over the Danube at Sigmaringen; unobserved, he moved southwards, screened by dense forest to the south-east of Tuttlingen. Poised now, close to the complacent enemy, Mercy moved in for the kill. Snuffing out the French pickets on the afternoon of 24 November, the Bavarian army stormed out of the woods and overran the spread-out enemy encampments one by one. Less of a battle than an ambush or sneak attack, it was a devastating French defeat. The French lost about 7,000 troops, with only 4,000 making it back to the Rhine. Of the elite Guarde Ecossaise of 4,500, only 10 per cent would be rallied for further service.88 All supplies, baggage, cannon, and considerable quantities of silver plate and cash were taken. Mercy had learned the lesson he had been so painfully taught by Bernhard Saxe-Weimar at Rheinfelden and Wittenweir; surprise is a decisive battlefield tactic.

The Bavarian army and postscript to Tuttlingen

The victory set back the French advance into Bavaria by three years, transferring the fulcrum of battle to the Rhine crossings. Pressure also increased on Hesse,

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   359 whose anxieties both real and imagined fluctuated with every minor or major turn in the military fortunes of France or Sweden. Following Mercy’s success, the Catholic league powers of Cologne, Mainz, and others would be emboldened to launch attacks on Hessian-occupied territory in the north-west. Following the Tuttlingen victory, Mercy captured Überlingen on Lake Konstanz to his rear, preparing the way for the siege of Freiburg followed by the capture of Breisach in the next campaigning season The Bavarian army was maintained by sustainable contribution agreements, in cash and kind, made with its base areas in Westphalia/Cologne, Bavaria and Swabia, which provided the majority of financing from 1635 to 1648. This was especially important because of the almost year-round cycle of the war; in a letter to general quartermaster Ruepp in 1634 Mercy wrote ‘We must do it just like the enemy [has done], who used the contributions, the levies and other exactions to replenish their war chest … which enabled them to pay the costs of the forces’.89 With his revenues collapsing, oppressing the enemy or enemy neutrals was the only strategy that could allow his army to function. Bavaria had suffered much from Swedish armies but the comparative peace that had prevailed since 1632 was about to change as a result of Mazarin’s new direction.

Torstensson identity: Enter the ‘artilleryist’, 1641–1645

When General Torstensson joined the mutinying Swedish army as its general in November 1641, the military situation in the Empire was in near-stalemate. Because armies could not move beyond their base areas, war was fizzling out. In Sweden, the Rad wanted to get out of the war on reasonable terms. Negotiations about peace talks were well under way, with the added dynamic of Spain’s suit for a separate peace with the Dutch. Hardly surprising then that Torstensson was under instructions to take a defensive stance and wait on events. Old before his time, sick from brutal imprisonment after his capture in 1632 at the battle of Alte Veste, exhausted from years of campaigning, he accepted the duty thrust on him. On 17 August 1603 Lennart Torstensson was born into a noble family of Catholics with links to the deposed Sigismund (Vasa), King of Poland. His parents being oppositionists, they fled into exile in 1603 leaving him behind soon after his birth. Raised by relations as a Lutheran, he was only to see his father again on his return from exile in 1623. His family had a martial tradition reaching back to his grandfather and the ‘wars of liberation’ against Denmark. His uncle was killed in the disastrous battle of Kirkholm against Polish lancers in 1605. Torstensson was called by the King to court as a pageboy in 1618. In this role it was hoped that his talents, already well recognised, could be garnered for use by the Crown; any oppositionist ideas might thereby be tamed. Torstensson’s military apprenticeship started early. In 1621, at the age of 18, accompanying Gustavus on the Livonian expedition, he took part in the fall of Riga, and two years later accompanied Gustavus on a naval expedition to

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360  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Danzig. Following a grand tour of Germany, he returned to military service again, seeing action against the Poles as an ensign of the bodyguard in the snow bound battle of Wallhof on the Livonian–Lithuanian border. Already a trusted officer, having been made colonel of the Norland Infantry Regiment in 1628, he served in the 1628–29 Prussian campaigns, acting in a staff capacity, but found occasion to distinguish himself in the capture of the massive fortress of Marienburg (Marbork), the former headquarters of the Tuetonic knights (now a UN World Heritage Site). He is said to have made his reputation by disobeying the king’s military instructions at the siege of Riga (1620–21). Sent with orders to an outlying unit, he understood that Gustavus’s orders were at odds with the actual disposition of the enemy and simply changed them. He excused himself with Gustavus, ‘Pardon sire, I saw the enemy’s march had changed and gave in your majesty’s name the requisite orders in accordance therewith.’90 In any army at any time this would likely have resulted in severe disciplinary punishment, court martial and death, particularly if the consequences were negative. However, they were not, and Gustavus is reported to have said, ‘Lennart, this could have cost you your life, but maybe you are better suited to be a general than a page at the royal court.’91 Apocryphal or not, the story illustrates the huge ability and selfconfidence of the young soldier. In 1629 Gustavus re-organised the artillery train into a separate regiment, reflecting the new importance of this arm of battle in Gustavus’s concept of war. No longer just for siege warfare or an incidental part of a field army to produce some morale-boosting detonations (or ‘shock and awe’ ) in the opening phase of battle, it was to become a rigorously professional and significant arm of war. ‘Firepower’, the coming concept of war, was thoroughly understood by Gustavus long before other commanders. In 1629 the various companies of artillery built up since 1623 were formed into one regiment, then placed under the command of 27-year-old Torstensson, who was given the title Grand Master of Artillery. Torstensson went on to distinguish himself with his performances after the landing in Germany, at Demmin, as well as the sieges of the fortresses of Grafenhagen, Landsberg and Frankfort-an-Oder. His handling of artillery at Brietenfeld, and Lech in particular, were well remarked; veteran Monro attributed the victory at Breitenfeld to the artillery: ‘next unto God, a second helpe unto this glorious victory, was the great execution made by his majesties cannon. At Alte Veste, Torstensson was captured when given command of the storming of the enemy defences; his mistake had been to do his job too well. Achieving lodgement in the enemy defences, where all the others had failed, he found himself cut off, then surrounded. He was then held in the appalling squalor of a damp dungeon for a year; as a result, he missed the battle of Lutzen. Who knows how history might have changed if Torstensson had commanded the guns on that fateful day? His value to the Swedes was clearly well understood by his friends and enemies, because

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   361 he was exchanged in 1633 for none other than the captured Imperial Treasurer Count Harrach (Wallenstein’s father-in-law) who had been ambushed while travelling in his coach. Nonetheless, the year spent in a dank prison dungeon seriously damaged his health; he suffered from kidney infections, severe gout and rheumatism for the rest of his life, particularly in the winter campaigns, which he was wont to undertake. He was fortunate to have a hardy wife, Beatta, who nursed him on his last campaigns. Serving as deputy to Marshal Baner, he distinguished himself again at the crucial battle of Wittstock, where his well-positioned guns prevented an Imperial breakthrough, giving an opportunity for the Swedish cavalry to regroup and winning precious time for the decisive flanking attack by the king and Stanhalske. Sent to hold Swedish-occupied Poland, it was Torstensson who brought across the Swedish army to reinforce Baner after the Truce of Strumersdorf. He had arrived in the nick of time to throw back the Saxon offensive. The only general who could work in harmony and enjoy the respect of the morose, bibulous and irascible Baner, he also served at the Swedish victories of Chemnitz and Brandeis. In early 1641 Torstensson returned to Sweden on compassionate grounds to nurse his health. However, in May, the death of Baner precipitated a double crisis because the army used the excuse of their general’s death to mutiny again in demand of backpay. He also adopted a brutal and ruthless approach to the enemy, understanding the necessity of allowing his underpaid troops free plunder in occupied lands. Torstensson understood the concept of total war. As a leader, he was not especially popular. Unlike many of his fellow officers, for whom drinking, whoring and looting were favourite pastimes, Torstensson was personally abstemious, so his senior officers’ mess lacked the carousing, festivity and camaraderie often associated with many of the war’s commanders, including Gustavus. By the war’s end he was leading hardened mercenary armies with a small Swedish-Finnish component in the artillery regiment. With politically suspect and rebellious soldiers in his ranks he had to be harsh. He could have no friends amongst the officers, especially the hard-bitten German colonels. The reliable and loyal Scots troops were long gone, though some officers remained. Command in these circumstances was a lonely business. He believed that war was necessarily cruel, and that cruelty was justified. Ratio belli was his favourite dictum. Another characteristic was his exceptional aggressiveness; always wanting to take the initiative in the style of Gustavus, he was a great exponent of surprise, high-speed attacks. Nevertheless, in other situations he could show restraint, subtlety and finesse to achieve equally dramatic results. Tactical withdrawal was never a psychological difficulty for him. An all-rounder, he was not only tactically adept but a master of strategy, at ease with the minutiae of battlefield tactics. Torstensson wanted not merely to defeat an enemy army but to obliterate it. Only a Cannae would do.

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362  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Being so sick, he was unable to ride a horse for long periods; his troops carried him on the battlefield in a litter, or he rode in a coach when the army was on the march. He did not rest in winter as was normal for the day, and his relentless campaigning is testament to an extraordinary inner energy and confidence. He was certainly the finest commander of his day, and badly underrated by history. He hardly features in many histories. Inability to ride a horse for a sustained period might have been a significant handicap to his grasp of the battle terrain and troop disposition, yet his understanding of battlefield topography remained masterly. He must necessarily have developed a good staff and battlefield intelligence system to overcome these disadvantages. One other notable aspect of his generalship was his outstanding organisational ability and sound logistics, which meant that his armies never fell apart for want of supply, either in long advances or retreats.

The German campaign in balance 1641; Brandenburg makes peace

Brunswick defected to the Imperialists in 1641, after the battle of Wolfenbuttel. However, this was more than balanced by the defection of Brandenburg to the Swedish-French alliance in the same year, following the diet of Regensburg. The Electorate was occupied by Swedish troops. The death of George William in 1640 precipitated a fresh stance: the new Elector Frederick William adopted quite different, more pro-active diplomatic and military policies than his weak father. He dismissed George William’s pro-Imperial minister, the Catholic von Schwartzenberg. Brandenburg changed sides in July 1641; officially it was neutrality, but in effect they were joining the Franco-Swedish alliance. Sweden remained in possession of five important cities including Frankfurt-on-Oder, and the Elector promised grain deliveries of 177,000 litres per month (177 cubic metres) and 120,000 Reichsthaler per annum by way of contribution.92 The political position for the Swedes in Germany was beginning to change decisively in their favour for the first time in nearly ten years. The improving political situation in Germany certainly owed as much to French diplomacy and money as to the stabilisation and improvement of Sweden’s military position since Wittstock in 1636. France became increasingly active in the Empire and co-ordinated military policy with Sweden more effectively: as a result, they would enjoy greater success. With Mazarin soon to be in control, there was no further need of falling in with Louis XIII’s fanciful annual expeditions to pointless sieges on the Flanders front. The way was now clearer for a more logical distribution of effort, resources and military talent. Nonetheless, so much had been invested in the Flanders campaigns that some continued effort there could hardly be avoided. In November 1641 Torstensson reached his mutineering army. Armed with 180,000 Reichsthaler, drawn on Hamburg bankers through Swedish diplomat and purchasing agent Salvius, the revolt was quelled by payment of two months’ backpay as well as the stiffening effect of 8,000 native Swedish reinforcements.

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   363 Pour encourager les autres, Torstensson imposed his will early on by having Colonel Seckendorf beheaded for treason. He spent the first four months, martinet style, doing nothing but drilling his troops in the best Gustavian tradition. Then he brusquely but truthfully pointed out to his disgruntled army that the only way to recover all their backpay was to win battles and win the war. Having extensive experience in Germany, he was a known quantity to the military contractors with whom he would have to work to maintain the logistical efficiency of the army. He relied in particular on a lead contractor, Melchior von Degingk, and the Hamburg-based Swedish diplomat and commercial plenipotentiary, Johan Salvius. Hamburg was a major finance centre, arms entrepôt, and military equipment production base lying at the head of the Elbe river that ran on down through Saxony and Bohemia. For strategic choice, Torstensson could push on down the line of the Elbe with direct attacks aimed at knocking out and conquering Saxony and then move on to Vienna through Bohemia, or take the Ocer route based on Stettin. The main problem of the Elbe line of attack was that the Elbe stopped well short of Vienna, the nearest point being just north of Prague before the river pulls away sharply towards Western Silesia. How would he be able to supply the army across Bohemia and Moravia? Torstensson decided to use both strategic alternatives. Stettin and the magazine at Frankfurt would support an easterly line of advance, giving access to Silesia and northern Moravia. This was a more direct approach to Vienna because, by ending up in Moravia, his army would be three to four days march away. He would use these river lines as a boxer would his left and right hands, jabbing with one while punching with the other. Could this strategy land a knockout blow?

Torstensson’s invasion of the Hereditary lands, 1642

Piccolomini, seeking to take advantage of the perceived weaknesses of the mutinous Swedish army, advanced into Brandenburg in February 1642. In response, Torstensson, with an inferior cavalry force, went onto the defensive behind earthworks on the line of the Elbe river, in much the same manner as Gustavus at Werben. Werben was connected by barges along the Elbe to the Swedish supply and finance base at Hamburg where Torstensson drew his finance and supplies, while Piccolmini’s army starved. The Werben position was covered by marshes. In deep mid-winter, with a shortage of food, the Imperialists were forced to retreat. In the spring Torstensson launched his offensive, having built up his army through the winter; transferring from the Elbe he would take up a new axis of attack along the Oder. In what was to become a trademark of his strategy and tactics, in April Torstensson sent Königsmarck on a diversionary cavalry raid into Saxony along the line of the Elbe, the expected line of attack (the jab). Meanwhile, Torstensson from his base at Werben in recently neutralised Brandenburg then

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364  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 marched into east to Silesia, using his alternative Oder river supply line (the punch). This was the direct route to Vienna along the line of the Oder into Silesia and Moravia. Torstensson’s strategy was bold and aggressive because Duke Leopold’s Imperial army was wintering around Magdeburg, strategically placed behind and to the west of Torstensson’s line of advance, posing a threat to his base area and communications. However, Torstensson was stealing a march and his diversion along the Elbe would delay Leopold, as well as hide his true intention; it would also take time for Leopold to mobilise and follow. Silesia was a wealthy province of small cities spreading along the Oder; manufactures (including arms production), trade and agriculture, based on its 100-kilometre-long flat fertile river valley, were the main economic occupations. To the south were the foothills of the mountains bordering northern Bohemia and Moravia, to the north of Silesia rolling upland hills laced with bands of forest which connected to the wheat-belt plains of central Poland on the west side of the Vistula. Crossing through Lusatia in April, he overran northern Silesia, capturing a string of towns, and occupying Sagan (one of Wallenstein’s former fiefdoms). Glogau, located near the Lusatia-Silesia border with its 1,400man garrison, was next. A fortress with double walls and high towers, demilunate works, this important town dominated the most fertile part of Silesia; it was stormed in an assault which cost 200 Swedish casualties. The defenders were put to the sword. As often in the Thirty Years War, initial ruthlessness in the first major assault of a campaign led to a domino run of surrenders. It should also be noted that slaughter of the garrison that refused to surrender and put the attacker to the trouble of a ‘storm’ was normal according to customs of war. Five more towns soon capitulated in a region which was mainly Lutheran. Then Torstensson moved on to besiege the strategically vital border fortress of Sweidnitz, located close to Bohemia, at the entrance to the gap in the mountainous border which allows easy passage to northern Bohemia and Prague, some 250 kilometres to the south. With such a key fortress at stake, the Imperialists were bound to try to relieve it; a corps-sized relieving army of 7,000 Imperialists and Saxons (mainly cavalry) was drawn in, but Torstensson was waiting for them. Failing to realise that Königsmark’s cuirassiers had backtracked to Silesia to rejoin the Swedish army, the Imperialists were annihilated on 31 May when trapped by greatly superior numbers. The tactics employed were similar to those of Hannibal; absorb the attack and enclose with flanking cavalry. Allowing a weak screen of troops to be driven back onto the horns of a superior cavalry force, concealed amongst the deeply undulating hills in the south of Silesia, Torstensson’s cavalry then rushed in on either flank. It was like ‘a Cannae in miniature’,93 and the Imperial dead and wounded amounted to 4,000, with 1,200 prisoners, four cannon and forty standards. Only 16 per cent of the enemy escaped. Sweidnitz’s 500-man garrison (and seven Jesuits), having resisted three assaults, surrendered soon after on 5 June 1642. The siege encapsulated the hard dilemma for an early modern fortress commander: having avoided being

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   365

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366  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   367

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368  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 massacred by accepting the summons to surrender, unlike his unfortunate comrades in nearby Glogau, the commander was duly beheaded by his own side for cowardice and dereliction of duty. The fortress of Sweidnitz now screened Torstensson’s communications in Silesia’s Oder valley from Imperial forces based in Bohemia as he marched further east into upper Silesia, towards Moravia and Vienna. Other Silesian cities, Breslau, Opeln, and Troppau on the Moravian border, fell to the rampant Swedish army and a detachment under Lilliehook besieged and captured Niesse while Torstensson went on to Moravia. His aim was the weakly-held provincial capital, famous and still quaint university city of Olomouc, just 150 kilometres north of Vienna. Torstensson had selected his target well and achieved strategic surprise.

The invasion of Moravia and capture of Olomouc, June 1642

Olomouc and the province of Moravia had been largely free of war since the Danish-backed invasion by Mansfeld in 1626. It was a wealthy province of the Emperor’s hereditary land; the original base of Wallenstein’s inherited wealth and political power, it would yield for Torstensson a significant contribution of 30,000 Reichsthaler. The place surrendered quickly to Swedish attack. Set in flat countryside, the university city was surrounded on two sides by rivers, behind which high defensive walls were built into large chunks of natural rock on a steep promontory: old fashioned curtain walls with square, medieval, hooded guard towers, but the defensive features were still formidable and still stand. However, the third side of the city is very long, lies on low ground and enjoys no natural barriers. Defences there were too weak, and so was the will to resist by a garrison unprepared for a siege. Upon occupation, the place was thoroughly looted, especially the famous university; 10,000 books from the city’s fine university library were packed off as a present for the rapaciously intellectual bibliophile, Sweden’s Queen Christina. More significant for military purposes was the strategic location of Olomouc (Olmütz), at the head of the navigable Oder river system, which ran up through Silesia to the Baltic at Swedish-held Stettin. Torstensson understood the problem of attacking Vienna: it was all about logistics. Silesia and Bohemia could not feed a large army for long, so any attack on Vienna would run out of food; it would collapse and fall apart. Overland communications were too long, slow, costly and unreliable to supply grain or bread, let alone munitions. Only river transport would do the job effectively and at a reasonable cost. Olomouc, just a four-day march from Vienna, could be built up into a huge magazine, storing food and munitions. With Silesia also under occupation, the Swedes would possess a seamless supply channel into the heart of the hereditary lands, a catspaw for a future swipe at Vienna. Torstensson enhanced its defences on its weaker western side.

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   369 The historian C.V. Wedgwood, using contemporary chronicles and sources, says this of Torstensson’s descent on Moravia; it was accompanied by the ‘burning of their villages, torturing and hanging the prisoners and issuing threats of horrible punishment against any who stole from the army’.94 Torstensson’s wellknown regard for the general discipline of the army was such that he would not have done things as policy unless justified by military necessity. The contrast is with Mansfeld, whose undisciplined troops were symptomatic of an army in disintegration. Torstensson’s armies never disintegrated. In regard to Olomouc, the depopulation of unnecessary elements in the city was a smart military decision because grain stores held in the magazine in case of siege would go further without useless mouths; a Catholic local populace sympathetic to the enemy would be a problem in a long siege. Nevertheless, the consequences for the population of the city were dire; under harsh occupation of the soldiery, the population dwindled from 30,000 to 2,000 by 1650 but this was based on policy. Olomouc was a large city for its day, comparable for example to Magdeburg. The reasons for the decline are not hard to understand. The town clerk noted that ‘initially there were 475 houses available to billet the garrison here, and now there are no more than 170, the remaining 300 are either completely ruined or abandoned because of serious damage’. ‘Useless mouths’, i.e. the poor, were ordered out of the city on 11 July 1642.95 Expecting to be besieged, the Swedes prepared thoroughly: town clerk Fredrich Fade noted that: On the 11th [July] the commandant ordered the honourable council to ensure that the citizens provided themselves with six months provisions, while the remaining artisans, healthy, non-resident burghers, peasants and beggars who could not feed themselves for this time were to leave the city…  . Further after midday on the 10th and early 11th the hospitals, monasteries and clergy were inspected, and the suspected men and guns searched for.96 Torstensson sowed some panic in Vienna when he sent Wrangel on a cavalry raid to the Austrian capital’s suburbs. Meanwhile the Imperialists were not inactive. They probed with cavalry units at Sweden’s communications.

Torstensson’s retreat to Silesia and Saxony, July–November 1642

As a large Imperial army approached, Torstensson started to retreat. Piccolomini was intent on hunting down the Swedish army rather than recapturing Olomouc, although a brief attempt was made to take the place. ‘On the 15th some troops of the Imperial cavalry appeared as an advanced guard, with his excellency count Piccolomini amongst them, followed by the entire army the next day the 17th.’97 The Imperial army cut short the attempted capture of Olomouc to follow Torstensson, sensing the opportunity to crush a vulnerable army in

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370  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 retreat. Picolomini must have been encouraged in his decision to pursue when on 25 July at Troppau, Montecuccoli routed a Swedish cavalry detachment (Montecuccoli had been exchanged after his capture by Baner at Brandeis in 1639). However, it was a withdrawal rather than a retreat as such. On the way back to Glogau, Torstensson exploited his lead on Piccolomini’s army by capturing the fortress of Kosel and the important city of Oppeln on the Oder where the garrison mutinied rather than face storm and slaughter. But when Piccolomini caught up, Torstensson abandoned the siege of Breig to carry on retreating. The normal ‘rubber band’ effect now took place as the Imperialists advanced with a numerically superior army from their nearer bases, and Torstensson was forced to retreat to northern Silesia, where Imperialists in their turn invested Glogau, the key fortress in the region which they were determined to recapture. But they failed because pushing on against the retreating Swedish army had become the priority. Again, the simple rules of early modern war threw back the advantage to Torstensson who in his turn had been reinforced as he neared his bases and garrisons in Saxony/Brandenburg. Torstensson’s cavalry commander, Schlang, defeated previously at Troppau, gained revenge in another small cavalry action. Still outnumbered, but taking the initiative, Torstensson manoeuvred the Imperialists into retreat then stormed the town of Zittau: here he was reinforced by Königsmarck (a German officer in Swedish pay), who had been sent on another raiding mission into Saxony and Lusatia. Torstensson then switched back into Saxony and besieged its capital city, Leipzig, whose wealth and economic power was hardly surpassed in Germany. The city had prospered as a military éntrepôt and manufacturing base during the war. An attack on the most important Saxon city necessitated an Imperial response in support of their crucial Saxon ally. What had been Gustavus’s Achilles heel was now that of the Imperialists. It was Torstensson’s aim to besiege Leipzig to draw the Imperialists into a major battle, to try to knock Saxony out of the war. It was a win-win strategy because he would either gain Leipzig, or the opportunity to smash the main Imperial field army: however, it was not without risk for his smaller army. Torstensson anticipated that the siege would lead to a major battle on his terms. The Imperial army under Archduke Leopold and Piccolomini duly came up to relieve Leipzig. With a 26,000 to 20,000 advantage in numbers they were seeking battle. Although Piccolomini was against the idea at the council of war, Leopold was all for glory in his bid to emulate the exploits of his brother and the Cardinal Infante at Nordlingen in 1634. There were also rumours that de Guébriant and the Hessians were on the way to reinforce the Swedes, so the chance to use his preponderance in troops was too tempting. The armies confronted each other at Brietenfeld in the same place where, eleven years earlier, Gustavus, with the support of his gunnery general, Torstensson, had destroyed Tilly’s army.

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   371 nd

Battle of Breitenfeld 2

of November 1642 N

6

ats

Cro

E

W

g

Slan

S

ni

omi iccol

P

5

3 d

pol

Leo uke

D

Lilliehook

5

Linkenwald

1

7 4 s

Saxon

2 Croats

1 klm

1 Swedish infantry attacks in the center 10 a.m. 2 Swedish cavalry attack disorganized Saxon cavalry on left 11 a.m. 3 Piccolomini attacks and forces back Swedish left 12 p.m. 4 Swedish right attacks Imperial center and pursues enemy 12 p.m. 5 Torstensson sends cavalry to support his left 12 p.m. 6 Piccolomini defeated on Imperialist right and retreats 2-3 p.m. 7 Imperialist centre is surrounded and destroyed 3-4 p.m.

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372  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

Torstensson supremacy: Second Battle of Breitenfeld, 2 November 1642

The second battle of Brietenfeld took place on the same patch of ground as the previous battle but with the Swedes facing north-east rather than south. Also, the Linkelwald wood, that was behind Tilly’s centre at the first Breitenfeld now stood behind the Archduke’s centre, but further up, so that the battle would effectively be divided into two parts on either side of the wood. The Swedes formed up with 10,000 cavalry, 10,000 infantry and seventy guns with the cavalry disposed on the wings as usual. The Imperialists likewise, but with 16,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry who also deployed small regimental cannon in the Swedish manner. Given that 5,000 of the Imperial cavalry were Croats and Hungarian hussars, light cavalry who would tend not to stand in formal battle, the disparity in numbers was less than it appeared. It was the first fully linear battle. Equally notable was the preponderance in numbers of cavalry; both facts are connected. Emphasis on firepower in relatively thinner lines meant that impact attacks by infantry were not likely to be decisive. Infantry battles became brutal firefights. This had thrown the emphasis for battle-winning onto heavy cavalry who could smash into the exposed flanks of the linear formations, causing a collapse in formation and morale which, rippling along the line, would cascade into helter-skelter flight. This battle was begun at about 10.00 a.m. with an attack by Wittenberg and Stahlhansk’s cavalry on the Imperial left, where awkward and disjointed forming up for battle had been spotted by Torstensson. Seizing the opportunity, he ordered an attack by the first echelon of his right wing. The light cavalry on the Imperial left flank fled along with the Saxon cavalry; the Imperialists were thrown back. A musketeer group placed in the line broke and opened a gap through which Swedish cavalry swept onto the flanks of the enemy. While the Imperialists re-grouped and held for a while, the Swedish second line smashed the Imperial and Saxon cavalry reserve. They fled the field. On the opposite side of the field, Piccolomini’s strongly reinforced wing, with sixteen cuirassier regiments, achieved the reverse with the Swedish left being thrown back, and outflanked by Croat cavalry. The intention was to cut off the Swedish line of retreat on the Terga road. Schlenk deployed mixed cavalry and infantry in a defensive scheme that was strong enough, under the rallying command of Königsmarck, to prevent disintegration. This owed much to the presence of Colonel Douglas’s and Maul’s Scottish infantry in reserve; once again command musket units proved their worth.98 In the centre meanwhile there were brutal volleys of musket fire between the opposing infantry; advancing Imperialists firing chain shot from their field guns claimed the life of Lillihook, the Swedish general. Torstensson was unseated and nearly killed when a chain-shot tore away the entire hindquarters of his horse; the same shot gutted another horse and killed a third, throwing their riders before killing two other senior officers who were standing in harm’s way, including commissioner

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   373 Grubbe. Blocks of infantry locked horns; as they advanced, according to Swedish General Wrangel, the troops ‘suffered great loss from the grape and cartridges of the enemy’. After the opposing infantry closed the fight became ‘a very hard action and we fought long pike to pike’.99 The battle had now reached the moment of truth; the decisions made at this juncture were crucial. Whereas the Imperialists on their right flank hesitated, declining to send in their reserves against the battered Swedish left to finish them off, Torstensson was decisive. He rode over to his successful right wing and took charge directly: this was unusual. A commander might in such situations place himself at the crisis of the battle, on his left. However, for Torstensson the battle winning opportunity was on the right. He sent one part of his victorious cavalry to pursue the fleeing Imperial horsemen to stop them regrouping; this they did for some fifteen kilometres. Another detachment attacked the flank of the Imperial infantry, while the main body under Wittenberg was ordered to circle back behind Torstensson’s infantry so as to emerge on the flank of Piccolomini’s Imperial cuirassiers on their right wing. Outnumbered and taken front and flank, Piccolomini’s cavalry were routed after a failed counter-attack. The Imperial infantry in the centre was now at the mercy of the Swedish army. When eventually the enemy infantry were cornered in almost the exact spot where the tercios had made their stand near the Linkenwald in 1631, Wrangel ‘took them in the flank … our cavalry so played with them that hardly one escaped’. A few disciplined units fought their way out; most did not. Almost the entire Imperial infantry were either killed or captured. The carnage in one of the bloodiest battles of the war was horrific. Apart from the mangled, dismembered and torn bodies of soldiers, as well as dead or dying horses on the field of battle numbered 3,571 for the Imperialists alone… It was a crushing defeat for the Habsburg army. Equal to the victory of Gustavus at the first Breitenfeld, there were Imperial losses of some 10,000, half of whom were killed or wounded and the rest taken prisoner; they mostly defected to the Swedish army. The Swedish army also suffered 4,000 casualties. The Imperial cavalry returns after the battle show that the victory was indeed overwhelming. They lost 2,570 troopers killed with another 2,033 captured. Just 354 were wounded. Total Imperial casualties in the cavalry alone were 4,957, leaving only 4,530 troopers and officers fit for combat, assuming they could find mounts. The Imperial cavalry’s casualty rate was well over 50 per cent. The story for the Imperial infantry was much worse. Forty-six cannon were captured along with 600 wagons full of stores, fifty ammunition wagons, and 180 standards.100 It was Torstensson’s clever second-phase deployment of his main cavalry attack on the right at the critical moment which won the battle; in this he proved himself the equal of contemporary Oliver Cromwell in second-phase cavalry deployment, where instinct for timing was as important as the tactical commands.

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374  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 After the battle there occurred an event that was exceptional even in this brutal war, with echoes of Wallenstein’s behaviour after Lutzen. Archduke Leopold, who barely escaped the battlefield, sated his desire for revenge for his offended Habsburg pride on one of the retreating Imperial regiments. Used as scapegoats for the defeat, the Madlo Cavalry Regiment which had fled precipitately in shameful circumstances was singled out for special punishment. Habsburg honour was assuaged when an entire regiment of ‘cowards’ received Roman-style punishment in front of the assembled army: ‘The entire regiment was to be decimated, i.e. every tenth man to be executed, with the victims selected by all men throwing a dice.’101 Some officers had their sentence commuted to be shot instead of beheaded while a few others were pardoned on account of their previous excellent service and bravery. As for the rest, the troopers, ‘all were bound to trees with rope and hanged until dead.’102 Leopold’s behaviour signified increased Habsburg viciousness and insecurity as the war came to roost in their precious hereditary lands. It was a policy born of rising desperation in Vienna, reflecting a realisation that the tide of war was changing. In his vicious pride, he was every inch an early modern Habsburg. However, it did not save his military reputation: humiliated by a string of defeats, he was replaced as Imperial commander by Gallas.

The strategic outcome of the battle of Second Breitenfeld

Torstensson is often criticised for not taking the strategic offensive as Gustavus had done after his victory at Breitenfeld. The critics say that he should have seized the moment to launch an attack on Vienna via his base at Olomouc. The criticism is misconceived because the political–military circumstances were entirely different in 1642, not the least the fact that it was November. Winter would come soon and the army, which needed rest, had had a tough and long campaign season. In 1632 Gustavus had the full support of the ‘Evangelical union’ and Saxony in particular. Torstensson would still be faced with a hostile Saxon state in his rear. The resources for a full-scale attack on Vienna were simply not there at the time. With Saxony as an ally, Gustavus’s huge army of 150,000 was orientated to a critical path-blitzkrieg strategy. This was not an option in 1642; it had to be an attack by careful stages. Finally, and crucially, Torstensson was not a king; he did not carry the essential aura and charisma that could lead a Protestant crusade to the gates of Vienna. It should be noted that even Gustavus in far more favourable circumstances did not get near to Vienna. Given this, Torstensson’s choice of taking Leipzig was prudent. It turned the screws on Saxony, giving the Swedes an excellent economic and logistical base for the prosecution of the war. Leipzig, in surrendering, was forced to pay a huge indemnity of 300,000 Reichsthaler, which could be used to pay the troops. Immense stockpiles of stores fell into Swedish hands including 24,000 yards of English broadcloth for uniforms.

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Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg Exhaustion   375 With the occupation of both Chemnitz, held since 1639, and Leipzig, Saxony was virtually finished, even though it took several more years before the final surrender. Torstensson was now able to prosecute a more ambitious strategy: he had established a solid base and was planning to launch his big offensive against Vienna in 1643. Another outcome from the battle was that it created strategic space for Oxenstierna to think about alternative grand strategies.

Torstensson’s campaign in 1643

Torstensson launched an attack on northern Bohemia through Lusatia in March 1643 with the intention of re-supplying Olomouc and linking with the reactivated Transylvanians under Rackozci. Gallas blocked the way at Koniggratz (scene of the decisive battle of the Austro-Prussian war in 1866). Falling back slowly, he delayed Torstensson by sending a strong diversionary 4,000-troops cavalry raid into Pomerania. The Imperial raid was partly successful in its strategic intention but only 1,200 troops returned from the gruelling experience. Torstensson went on to relieve and resupply Olomouc before retreating again to his Silesian bases. The campaign had been strangely low-key for such a forceful commander, the reason for which only became apparent later on. In May 1643 Torstensson had received instructions from the Rad in Stockholm. Any plans he might have had to fight a major battle and take the fight directly to Vienna had been undermined by Oxenstierna’s astonishing strategic volte face.

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Chapter XX

Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark

Torstensson’s ultimatum: The Swedish-Danish war, 1643–1645: causes

T

he Swedish-Danish war was one of the great surprises of the Thirty Years War. No one expected it, least of all the Danes. With the Swedish army on the offensive, a solid base established in Silesia, and a strong forward base in Moravia, it seemed unthinkable that Sweden should make an unpremeditated attack on Denmark when a final offensive against Vienna seemed to be within their grasp. It was risking a war on two fronts. More probable was an attack by Denmark on Sweden, because in 1637 Christian IV had toyed with the idea of an alliance with Vienna. In 1638 the Danes had made an alliance with Spain to help enforce the embargo on Dutch trade to Spain and its Mediterranean possessions. This had involved intrusive inspection of cargoes and ships, especially Swedish ones which, being toll-free in the Sound, were used by the Dutch to avoid toll-tax under flag of convenience arrangements. It was a diplomatic move hostile to the interests of both Sweden and the Dutch. With the Swedes ever anxious about their status as much as their security, the constant pinpricks against them were bound to annoy and stimulate their incipient paranoia about their Danish rival. Sweden’s paranoia was not entirely unjustified: angst had a real cost. Constant fear of a Danish ‘stabbing in the back’ meant holding a large reserve army of about 15,000 troops, uselessly and expensively maintained in the Swedish homeland, troops and cash that might be better spent on the war in Germany. Sweden was all too aware of ‘Danish diplomatic intrigues’ (Oxenstierna’s words) against them, including tentative links with Poland and Saxony, with whom Christian had secured a marriage alliance for one of his sons. Equally importantly, the Danes had insinuated themselves into the peace negotiations at Osnabruck as mediators, despite Sweden’s protests. Oxenstierna well understood that any influence or mediation by Christian IV would not be evenhanded, but would aim to reduce Swedish negotiating power. Christian IV had already publicly denounced Sweden’s occupation of Pomerania, which was the essential element of Swedish claims for Satisfactio and securitato. Therefore, Denmark was threatening the absolute minimum of Sweden’s peace negotiation demands. As the Swedish

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   377 War Council noted in May 1644, ‘It seems very clear that this was the real reason why the King of Denmark put himself forward as a mediator; his idea being that he could put obstacles in the way of our gaining anything that would be convenient and useful to us’.1 With bitter memories of the harsh terms imposed by the Danes at the Treaty of Knared following the disastrous War of Kalmar (1611–1613), Oxenstierna had a lifelong hatred of the Danes. On 20 June 1643, at the time that the Danish war was being decided by the Rad, he wrote ‘What wrongs the king of Denmark has done and in which manner he stepped on your toes, in which intrigues he contributed with our enemies and neighbours to our downfall you have known for a long time.’2 The animus was personal, historic, and bitter. After her shocking flight to Copenhagen, rumours of a romance between divorcee Christian, an infamous womaniser, and widowed Maria Elenora proliferated into a European-wide scandal. It was probably not true but that did not lessen Sweden’s feeling of injury and insult. The idea of Christian IV defiling the memory of Sweden’s iconic hero Gustavus by being intimate with his widow was too much for Swedish pride to bear. There were also territorial issues; of particular interest to Oxenstierna was the eradication of the Skane, a significant Danish enclave on the southern tip of the Swedish littoral, as well as the control of certain key Baltic islands, most notably Osel, just off the coast of Livonia. Border disputes in the Arctic Circle and northern Norway were also a continuous niggle between the countries. Aside from these there was the question of ‘The Sound’ dues which had been increased eight times since 1638, and by 40 per cent overall. Flat fees were raised by 33 per cent in 1638 and taxes on some individual cargoes rose by as much as 300 per cent. This made the importation of critical war supplies such as gunpowder from the Dutch Republic extremely expensive. In 1637 Christian IV unilaterally banned weapons trade through the Sound, a move that struck at Sweden’s vital economic and military interests, not least the export trade in high-quality bronze cannon. These trade fiats and taxes were also matters of essential importance for the Dutch, and the Swedes could expect help from that quarter if war were to break out. The Dutch were attuned to defending their trading interests with aggressive military and naval action, to which the Danes as a coastal power were vulnerable. In 1640 Sweden and the Dutch Republic had signed a Treaty, whose character was obviously anti-Danish, for the protection of free trade in the Baltic. Oxenstierna, having secured the agreement of the Rad for an attack on Denmark in May 1643, made secret preparations for war, with a letter of instruction to Torstensson being drawn up in June 1643 but only delivered in October. The plan was for Horn to invade the Skane with 14,000 men, cross over Danish territory to Malmo, then invade the northern provinces of Norway. Torstensson, after whom the war is named (ironically, for he was against the

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378  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 strategy), was to march north with the bulk of his army, occupy Holstein and Jutland while combining with the navy for the occupation of the islands, first Fyen then Copenhagen. Oxenstierna boasted crudely that Denmark would be caught like a ‘louse cracked between two fingernails’.3 Sweden’s navy boasted fifty-eight major warships, surpassing Denmark in naval tonnage, 35,000 tons against 20,000, but was relatively undergunned. Taking no chances, and with the happy connivance of the Dutch, and the assistance of copper magnate de Geer, Oxenstierna had also chartered in a mercenary fleet of thirty-two Dutch ships, including many VOC Retoursheppen, under the command of the experienced Dutch Admiral Maarten Thijsen. Oxenstierna understood the lessons of Wallenstein’s invasion of Denmark, unlike the war council in Vienna, that, without naval power, Denmark could not be brought to submission.

‘Torstensson’s War’: Swedish war aims 1636–1642

Oxenstierna had long-term goals to dominate the Baltic for trade proposes, primarily to monopolise collection of tolls and harbour dues. Only the Vistula had escaped his grasp in this remarkable ‘Athenian’ economic vision of mercantile exploitation and seaboard colonisation. Probably the main reason for the decision to strike in 1643 was the decisive victory achieved by Torstensson at second Breitenfeld in November 1642. Due to the destruction of the Imperial army, pressure had been relieved from the war front in north-east Germany and Torstensson had established a strong defensive network in Silesia. Sweden therefore enjoyed the luxury of a strategic breathing space before the Imperialists could recover. Oxenstierna wanted to settle the matter of Swedish dominance once and for all, to be rid of the Danish threat permanently. With the strategic space, Oxenstierna was on the cusp of achieving his long-held ambitions, even if Torstensson, with his eyes fixed on Vienna, did not agree. Whereas Oxenstierna was thinking ‘grand strategy’, Torstensson simply considered ‘strategy’. In the end, Sweden’s vital interests were close to home and its immediate geographic locality in the Baltic, and not in faraway Vienna. Nonetheless, Oxenstierna was taking a big risk because, with their main army deployed on the principal battlefront, the Imperialists might undo all of Swedish gains in Germany. If a pre-emptive strike were to be made, better to do it in 1643–44 to avoid complicated or possibly difficult negotiations with the Queen, or even a veto when she took up her majority. Apart from his territorial and economic ambitions, Oxenstierna was also concerned with the strategic risk of a malevolent and jealous rival in the Swedish rear. He noted the recovery of the Danish military and financial position, following the debacle of the Danish defeat in 1628. The Danish army now consisted of 22,500 Danish and Norwegian militia, plus 2,000 cavalry to support a standing army of 11,000. The biggest threat came from the Danish navy’s thirty-five large ships, which might have been able to cut Sweden’s trade and blockade its ports, as well as cut communications to

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   379 Germany. While the Danish fleet was smaller in tonnage, its capital ships were much more powerful in armament. Nonetheless, the War Council’s conclusions were decisive: ‘the grounds and reasons for war with Denmark are sound, strong, and satisfactory; … our best course of action would be to begin the war and rather throw its burden upon him (Christian) than sit waiting to be attacked by him at home.’4

The invasion of Denmark and the War at Sea, 1643–44: Opening Gambits

The war against Denmark had to be planned with the utmost finesse. What followed in the next year was more like a game of chess with move and countermove choreographed around a bold and original opening gambit. At the May meeting of the Rad, a resolution was passed: to get in touch with Field Marshal Torstensson, and put him in the picture about the whole situation, and our policy … . to keep the army in such a state as to move to the coast. In the Autumn to follow them [the Danes] and take up winter quarters in Holstein and Jutland … while all is being quietly and secretly arranged.5 Only on 23 September did the Rad’s representative, Johan Törnsköld, arrive at Torstensson’s HQ in Eulenberg Castle with secret ‘verbal’ despatches. Commands to Torstensson were issued by spoken word rather than by written command in case the written instructions were lost or intercepted, although a written communication followed in early October. On 13 November 1643 Torstensson moved his army out of his bases in Silesia and Saxony, aiming for Havelburg in Brandenburg. He disingenuously informed his troops that they were headed for Pomerania for winter quarters as well as setting off other rumours that he might be set to invade Bavaria by building a bridge over the Elbe. Torstensson anticipated the possible threats by leaving his garrisons strengthened and well supplied; at least there was a hope that determined defence would slow down the enemy. To reach the Danish frontier at Kiel, the Swedish army would have to march 750 kilometres in winter. The other cost that would have to be paid was the consternation and disappointment of Sweden’s allies at being left in the lurch to face the full brunt of the Imperial army. Having reached the Havel in Brandenburg on 16 December, Torstensson revealed his true intention to his officers. At this point he was only six days’ march away from the border of Holstein. At around the same time the Danish ambassador in Stockholm, Pede Vibe, picked up ugly rumours and warned Christian IV of a surprise attack. The king, believing in the knightly virtues of a bygone age, refused to believe the reports, but, in any case, it was too late.

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380  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Nothing could have been done in the time available. The Danes had no chance of containing the veteran Swedish army. Arriving at the Holstein border with a winter force of 12,0006 after just sixteen days on the march from Glogau, Torstensson stormed the newly-constructed fortress of Christianspreis at Kiel on 26 December, where a vast haul of food and supplies was captured. The garrison of sixty was slaughtered as a matter of policy, so encouraging from sheer terror the surrender of other key frontier fortresses at Tendsburg and Tonning. By mid-January Schleswig, Holstein and southern Jutland were occupied after a pathetic militia force of 1,600 was overrun at Kolding. Christian’s massive expenditure on fortifications had been in vain. Swedish units spread out over the Danish peninsula, no doubt revelling in the scenery of rolling green hills and tidy, prosperous villages with their whitewashed churches. After using up their food supplies en route, sustenance for the army by foraging grain and foodstuffs was the primary concern for the army in winter. In a letter to General Wrangel, Torstensson advised, ‘You have to take all possible precautions that the soldiers do not suffer from any cause, and also keep good order amongst the horsemen that the grain which comes in very opportunely may not be damaged.’ 7 Nevertheless, the fortresses of Gluckstadt and Krempe in the rear of Torstensson held out. They could be re-supplied by sea. Having screened off the latter, Torstensson gathered his forces at the ‘little belt’ opposite the strategic Danish military/naval base of Fyen, where he waited for the Swedish navy to help him cross. Despite being iced over in places, the thickness was not strong enough to support an army. Fyen island contained Denmark’s second city, Odense. Impatient as ever, and in the absence of the promised naval support, two attempts to cross by small boat were defeated with the loss of 1,300 men; it was an unusual setback for Torstensson, but hardly surprising in the circumstances. Meanwhile the army of Marshal Horn with 10,600 men had overrun most of Skane, capturing the key cities of Helsingborg and Landskrone, which controlled the eastern side of the sound. The war hung in the balance; the question was, would Christian once again evade total defeat thanks to his navy’s control of the sea? As the war was now going to take longer than expected, the danger for Sweden’s strategic position in Germany increased, particularly as the Imperial army would be mobilised after the spring thaw. Torstensson’s blitzkrieg had missed the ‘critical-path’ timetable. If Sweden became bogged down in a long war, with Torstensson marooned in Jutland by Danish sea power, the future of the Franco-Swedish hold on north and central Germany would be in jeopardy.

Disquiet amongst the anti-Imperialist alliance, 1644

The invasion of Denmark caused great disquiet amongst Sweden’s allies, including France. They feared that the Imperialists would take advantage of the Swedish army’s distraction. Sweden’s allies stood to bear the brunt of an

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   381 Imperial attack to exploit the absence of their main field army in northern Germany. Not slow to seize an opportunity, the plethora of hostile Catholic League states and Hesse-Darmstadt began to assemble an army of 15,000 under Hatzfeld to attack Amelia’s positions in Hesse and Westphalia. In a region where a 5,000-man field army was a significant force, this was a threat indeed. Hesse was especially fearful because not only had the Swedes moved north, but de Guébriant’s Franco-German army had shifted south, leaving them alone to face any Imperial or Catholic League attack in the centre. The chief councillor of Hesse, Von Krosigkt, noted archly in a letter of 25 January 1644 to Mazarin, ‘Since the army of France has to face that of Bavaria … the army of Hatzfeldt will have a free hand to attack Madam the Landgrave … . Thus, it is absolutely necessary that Madame the Landgrave be in a position to sustain the shock’.8 It was essentially a begging letter: give us more subsidies or reinforce us. Von Krosigkt, with the elegant pretence of disinterested concern, also pressed on raw French sensitivities about their negotiating hand at Westphalia. The subtext again was: why such risks at such a critical and delicate moment? You should be putting pressure on the Swedes or providing us with much more aid. In a further letter to Mazarin on 25 February, Von Krosigkt, presumably because Mazarin’s reply had not been forthcoming enough, arrived at the nub of his demands: For it will happen that if Her Highness [Duchess Amelia of Hesse] is not able to put her troops in good condition (which is a pure impossibility without more help, and at least double fifty thousand riechsthalers, then her army will act with so much weakness that the enemies will do everything they please or will turn, without much hindrance, against our allies.9

Baltic Naval strategy

The Swedes had for some time established close diplomatic links with the Dutch; it was a natural anti-Habsburg alliance. There had been little coordinated military action between the two states, although the Dutch would have been keenly aware of the essential role that Sweden had long played in diverting Habsburg armies in Germany, thereby giving strategic protection to the vulnerable eastern flank of the Republic. However, trading in military supplies, finance and raw materials was of vital importance to both. Reacting to the worsening military situation, the Swedish resolution in council of May 1644 noted that: And since we concluded an alliance with the States-General of the Netherlands three years ago for no other purpose than to safeguard trade and navigation in the Baltic and North Seas, and the Sound, they too should be written to, their assistance should be sought, and they should be stimulated to make the alliance effective by cooperating with us. Private merchants and shippers in Holland should also be induced to help us.10

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382  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 With ill feeling about arbitrary increases in Sound tolls, Jakob de Geer, the Dutch-Swedish arms magnate, hardly needed encouragement, nor did other Dutch traders and shipowners, so war switched to naval operations in an allied attempt to win control of the sea and the Sound. At first the naval war went badly. The Danes fought back, trouncing the outgunned Dutch fleet under Thijens at Listerdy off the south-west coast of Jutland twice on 26 May 1644, as the Dutch fleet sailed towards the Sound to join the Swedish navy bottled up in Gothenburg. Although outnumbered, specialist Danish warships equipped with powerful 36-pounder cannon overmatched the swarm of converted Dutch merchantmen.

Gallas; ‘the army wrecker’ and last hope for the Danes, 1644

When it was discovered that the Swedish army had pulled off a masterful deception, Ferdinand was faced with a strategic dilemma, equal and opposite to the one faced by Torstensson. With winter setting in and the army in quarters, it was quite impossible to order an immediate departure of the main field army: quite apart from the need to muster them anew, supplies and wagon trains would have to be gathered in. The Imperial war council and the Emperor would have some months to consider the tangle of strategic, political and logistical issues. Should the Imperial army chase after Torstensson? To go to the aid of Denmark was either a daring or a foolhardy move because the army would be operating 750 kilometres from its logistical base. The army’s communication lines would be long, as well as operating in hostile territory with large numbers of enemy garrisons in its rear. The safer and obvious option would have been to take the opportunity to reduce the Swedish gains of the last two years, most notably the forward base at Olomouc (Olmütz) and the key fortress of Glogau in Silesia; Saxony could also be recovered, including the cities of Leipzig and Chemnitz on behalf of their important Saxon ally John George, who was the influential leader and weathervane for moderate Protestant opinion in Germany. The strategic decision made by the Emperor was nonetheless risky. The allure of total victory on the Baltic would draw on the Imperial army like a siren, as it marched north to try to trap and destroy the Swedish army. In order to counteract moves against the isolated Swedish garrisons left behind, Torstensson had presciently reinforced them with men and supplies in anticipation of sieges. Fortresses could be dearly sold and time bought in a strategy which was about trading space for time. Finally, Torstensson planned to send a large cavalry-raiding column under Königsmarck to cut the supply line of any advancing Imperial army and disrupt any sieges of Swedish garrisons. No doubt the Imperial war council was hoping for a reversal as dramatic as the one at Nordlingen when Gallas had also been in command.11 Simultaneously, the Imperial war council sent newly-raised or reinforced small armies to take back important Swedish outposts in Silesia; in Moravia Ladislas von Waldenstein was sent to recapture Olomouc. General Götz who had been set to besiege

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   383 Olomouc was delegated instead to deal with the Transylvanian menace, after Rákóczy’s declaration of war on 17 February 1644. For Rákóczy this was the chance to recover the counties that had legally reverted to the Emperor after the death of Bethlen Gabor, under the terms of the Treaties of Nikolsburg and Pressburg of 1621 and 1626. Another Imperial force attacked Chemnitz. Meanwhile the Bishop of Bremen, a Danish satellite, looked to exploit the situation by attacking the important Swedish-held Bishopric city of Halberstadt which lay to the south-west of Saxon-held Magdeburg. An impressive Imperial riposte on paper, but the danger in attempting so many strategic objectives was that the Imperialists would achieve none of them. The decision to march in support of Denmark was much contested by Gallas but, under orders, the 20,000-strong army set off from the Bohemian border for Holstein in June 1644; it was an exceptionally slothful start to the campaigning year and it would take three months, as opposed to Torstensson’s sixteen days, for Gallas to reach the Baltic coast. Gallas was clearly dragging his heels, perhaps hoping for a quick Danish capitulation as much as the Swedes were.

Transylvania stirs again

Prior to Oxenstierna’s démarche against Denmark, Sweden signed the treaty of Munkacz with Prince Rákóczy on 26 April 1643 for an alliance against the Habsburgs. A deft diplomatic move, it followed several years of French diplomatic embassies to Rákóczy’s vast latifundia around Munkascz near the Royal Hungarian border and not far from Kasia. (Kosice in the east of Slovakia). This demarche would distract from the Habsburgs’ attempt to exploit Torstensson’s army’s abandonment of central Germany and Silesia. In Transylvania a strong economy had been inherited from Betheln Gabor and built upon. Reforms in agriculture and the production of taxable surpluses were aimed at funding military establishments in new fortresses or a field army which could both defend its independence as well as expand its borders opportunistically. Underpinning the Transylvanian drive for power and status was economic success: [agricultural] estate policy becomes more comprehensible if we seek the place of the manor in the Prince’s efforts to mobilise every material resource for the wars of independence. In fact the revenues of the Transylvanian princes at the time of Barthorys came to 5,000–6,000 florints, while his income (Gabor’s) in 1629 amounted to 164,010 florints and 54 dinari derived from the treasuries of the manors.12 Braudel estimates that Transylvania may have sold as many as 200,000 head of cattle into central Europe annually even before the war, half the total European trade in cattle of 400,000 per annum.13 Rákóczy, like Gabor and previous Princes of Transylvania, kept as much distance from the Ottomans as possible and would try to avoid the occasional

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384  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 military obligation. When called upon to raise troops for the Ottoman war with Poland in 1633, he duly mobilised 12,000 troops in 1634 but delayed deploying them. In the end they were not called on. However, Transylvania was still a satrapy, so there were distinct limits to freedom in foreign policy. Raiding began again and diplomatic correspondence with Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna picked up as Torstensson’s Swedish army marched north to crush and occupy Denmark. With the Habsburgs pre-occupied it was time to raise the standard of war. Fifteen thousand cavalry were mobilised for a full-scale raid into Royal Hungary; they included 2,000 light cavalry sent from the Romanian Voivode and 1,500 Tartars hired in from the Crimean Khanate. These latter were the ‘terror weapons’ used by Gabor in 1623 and 1626, more useful for applying diplomatic pressure than fighting as such. In regard to Romanian ‘red cavalry’, who were still armed with bows in some cases, Rákóczy noted that ‘we have enough heavy troops but are in great need of light ones’.14 This was hardly true as his Hungarian hussars were mainly light cavalry. After the angst caused by Oxenstierna’s Danish gambit, on 17 February Prince Gyorgy Rákóczy, the Transylvanian successor of Bethlen Gabor, with Oxenstierna’s encouragement, once more declared war against the Austrians. If Gallas’s Imperial army marched north, it would be an opportune moment for Rákóczy to attack in the south. Rákóczy’s declaration of war was the usual mix of righteous indignation against the Counter-Reformation activities of the Austrians in Calvinist Hungary and the ‘oppression of our nation’. As always there was special mention of the Protestants’ bogeymen of the Thirty Years War: ‘with what swiftness or tricks the Jesuits are crept into the Kingdome to the utmost ruine of the libertie thereof & of the Protestant religion … and with what unjustness also in the frontier townes themselves, those, that have Iura Patronatus in the churches are troubled.’15 Of particular concern were the Counter-Reformation successes in Hungary. It was an opportunistic strike in typical Transylvanian style by another whose policies were very similar to his predecessor’s, including domestically. In consequence of Rákóczy’s declaration, Gallas was delayed, and did not set off for Denmark with the Imperial army until June 1644. Apart from the Transylvanian threat the Imperialists also had to reconstitute their army, finance and equip it. In 1644 the raids made by Transylvanian light cavalry were turned back by efficient border defence organised by General Götz, who was recovering his reputation after his failures to save Breisach in 1636.

The Baltic naval war and Torstensson at bay July 1644: Middle Game

Christian had already defeated the Dutch flotilla by the time the Swedish fleet sailed to a rendezvous with Torstensson. The critical moment of the war had arrived, a clash between the two opposing battle fleets to decide control of the Baltic. The Danes won, but it was not an overwhelming victory. After the battle

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   385 of Kolberger-Heide in July 1644 the Swedish fleet found refuge in nearby Kiel. The battle was notable for the indomitable courage of the 67-year-old Christian IV who stood astride the shot-ravaged quarterdeck of his flagship. Even when severely wounded in the eye and shoulder by splinter fragments, after a broadside had killed twelve men around him, he continued to direct the battle from his post. He cried out, ‘God has still left me life and enough strength to fight for my people, so long as each will do his duty.’16 The warrior king also lost an ear in the battle (the damage was perhaps not significant – because listening to sound advice had never been his strongest point). Despite the fact that no ships had been lost, Clas Flemming, the Swedish admiral, and his fleet were bottled up in the wide expanse of Kiel bay sheltering under the guns of the Swedish-occupied fortress of Christainspreis and blockaded by the Danish fleet. Not content to keep a passive patrol on the harbour entrance, the Danes landed troops and six cannon on the other side of the bay where they built a redoubt from which they opened a cannonade on the distant enemy fleet. Admiral Flemming was washing in his cabin when a cannonball skimmed off the water, crashed through his cabin and ripped off his leg. He died an hour later. Sweden was now strategically embarrassed. Christian had brilliantly used his central position and the advantages of interior lines to defeat individually the separated Dutch and Swedish fleets. He had also used his naval dominance after the defeat of the Dutch at sea to transfer soldiers over to the Skane. The Norwegians recovered Jamtland and Horn’s siege of Malmo was abandoned. Horn’s Swedish attacks in the Scandinavian littoral were blunted and rolled back. Meanwhile Gallas’s army was nearing the Baltic coast with the prospect of trapping and cutting off Torstensson’s depleted army in the Jutland peninsula. The threat of the invasion of Copenhagen and Fyen Island had been averted. Oxenstierna’s risky strategic gambit appeared to be in tatters. Destruction threatened. Having been informed of the crisis in Kiel bay, Torstensson rushed down with troops from the north, attacked the redoubt on the north side of the bay, captured the Danish cannon, and massacred the entire Danish garrison of 1,500. General Wrangel then exchanged his horse for a quarterdeck when he was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet. Anxious now for the safety of the landlocked fleet with a large Imperial army under Gallas approaching, Torstensson gave explicit instructions to the new admiral: Herr General I beseech you as a friend in concert with other Admirals … to put to sea, in the name of Jesus, as soon as god sends favourable winds, for if you do not take advantage of them you cannot excuse yourself for the neglect, neither to god nor to man.17 The letter reveals the extent of desperation as to Sweden’s strategic position. Taking advantage of some negligent Danish blockade patrolling, ‘Admiral’

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386  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Wrangel obeyed orders and escaped with the Swedish fleet intact. Christian duly beheaded the admiral of the blockading Danish fleet.

Military manoeuvres in Jutland and Holstein

Shortly after the fleet’s escape, Gallas’s forces arrived on the Baltic coast. Torstensson had already understood that the plan to rendezvous with the fleet to transport his army to the Danish islands and Copenhagen was no longer tenable. ‘Gallas approaches with his whole force,’ wrote Torstensson on 23 June 1644, ‘and we must desist from the plan concerted.’18 Outnumbered by the Imperial host and with Silesia and other outposts under threat, Torstensson made an audacious gamble. Königsmarck was sent on a wide-ranging cavalry raid with seven regiments, combining with Hessian allies to raid into Saxony across Gallas’s lines of reinforcement and supply. Imperial General Hatzfeldt in Westphalia was drawn off from the possibility of reinforcing Gallas by Königsmarck’s deep penetration. Königsmarck was also able to save several of the garrisons that were coming under Imperialist attack. Although Chemnitz was lost in August 1644, the more important Leipzig and Erfurt were saved. Sweidnitz in Silesia was lost but Torgau was saved. Halberstadt, having been lost to the bishop of Bremen’s forces, was recaptured. Meanwhile Gallas had insinuated himself at the neck of the Danish peninsula at Kiel and recaptured the fortress of Christianpreis. Torstensson retreated north to gather in his depleted forces in strong defensive positions. Königsmarck was still away with a large part of the cavalry. He was in any case cut off from the main Swedish army bottled up in Jutland. Gallas believed that the Swedish army, which was down to about 6,000 men, was trapped and ripe for destruction. However secret approaches, surprise attacks on blocking enemy redoubts, and newly-built plank-roads over the miasma all helped to gain the Swedes a way out, allowing them to slip round the flank of the Imperialists and take positions astride their lines of communication at Ratzenburg. Free at last from the trap, Torstensson was then reinforced. The war with Denmark hung in the balance.

Naval battle of Ferman, 23 October 1644

After their initial naval defeat, the Dutch determined to come back stronger. Using his clout in Holland, Jacob De Geer, the Swedish arms industry magnate, arranged for the chartering of thirty-two Dutch warships, including six heavily-armed VOC retourscheppen, at a cost of 460,550 Reichsthaler. Although it was a private contract, Dutch Estates political backing was implicit, because of the symbiotic connection between business and the political elite. Sailing unchallenged through the Sound, the Dutch managed to join the Swedish fleet which had escaped from the Kiel blockade. Then a combined fleet of thirtyseven capital ships sailed along the Mecklenburg coast and engaged the Danish

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   387 fleet commanded by Pros Mundt, destroying it utterly at the battle of Ferman on 23 October 1644, off the island of the same name, not far from Kiel. The Danes had been caught napping. Their fleet consisted of just seventeen vessels, the rest having been sent into winter lay-up. In a catastrophic failure of military intelligence, Christian had not expected the Dutch to return with another fleet so quickly. Heavily outnumbered and outgunned by two to one (875 guns to 448) the Danish fleet was annihilated after a hard fight in which the Dutch and Swedes each lost a ship. Danish warships were specialised naval vessels, large and well-armed; individually they were better vessels but sheer numbers overwhelmed them. Ten Danish vessels were captured and two sunk, one of which exploded after a Swedish fireship became entangled. Completing the catastrophe was the death of the Danish admiral and the capture of 1,000 Danish sailors. It marked the end for Denmark because, without naval protection, Copenhagen and Fyen Island were at the mercy of Sweden. Once the Danes had finally lost control of the sea in October, Gallas’s position was hopeless. His invasion became quite pointless. Denmark, its last bastion of defence gone, asked for peace terms. Christian IV’s reputation was broken and, as Lockhart points out, ‘If the King’s capital was spent so too was his political capital’.19 He for his part bitterly berated the Diet for their failure to make sacrifices for the nation. However, his failure to take personal responsibility would backfire. Emboldened by his failure, the aristocracy on the Royal Council took power in a velvet revolution. When the result of the battle of Ferman was known, the Imperialists started to retreat, prudently ordering 200,000 pounds of bread from Hamburg before setting off.

Gallas’s long retreat autumn-winter 1644: Endgame

After Torstensson was reinforced by other units from Sweden’s northern bastions, and allies, he went onto the offensive, manoeuvring Gallas into the loss of Olesloe, while making sure of his connections to the Swedish re-supply base at Lubeck on the coast. Gallas advanced again, but realising that the balance had now changed, he went onto the defensive. His increasingly desperate army traipsed south. In a quick reversal of the fortunes of war, the hunter became the hunted. Isolated and unsupplied in territory which had already been thoroughly ransacked and denuded of food supplies, Gallas retreated with his army to Bernberg, in northern Saxony, about thirty kilometres south of Magdeburg. In desperation, he then adopted a ‘hedgehog’ strategy by fortifying himself in a strong defensive position on a hill, defying the Swedes to attack. Torstensson declined; he responded by laying waste to the surrounding area, while setting up a ring of cavalry posts to deny food, grazing and fodder to the enemy. The Imperial army was already severely degraded in capability by long marches

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388  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 and the harsh experience on the Baltic coast, but the Swedish interception and capture of a large supply convoy nine miles south of Bernberg was the final death knell. Without fodder, the cavalry horses died by the thousand, leaving many troopers lacking mounts. His army down to a mere 10,000 troops, Gallas was confronted by 5,000 foot and 7,000 cavalry but, by cleverly feinting with a foraging force, he was able to escape the net in the direction of Magdeburg where he found sanctuary with Vienna’s Saxon ally, although he had to leave behind all his sick, baggage, supplies and cannon. In his wake, the Swedes rounded up Imperial wounded, foragers and stragglers. Given the number of men and horses to feed, the situation in Magdeburg looked ominous. There was barely enough food for the soldiers, let alone the citizenry. The Saxons refused to share their precious supplies. Trapped, 4,000 of Gallas’s remaining healthy cavalry broke out for Wittenberg. Chased down, they surrendered to Königsmarck on 23 November 1644 before reaching safe haven, with only a handful escaping.20 Only 3,000 reached Imperial lines at Wittenberg, the remainder deserting or being taken prisoner. Gallas was dismissed from Imperial service in January 1645, being replaced by Hatzfeldt whose good service in Westphalia had somewhat recovered the reputation lost at Wittstock 1636. When the Imperial army had been dealt with, Königsmarck was sent back to the Baltic with 3,000 troopers to reap the rewards of victory. Stade was captured on 15 February, so the Swedes eradicated entirely Danish power in the Lower Saxon Circle. Torstensson’s troops took the valuable trading cities on the Weser river, the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. These places became new bargaining chips at the Westphalian talks. In one of his greatest victories, Torstensson had obliterated a whole Imperial army, with barely a shot exchanged, simply allowing the invading army to ruin itself before pouncing on its disparate and weakened parts for the coup de grace. Christian lamented, ‘It is a terrible thing to be king of Denmark.’21 The strategic balance of account from the campaign was vastly in favour of Sweden. They had lost a few places, most notably Chemnitz in Saxony and Schweidnitz in Silesia, but this was small beer when balanced with the gains. Typical of Swedish priorities, they had traded minor places for very valuable economic assets in north Germany. Especially pleasing for Torstensson was the ability of the Olomouc garrison, with its improved defences, to hold out after nine months of siege. It was his vital catspaw and magazine deep in enemy territory.

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   389 Swedish strongholds maintained against Imperial/Danish attacks

Swedish strongholds in Silesia and Saxony lost in 1644

Olomouc (OlmützMoravia)

other Silesian towns, Trachenburg

Glogau (Silesia)

Erfurt (Thuringia) Leipzig (Saxony)

Halberstadt* (Brunswick) * lost and recovered

Swedish gains

Schweidnitz (Silesia)

Bremen (Danish)

Oppeln, Wohlau, and Batch

Western Holstein (Danish)

Chemnitz (Saxony)

Verden (Danish) Stade (Danish)

Region of Oldenburg

Region of Kedingerland Control of Lower Saxon Circle Halland, Jamtland (Danish province) Islands Osel and Gotland (Danish)

Freedom of the Sound (tollfree transit) (Danish) Control of Hamburg Control of the Weser River

The Peace of Bremsebro, 1644: Checkmate

The overwhelming defeat of Denmark posed a dilemma to both the Dutch and French governments. Both offered to act as mediators. They had no wish to see a Danish monopoly replaced by a Swedish one. Balance of power in the Baltic was the aim of their policy. Near-contemporary historian Puffendorf commented acidly on the mischievous Dutch, ‘They desired to fish in muddy waters, and to keep an equal balance between the parties under the appearance of mediation.’22 The Dutch were certainly mediators with ‘attitude’. Both ‘mediator’ nations strived to bring on a rapid peace settlement on terms that balanced the two sides. Christian IV, sensing the opportunity, eagerly accepted their offer of mediation. It was his only hope of achieving bearable terms. The Dutch were also keen to see the Swedes back in the war proper. They hardly wanted a reversal, because that might mean the surrender of their ally Hesse who acted as a buffer on their eastern borderlands. Nevertheless, as the dominant traders in the Baltic, the Dutch had a particular interest in the settlement to stop the arbitrary searching and swingeing taxation of their vessels. In a brutal and astonishing twist of the diplomatic knife, they announced a volte face on 9 April 1645: they were giving up mediation and joining Sweden’s side in negotiation. ‘When Danish negotiators baulked at conceding freedom of passage for Swedish ships of the sound, the States General immediately despatched a naval force to the straits of Helsingor to press the point.’23 No expense was spared in humiliating the Danes when a fleet of forty-nine vessels, eleven of which were supplied by Swedish-Dutch mining magnate de Geer,

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390  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 under Dutch naval command, convoyed 300 untaxed merchantmen through the Sound in July 1645. Danish economic and military power was broken. An agreement was reached at the Treaty of Bremsebro on 23 August 1645. The terms were inevitably harsh, but they could have been still harsher. After hard negotiation it was agreed that all Swedish-flagged vessels, including those from Livonia and Ducal Prussia, should be given unconditional freedom of the Sound with no stopping or searching. The Norwegian border provinces of Jamtland and Harjedalen were to be handed over to Sweden, along with the strategically important islands of Osel, off the Livonian coast, and Gotland. Nor did Sweden have to hand back the archbishoprics of Bremen and Verden which had been ruled for twenty years by Christian’s son Frederick. To guarantee the peace, the strategically important province of Halland, a part of the Skane, was ceded to Sweden for thirty years as guarantee for good behaviour; nobody expected Halland ever to be returned. Sound dues were reduced and Denmark’s income was slashed, not from the absence in dues from Swedish ships, a minor matter, but from the huge cut in transit rates charged on Dutch ships. The Dutch got their pound of flesh from the Danish carcass. ‘The disturbing truth revealed by Bremsebro was a simple one: Denmark was no longer master of the Baltic.’24 Another happy result for the Dutch and a vindictive imposition favourable for the Dutch elite, which had nothing to do with the Baltic, was the ending of Danish trading pretensions in Asia, in Coromandel, Bengal, Ceylon and Makassar: Danish forts and trading stations which had been built up under the state-backed Ostindisk Kompagni during the 1620s and 1630s were to be closed down and handed over. Despite the victory, there was also an ‘image’ cost for Sweden, now cast as a villain in European politics. Attacks in short order on Russia, Poland, Germany and Denmark had been noticed. Whatever the legal and diplomatic excuses or provocations were, European states could work out that there was a sort of ‘psychopathic pattern of behaviour’ at work. Sweden’s ruthless militarism and apparently limitless ambition would nurture a coalition of opposition at the peace talks, both amongst its known enemies as well as covertly from their ‘friends’. The peace was also delayed by the war; talks could hardly proceed while one of the mediators was being attacked militarily by one of the parties being mediated. Not surprisingly, the Danes walked out of the proceedings, a fit of pique in reaction to Torstensson’s attack but one that was ultimately futile and damaging to Danish interests.

The accession of Queen Christina of Sweden, her character and policy, 1644

Queen Christina, who was born in 1626, coming into her majority in 1644, developed into one of the most enigmatic and controversial figures of the era. Now revered by some as a lesbian and cross-gender icon, she was certainly several centuries ahead of her time. However, in her attitudes and approach

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   391 to life, she never lost the sense of her own regal status and importance. She was uniquely individual, egotistical, and free of all the usual social, moral and behavioural constraints of early modern Europe. She was a libertine. It was her desire for complete freedom of action and thought that led her to abdicate the throne in 1654. She claims to have wept for three days following the news of her father’s death. Gustavus was an icon for her as much as he was for the Swedish people and Protestant Europe. After his death, when she was six years old, she came under the direction of her hysterical and melodramatic mother, whose displays of grief were narcissistic pantomime: ‘My mother shut herself up in her apartment, which was draped with black hangings from ceiling to the floor. The windows were covered with the same dark material.’25 Like her father, Christina approached life with gusto and relish. Another sign of her modern outlook was the intense dislike Christina felt for her mother’s penchant for employing dwarfs, freaks and jesters as constant attendants in the royal apartments. ‘I have a horror for these ridiculous freaks,’ she complained, ‘I went to my lessons with unimaginable joy.’26 She would become a devoted bibliophile; book looting from palaces, universities, monasteries and private homes became a general standing order to her field commanders; a good way to ingratiate. Christina’s early predilection for learning was notable and encouraged by the five-man Regency Council under the chairmanship of Oxenstierna, to whom the prescient Gustavus, well understanding his wife’s foibles, had entrusted the care of his daughter. In December 1630, Gustavus instructed his minister as follows, ‘Look after the welfare of my family as you would that God looks after you and yours … If anything should happen to me, my family will become objects of compassion; for they are women, the mother a person of no judgment, the daughter still a young girl.’27 Oxenstierna, following Gustavus’s instructions, had no compunction about removing Christina from her mother. He closed the debate in council saying, ‘We often see parents, out of love for their children, send them away for their benefit. Even monkeys do so with their young. I vote for separation’, 28 much to Christina’s relief. Her upbringing was untypical in that she wore boys’ clothes and shoes. She ‘could not endure dresses with trains, but much preferred breeches.’29 She was schooled in all matters, cultural, political, and military. Unusually for the age, she became a fine horsewoman, fencer, and shot; at needlework she was hopeless. She spent her free time at the royal stables, which is probably where she picked up her bawdy sense of humour. She seems to have developed a partly contrived dislike for men and the idea of marriage. She believed that she was ugly; this was objectively untrue. Even elegant Madame de Montpensier could not deny her good looks, or diminutive stature. Her spark and feisty character added to her attractiveness. Charles Gustavus, her designated successor, had a lifelong passion for her.

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392  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Oxenstierna tutored her for an hour each day on the art of government and diplomacy. Excelling in her studies, she became fluent in French, German, Flemish and Spanish. She read the classics, Greek and Latin, in the original. Despite the quarrels and power play which would later emerge, Christina in later life admitted that ‘it was from he [Oxenstierna] himself that I learnt part of all I know of the art of ruling … it was one of the greatest men in the world who gave me my first lessons’.30 A delight to modern feminists, she declared, ‘Men are fools, and I delight in ripping aside their flimsy cloaks of pretention and exposing them naked in all of their foolishness.’31 She was privy to all the discussions leading up to the invasion of Denmark, as well as the diplomatic manoeuvrings at the start of the Westphalian peace conference. Long hours were spent with Oxenstierna developing dialectical debating capacity which was encouraged. Perhaps he taught her too well. He must have noticed that her policy ideas veered towards peace. This may well have precipitated Oxenstierna’s decision to invade Denmark in 1643 for, at her coronation in 1644, she announced that she was opposed to ‘wars that cause so much death and misery, that impose a burden of taxation on our subjects and hinder our attempts to attain the destiny that the Lord has ordained for us’.32 Appealing over the heads of the aristocracy and their embedded interests in war, she seemed to have inherited the demagogic instincts of her grandfather. In 1645 the tension over the Danish peace terms sowed the seeds of a power struggle with her former mentor. The fight for power was already beginning to take shape as Christina archly wrote to him on 20 June 1645 in respect of debates in the Rad, that ‘having feelings quite different from yours and mine … there are some who would give their hands to end the war.’33 The most that can be said of her peace policy is that Christina tried to prevent Oxenstierna from holding out for even tougher terms, despite the military dominance which Sweden had established at the war’s end. She warned presciently that Sweden’s behaviour over Denmark would be regarded by the foreign powers as having ‘unbounded ambition founded on injustice and the desire to dominate’.34 In this she had wisdom well beyond her years; her comments reveal considerable political astuteness, although it is likely that these sentiments reflected information passed by Salvius, with whom she had established back-channel information direct from Osnasbruck. Given that she was her father’s child, headstrong and impulsive, some conflict was inevitable as she sought to shake off the shackles imposed by the Regency council. If Oxenstierna had been a strong advocate of peace, Christina may well have taken the contrary policy; she was the rebellious surrogate daughter. Her peace policy, certainly popular amongst a Swedish population worn down by the human and financial costs of war, gave her some leverage with the noble oligarchs and Oxenstierna. In reality her ‘peace policy’ was as much a political gambit.

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Torstensson’s War and the Invasion of Denmark   393 Salvius, who was her man at Osnabruck, was elevated to the Rad, becoming one of her factional supporters in the power play with Oxenstierna. She sought to balance out the power of the senior nobility who had acquired vast fortunes in the war. Supporting the so-called calls for redaction, she promoted the recovery of crown lands that had been alienated in favour of the aristocracy in usurpation of the interests of the peasants and poorer farmers. However, the extent to which she really cared about the commoners was revealed when she abandoned this policy in a negotiated trade off to get the nobility to accept her cousin Charles Gustavus as successor. Her policy agenda was as much about political manoeuvre as belief. She had clearly determined not to marry, but understood her duty to establish a strong succession. It proved to be a good choice. Christina was a capricious character but she was hemmed in and controlled by the nation’s constitution and Oxenstierna’s power.

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Chapter XXI

War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant Turenne

B

orn as second son into one of the great families, Turenne, duc de Bouillon, despite a weak constitution and ill health in childhood, showed an early interest in the military life. He was brought up in a staunchly Calvinist family which revelled in an independent political status at Sedan on the fringes of France; they also owned significant territory in the country. The family married into international Calvinist royalty, so he was related for example to the Stadtholder and to Amelia of Hesse. Calvinist Sedan’s struggle to retain its independence formed a backdrop to Turenne’s life and career. Becoming an accomplished horseman, his feistiness was demonstrated when, at the age of 13, he challenged an officer in his mother’s entourage to a duel. It amused his mother, filling her with pride for her son whom, at the age of 15, she helped in attainment of a military education through her famous relative, Prince Maurice of Orange, military theorist and practitioner. Turenne’s martial enthusiasm was immediately displayed when, aged 15, he was reprimanded for putting himself in danger at the siege of Bois-le-duc where he performed well in a skirmish with Spanish cavalry. An observer at the siege of Breda, after Maurice’s death he was to spend five years in the Dutch Republic learning the art of warfare under the tutelage of his uncle, Frederick Henry of Orange. Turenne claimed that he learned from his uncle ‘How to choose a camp with advantage and how to attack a town; to form a project as long as might be before he carried it out, to turn it over frequently in his thoughts, and to let nothing appear till the very moment of its execution’.1 In 1635 while serving under de La Valette in the first year of the official war with the Habsburgs, he distinguished himself in rearguard fighting in Lorraine, including an ambush with 9,000 troopers of General Gallas’s army in a wooded defile. During the retreat in 1636 he shared the privations and discomfort of his men. In 1636 he was wounded; the shot remained in his right arm for the rest of his life. As a character he was one of the most attractive in the Thirty Years War, taking care of the welfare of his troops to the extent that he would on occasions sell his own possessions to make up for their unpaid wages. He was notoriously modest and taciturn. Even as a child he was generous to the poor; sober,

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Swabian area before marching on the Black Forest to seize Breisach.

French Army

Bavarian Army

WQ *Winter Quarters

13 Mercy takes up WQ between Frankfurt and Kassel.

12 Turenne advances to take up WQ on the Moselle, November.

November.

Moselle and is turned back at Kreuznach and Bacharach castle

11 Duke of Lorraine with the Spanish army attacks the French along the

October.

with a reinforced army and retakes Mannheim and Pforzheim,

10 Mercy tracks back along the right bank of the Rhine from Bavaria

Mainz, Mannheim and surrounding cities on the left bank.

9 French overrun Baden, Speyer, Oppenheim and Worms, captured

Philippsburg 12th September.

8 Condé and Turenne capture the Spanish held Rhine fortress at

in the Glotter valley but loses all his baggage.12th August.

7 Mercy maneuvered out of Freiburg and just escaped the French trap

6 Five day battle of Freiburg results in costly French defeat.

decides on a direct attack on Mercy at Freiburg 3rd August.

Rosen who want an indirect advance along the Glotter valley and

Champagne front. At a council of war Condé overrules Turenne and

5 Turenne is joined by Condé with 10,000 reinforcements from the

4 Bavarian army captures Freiburg 29th July.

3 Failed attempt by Mercy to take the fortress at Hohentweil.

2 Mercy captures Uberlingen May 10th.

1 Mercy leaves ‘WQ’* in Bavaria; the strategy for the year is to clear the

sh

WQ

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Bamberg NIA RANCO s urg 2 Battle of Mergeniheim F e v e emb Tr Nur 8 1 9 Battle of Roth Phi WQ lipp enbu Allerheim 11 sbu rg M l rg 1645/46 CE 1644/4 h A u 5 b Nördlingen adt g LS Condé cement ST kels olst ur g A E n b I 10 s n R Reinfor eim ra Di to Mannh FO St kar c K e Rain N Benfeld C N A L B Augsburg IA R Fre ibu rg E W ich VA h Tuttlingen Mun A sac B i e Br IA SWAB S Uberlingen Konsta n z Rheinfeld Lindau 100 klm 50 klm en

1644

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from

Winter

Quarters

[WQ]

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Mercy

WQ Winter Quarters

Swedish Army Hessian Army

French Army

region for WQ.

and captures Treves from the Spanish and takes the

11 September/October Turenne marches on the Moselle

10 French Capture Dinkelsbühl late August.

August 3rd and is killed.

9 Mercy in retreat from Hesse fights at Allerheim on

for atrocities on retreat from Mergenheim defeat. July.

8 Turenne sacks Rothenburg and kills garrison in revenge

out Saxony July.

7 Königsmark leaves allied army under orders to knock

7,000 French soldiers.

6 Condé joins Turenne at Mannheim with a further

Turenne June 1644.

5 4,000 Swedish troops under Konigsmark reinforce

4 Hesse reinforcements of 6,000 troops June 1644.

Mercy who consolidates in Franconia.

3 Retreat of Franco-German army remnants chased by

Mergenheim 6th May.

2 After Mercy’s surprise attack Turenne was defeated at

emerges

1644/45, crosses the Rhine 26th March.

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Bavarian-Imperial Army

Bavarian Army

Leopold Imperial Army

Swiss Alps

WQ Winter Quarters

Wrangel’s Swedish Army

13 Swedes launch successful amphibious attack on Mainau Island and

12 Swedish army feasts on un-spoilt Tyrol in hereditary lands Jan 1647.

11 Swedes take Bregenz and capture 4m florins 4th Jan 1647.

10 After a cavalry raid on Munich Maximilian asks for truce Aug 1646.

deeper into Bavaria and capture Landsberg with huge stores.

9 Leopold blocked Franco-Swedish army retreat they then advance

8 Swedish and French join forces and advance on Bavaria July 15th.

7 French cross the Rhine at Wesel to avoid interception 15th July 1646.

6 Bavarians and Imperialists join forces in Hesse June 1646.

5 Turenne and French army leave winter quarters June 1646.

4 Bavarians leave Wettau quarters, advance on Hesse May-June 1646.

3 Leopold’s imperialists emerge from quarters in Franconia May 1646.

2 Wrangel’s Swedish army goes to the rescue of Hesse April 1646.

1 Hessian capture Marburg Jan 1646: start of Hesse Civil War.

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398  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 mature and reliable. His attitude to his troops was demonstrated in his care to avoid heavy casualties, in marked contrast to Condé. He would manoeuvre and outflank instead of making disproportionately costly frontal attacks. As a general he was competent, courageous and on occasions inspired. He was patient and a good listener with no excess of pride, which made him a perfect subordinate officer; no doubt it was these virtues which made the partnerships with military primadonnas d’Harcourt, Saxe-Weimar and Condé so successful. Richelieu promoted him to major general at the age of 24, despite his Calvinism and brotherly links to the potentially troublesome opposition. Turenne was a true patriot who cared for his men. After Breisach, in the winter of 1638, the suspicious Richelieu invited Turenne to court where he was held in career limbo. Forcing him to endure several years of unemployment, Richelieu tried but failed to win him over politically, even offering a niece in marriage. She was a Catholic and he refused. If he had accepted Richelieu’s patronage, Turenne would immediately have risen to high command. Later, Richelieu would successfully foist another niece on Condé. For the quiet man of action, the gilded cage of the court was a sort of purgatory, the worst time of his life. ‘He found himself reduced to melancholy, most miserable life in the world; without suite, without court, without power, and without honour. In this way his life was passed at St Germain, where he lived like a private person.’2 A taciturn character, a soldier’s soldier, he was a man of action, not a court dandy.

The ‘Great’ Condé, duc d’Enghien

Condé, known before his elevation as duc d’Enghien, was born into one of the great baronial families of France. His father had famously rebelled during the minority of Louis XIII. Not only was he an aristocrat du sang, but he was also third in line to the throne after Gaston and his own father, the Prince Condé. His was one of the troublesome great families. He was trained for greatness from the first, receiving an extraordinarily extensive and disciplined education; it did not suppress his precocious pride. Like Turenne he suffered ill health as a child and there were no great hopes for his survival: raised with due care he was nonetheless enthused with the idea of soldiering. According to Madame de Montpensier, in his teens he wrote to his father, ‘I read with pleasure, in history, the heroic actions of our kings. I feel a holy ambition to imitate them, when my age and capacity shall have made me what you wish, and to follow in their track.’3 He did. Casting himself in the mould of an Alexander the Great, he would embody this ‘heroic’ ethos to the utmost, uncompromisingly, in body and soul. The hero theme is taken up by most of his admirers; he was the young aristocrats’ aristocrat; ‘The duke of Enghien … well made, of a great mind, clear, penetrating and capable, shone with glory’,4 enthused de La Rochefoucauld. He accompanied the king’s armies on various campaigns, including the successful capture of Perpignan, drawing the attention of King Louis for his

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   399 natural talent and intelligence, and perhaps his feline looks as well, complete with flowing hair in the French fashion. However, according to de Motville, He was not handsome; his face was ugly in shape; his eyes blue and keen, and there was much pride in his glance. His nose was aquiline, his mouth extremely disagreeable. He danced well and had an agreeable air; his bearing was lofty and his head fine, its arrangement with curls and powder being required to make it so.5 He exuded charisma. Perhaps there was recognition by the king of another soul confused in its sexuality, though, unlike Louis, managing it with the confidence of Alexander the Great. Like Turenne, Condé was very young when placed in senior command; they were 31 and 21 years old respectively in 1643. Whatever the personal chemistry, it was a masterly political and military appointment by the dying king. The political containment of the Condé family was already in process by his arranged marriage to Richelieu’s 13-year-old niece. At the same time his father, Prince Condé, was being accepted into the Royal Council in which Mazarin had been made chief minister in acceptance of Richelieu’s deathbed advice. Surrounded by the scepticism of the court, not least from the jealous Gaston, Condé’s martial ambitions and lust for glory were unleashed on the enemy rather than on the administration. De La Rochfoucauld describes our hero at the sharp end of trench warfare at the siege of Mardyk: I led my men into the trench and we killed without stopping, coming face to face with the duc Enghien … The prince seemed to me to be an incarnation of one of those paintings, when the artist in a triumph of imagination depicts Mars in the heat of combat. His shirt was covered in blood which ran down his arm to his epee hand. I asked him whether he was wounded and he replied, ‘Not me,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s the blood of those bastards’. What was exceptional about Condé was his extraordinary personal courage, because he usually led his troops from the front, even in the face of withering gunfire. According to his comrade, the Comte de Bussy-Rabutin, ‘It is unimaginable the extent to which the Prince had a talent for war; his leadership, his spirit, his judgement and courage reached the highest possible level’.6 Selfbelief and confidence in his destiny underpinned his insatiable lust for glory. He always sought battle even against the odds or against enemies in strong defensive positions. Not for him the art of manoeuvre and finesse. His personal life was equally adventurous and vigorous. Comparisons to Alexander the Great are apt, and not just for Condé’s style of generalship. He had numerous mistresses, including some of the outstanding beauties of his generation. In this he was not exceptional for his time, but he was also bisexual and had close friendships with young gentlemen soldiers such as Châtillon,

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400  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 before his death in battle at Thionville. The duke liked to play with his friends on campaign; before the battle of Lens, ‘Our hero cut a switch from which he made an implement to throw apples, and began to throw them against the Marquis of Normanville; the Prince [Condé] found this entertainment pleasing and he took one also’.7 Condé’s French biographer, Simone Bertière, neatly sums up the advantages of his soldier’s life as French commander: ‘the seasons divided the year into two parts, in summer when he was with his camp comrades together, in winter spent at court when he chased loose women, which accommodated itself very well to this bisexuality, without so much as breaching the permanent pre-eminence of friendship.’8 Condé also had an independent streak that set him apart from his powerful family and the conventions of the time. Shortly before Rocroi, he refused the instructions of his father, Prince Condé, to leave the army in Champagne to return to Paris to support him in the expected power struggle following Louis XIII’s death, which was imminent. On 14 May 1643 he had written to his father, Prince Condé, a passionate and stinging rebuke; duty to his army and to France should come first. ‘You know that the enemies are but a day’s journey away from me, and tomorrow we will meet. Judge if my honour would not go to the limit to leave the army in this situation.’9 He would win his stunning victory at Rocroi just five days later, a victory that went some way to stabilising the new regime. Another peculiarity of this aristocratic renegade was his notorious impiety, which was unusual in such a religious era. He thought the rituals and culture of the church, and probably the idea of religion, completely ridiculous. In Paris Condé’s fabulously appointed Hôtel became the centre of the ‘libertine’ enlightenment of the period, acting as a salon for artists, philosophers and the cultural demi-monde. Irreverent and witty, he attracted great loyalty, even from those who would later oppose him in the Fronde. Younger officers adored and virtually worshipped him; for example, de Bussy-Rabutin, writing his memoires when any thought of favour was no longer relevant. He was the hero-warrior, the idol of the aristocratic caste, the epitome of chivalry. Like Alexander he behaved in battle as if he were immortal. Unlike Turenne, from the lofty heights of his ego, he had little or no empathy for the lives of ordinary soldiers and was callous of casualties suffered by his bull-headed frontal attacks. He was a stern professional soldier, though he was not so severe that he did not enjoy the amusement, the joshing and laughter of the camp. De Bussy-Rabutin says of him in his memoirs, ‘Never was there a man who had less secret agendas, he always had so much respect for the King [Louis XIV] even if he suspected the feebleness of his ministers.’10 Inevitably he did have designs and ambitions; he became increasingly disenchanted by a regime that, in his own estimation, did not reward his contributions to the war effort; his pride drove him on to rebellion in the end, believing he had lost honour due to the actions of the Queen and Mazarin, who constantly denied him honours

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   401 and patronage that were ‘his due’. Playing politics, he installed a printing press in the basement of his Parisian mansion to produce anti-Mazarin propaganda. Overweening pride was the weakness of the French nobility and he was the proudest. After the end of the war in Germany, wounded in ego and dented in pride, he would ally with the rebels and Spain during the Fronde (civil war).

The five-day battle of Freiburg, August 1644

The Duke of Bavaria and his ally the Emperor held one of their rare war conferences in Passau in the winter of 1644. ‘We must hurt France,’11 declared Maximilian. If Breisach could be retaken the threat to Bavaria could be neutralised. Fearing that Bavaria might otherwise be knocked out of the war or succumb at last to the efforts of France to detach it into the French orbit, the Emperor had little choice but to agree the plan, even if it made no sense in the geo-political situation created by Sweden’s attack on Denmark. For General Franz von Mercy the campaigning year started from his bases in Bavaria. He intended to clear his lines of supply, then, under orders from Maximilian, make an attack on Briesach. First, Freiburg would have to be taken. Mercy dawdled a little in taking Überlingen on Lake Constance; perhaps it was too beautiful in the spring, and he could hardly be blamed for loitering on the lush alpine meadows besides the idyllic lake and beneath the snow-capped Alps that rise up on the far side. The place did not surrender until 12 May. Then he moved on to attack the mountaintop fastness of Hohentweil, an impregnable fortress. With the commander impervious to bribery this time, Mercy left a small screening force. Freiburg was next. It surrendered on 28 July, a month after the opening of the siege. It was much too late to make an attempt on Breisach because Condé’s army arrived to support Turenne. Condé and Turenne decided to press on and attack the Bavarians. Freiburg was too important to be left in Imperial hands, because of the incipient threat to nearby Breisach. The scene was set for a major battle. Freiburg is a beautiful city with a spectacular location, set in a bucolic valley between steep, pine-clad hills with the mountain of Feldburg dominating the scene. A strategic town blocking the main route between the upper Rhine valley and the Danubian plain, it had huge importance for both sides for equal and opposite reasons. Freiburg was a forward logistical base for French attacks on Swabia and Bavaria; conversely it could serve as a launch pad for Bavarian attacks on Breisach, the Rhine Valley and Alsace. The coming confrontation between Franz von Mercy, the commander of the Bavarian army, and Generals Turenne and Condé would be one of the epic contests of the war. Described as ‘an intelligent and brave general’12 by Grimmelshausen, Mercy was one of the outstanding commanders of the Thirty Years War; little known to history, he was more than a match for the two famous French generals who would establish France as a leading military power. Mercurial in defence, he could strike like a cobra in attack. In his first major

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   403 engagement as commander he had wiped out de Guébriant’s Franco-German army at Tuttlingen at minimal cost to his own forces. Not since Lutzen in 1632 had both sides fielded commanders of such outstanding ability and reputation. As Turenne moved south towards Freiburg, Condé came from France, crossing the Rhine at Breisach to join him with 9,000 reinforcements. They deployed about 20,000 men against Mercy’s 16,500. Condé superseded Turenne in command of the combined army. The generals met near Breisach, calling a council of war at which Erlach, Saxe-Weimar’s leading lieutenant and commander of the Breisach garrison, suggested to Condé a flanking attack on the Val de St Pierre, so cutting Mercy’s communications, to prise open the Freiburg position without costly frontal attacks. The atmosphere turned stormy when Turenne also supported the indirect approach, rather than accept heavy casualties by a frontal attack on the ground of Mercy’s choosing. Baron de Sirot relates: we had a council of war to discuss what should be our course of action on this occasion. There were many opinions but after long discussion, we followed only two. The duc d’Enghien wished to attack the enemy head on; it was the strongest place and the most dangerous and despite remonstrations made on this point, he refused to change his mind.13 ‘Very well,’ exclaimed Condé. ‘Keep yours. I shall fight with mine. I did not come here to be a spectator of imperial conquests!’ ‘Because you so wish,’ said Turenne, ‘I shall fight in the mountains; but allow me to attempt to win the enemy rear, to divert their forces and so that they do not fall on us at the same time.’14 Turenne argued his corner fiercely but like a loyal deputy he would fully support his commander. The indirect approach was not Condé’s style. He was a fighting general; as Count Gramont, one of his chief officers, wrote, ‘He was of a unique breed of man: one whose courage increases proportionately to the danger he faces. There are very few like him.’15 Even Napoleon, the fighting general par excellence noted that he would not have assaulted Freiburg head on. The first battle of Freiburg on 3 August saw an attack on the entrenched hill, the Schonberg, which guarded the passage between hill and the swamp. Time and the predictability of the French line of advance allowed Mercy to develop exceptionally strong defensive lines, a project that was helped by the ready availability of trees which could be turned into fortification abatis and cheval de frise (spiked logs/abatis); trees were also incorporated to strengthen earthworks and redoubts. This hill had to be taken before the city could be approached; at the same time Turenne would make his flanking attack. Condé, according to the Marquis de Moussaye, resolved to attack with his army some posts where Mr de Mercy had three or four infantry regiments upon a rising ground at the head of his camp, and ordered Mr de Turenne to march with the army he commanded through the woods and hills to endeavour to enter the plain where the

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404  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 enemy were, and to attack them in the flank: it was resolved to begin the attack three hours before midnight.16 Unbeknown to the French, the Bavarians had pre-empted Turenne’s flank attack by blocking the narrow defile to the left with a strong line of entrenchment in the forest. Against the main Bavarian works, the French stormed the hill with Condé leading them in person against very strong opposition from 2,500 Bavarians. It may be apocryphal, but Condé is said to have tossed his marshal’s baton into the enemy trench before calling on his men to help him recover it. Once taken, those who were captured were cut down. The French also took heavy casualties with 1,500 dead, double those of the enemy. Mercy withdrew in good order covering his retreat with skirmishers. Meanwhile Turenne, surprised by the newly discovered fortifications in the wooded valley below, launched costly frontal attacks throughout the afternoon, late evening, and night; in the circumstances and considering the topography it was the only tactic possible: he drove them from a wood, and then from a hedge, and beat them from post to post to the entrance of the plain … the two armies continued thus facing each other. They had reason to be afraid that the Prince [Condé], having been prevented by the night from advancing further, would attack them at daybreak in the plain on his side.17 Turenne’s units sustained another 1,400 dead. Rather than risk his left flank being cut off, Mercy lost his fortress on the hill and withdrew in good order to better defensive lines before Freiburg. Here he had already entrenched with abatis and artillery during the 4th; no doubt the defence in depth was his original scheme, a very modern concept. Turenne’s troops were too exhausted to follow up after their all-night battle so he rested his troops while preparing to attack on the 5th. The forward redoubt positions on the hill and in the flanking forest in front of Freiburg were defensive, like the other outer works intended to collapse to blunt and weaken the impetus of the French attacks as they approached the main defences. These were manned by 8,000 infantry, with over 8,000 cavalry waiting in reserve for a counter-attack. Without room to manoeuvre, on the 6th the French planned to make frontal attacks on the Bavarians. Turenne would attack in a valley on the southern flank while Condé would storm home with the main attack on the north side of Freiburg’s defences. At first things went well, or apparently so; Condé stormed an advanced redoubt with Hessian troops in the vanguard while Turenne pushed back the Bavarian army in the woods. But these successes were deceptive because they were outworks, once again absorbing and weakening the shock of the French attacks. The Bavarians retreated to their prepared positions, entrenched lines, complete with hornworks and faced with chevreux de frise. Twenty Bavarian masked cannon sited along killing zones belched out sprays of grapeshot into the massed ranks of the enemy, who were caught in deadly crossfire. Then things started to go wrong as the French fell upon the main

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   405 enemy defences. ‘On being told by numerous wounded officers and soldiers returning from the battle that duc d’Enghien was personally at the head of his infantry leading the charge under heavy fire from the enemy,’ later Condé was seen ‘retreating with only a small number of his men (the rest having been killed fighting by his side), having had two horses killed under him and numerous shot through his clothes by muskets.’18 According to Grimmelshausen, a dragoon in the battle, the French attacked with ‘unbelievable fury, but each attack was repulsed … in such a fashion … that it looked as if it had snowed soldiers.’19 The attack was failing and a renewed assault launched by de Mauvilliers without orders just made the situation worse. Waves of French infantry were mown down. De Guiche, sent to retrieve the situation, found ‘the infantry in appalling disorder reduced to fending off the volleys of musket fire by pressing up as close as possible to the field fortifications built by the enemy’. 20 It was like the remnants of the ‘pals’ brigades cowering from Maxim fire in front of the uncut German wire on the Somme or the Union infantry at Fredericksburg trying to hide from hails of bullets below Confederate marksmen on the heights by lying prone or behind little stone walls. The problem was how to extradite them. Long discussions took place with Condé, anxious that ‘if he ordered them to retreat before nightfall the enemy cavalry would cut them to pieces as they retreated’.21 Once assured that the Bavarian cavalry could not pass through the abatis defence works, the withdrawal proceeded. After pushing the enemy back Turenne’s attack also stalled. They, too, then fell upon the prepared defensive positions ‘but the soldiers were so disheartened, that they advanced very little towards the enemy. The battle lasted two full hours and ended with the day, the enemy not stirring from their posts’, noted Marquis de Moussaye.22 Fighting at the Bavarian entrenchments was so relentless and ‘the two parties fired with such fury that the noise and the smoke confused everything, and they could only make each other out by the light of cannon and musket fire’.23 The casualties were as heavy as might be expected. Increasingly, French troops cowered before the hail of shot, which had shattered their ranks in successive waves. Eyewitness Marquis de Moussaye remembered that ‘in vain did the generals press them, threaten them, and drag them to the fight.’24 Mercy drew the French army to break themselves on his defences, but even he was astonished that it would be attempted with so much élan as he remarked in his letter to Baron de Sirot: We were entrenched in places that I believed approachable only by birds: we had covered the entire mountain with tree trunks that we pushed down the slope; we were fortified in different places and covered by a number of forts … . In truth only the French are able to undertake such things.25 There were 4,000 French casualties against 1,000 for the Bavarians. By the end of the day the French army, once appreciably larger than the Bavarian force, had become significantly smaller, with 8,000 casualties in three

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406  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 days against 2,500 Bavarian losses. It was a crushing defeat and a mistake as big as Hitler’s at Kursk, Haig’s at the Somme, Grant’s at Cold Harbor or Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Mass attacks on a narrow front against well dug-in and prepared positions will invariably fail in the absence of other winning factors, such as surprise or mass artillery preponderance, and even this might well not suffice. After the Freiburg battle General Werth commented with astonishment on the level of casualties. ‘In the twenty-two years that I have been involved in the carnage of war, there was never such a bloody encounter.’26 With 12,500 weary French now facing 14,000 fresher Bavarian troops, Condé and Turenne, their forces in disarray, feared a counter-attack by the enemy. However, the French decided to stand and fight rather than withdraw. Turenne spent the 6th building field fortifications. Condé ordered up 6,000 reserves from outlying garrisons in the Rhine valley to cover the 40 per cent casualty figures from his original army. In reaction to the losses, Condé reportedly remarked with typical hauteur, ‘Bah, so many will be conceived in a night in Paris.’27 Victory goes sometimes to the army with the courage to stand its ground, not retreating even in the face of palpable defeat or simply attacking again in a different place. When Grant was defeated in the Wilderness, unlike all his predecessors he refused to accept the fact, so he moved on to attack again at Spotsylvania. Defeated there also, he sidestepped again, then slid on by yet again to Petersburg when trounced at Cold Harbor; it was Grant’s refusal to accept repeated tactical defeats that eventually won the war. Napoleon, too, refused to accept defeat at Wagram or Borodino. Sometimes victory is just a matter of will and stubbornness: the commitment of the last reserve at the last moment. The days of the 7th and 8th were taken up clearing the detritus of battle while resting the exhausted French-German troops after two days and nights of brutal attrition: a vast number of wounded were sent back to Breisach and provisions were ordered from thence.28 Condé refused to accept defeat. Accepting Erlach’s and Turenne’s original advice, like Grant in the Wilderness, he slid his army sideways, feigning retreat at first but then marching a few kilometres north to Denzlingen before slipping into the Glotter Valley to the north of Freiburg on 9 August with the intention to interdict the Bavarian lines of communication at St Peter’s Valley, so cutting off the Bavarian army’s line of retreat to Swabia and Bavaria. ‘We stayed three days in our encampment and spent them transporting back to Breisach all the officers and soldiers wounded during the great attacks,’ recounted de Gramont. ‘It was a terrible time because of all the dead bodies causing infection that many men died of it: however guessing that the plan was to cut off their supply lines, the enemy marched swiftly … towards San Peter Valley.’29 In squeezing through, the Bavarians abandoned their baggage and their guns but were safe from renewed attack; it was a defeat but escape was a victory and the French army had been badly battered. For the soldiers of the FrancoGerman army there was relief and a rare opportunity to feast on the stores

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   407 abandoned in hundreds of enemy wagons. ‘We returned to the Abbey of San Peter to camp,’ Gramont remembered, ‘and the soldiers were able to recover from their exertions by plundering with great satisfaction the food that they found in the wagons that the enemy had left behind.’30 So ended a battle which had lasted for five days; the Franco-German army had lost over 40 per cent of its troops, mostly French infantry. Condé and Turenne decided not to pursue the retreating enemy any further. The reason was simple, as Turenne explained in his terse style: All who remained of the infantry were accustomed to his bread and could not do the same as the old troops who had served for a long time in Germany; they would not follow the enemy into the territory of Württemberg where we had no magazines [stores of supplies].31 Bavarian casualties only accounted for around 5,000 for the five days. It was by far the longest battle of the Thirty Years War. Tactically and strategically complex, the battle of Freiburg tested all the qualities of three of the finest generals in the war. Mercy’s defence in depth involved concepts far ahead of his time; he anticipated Turenne’s initial flanking attack, then absorbed the energy of Condé’s audacious onslaught by retreating from strongpoint to strongpoint, and finally slaughtered the Franco-German army before the abatis and redoubts around Freiburg. After the battle of Freiburg, Mercy, realising that French preponderance in numbers and logistics was bound to lead to Imperial defeat, suggested to the Emperor that he should seek peace. He wrote to the Emperor of Bavaria that ‘all the Rheinburgange (Breisgau or Rhein passage way) have fallen into the hands of the French’ and that he no longer has any hope that the fortunes of war will turn, but that, instead, he greatly fears that it is now urgently required to persuade France to conclude peace.32 Continuing in his delusions, in late 1645 Maximilian lectured that ‘it must be made clear to the French that they will not reach the right bank of the Rhine’.33 It was too late for that: all he could hope for was to fend off the French long enough for the peace to progress favourably.

The siege of Philippsburg, August 1644

The obvious move now would be for the French to besiege Freiburg at their leisure. Mazarin was desperate for the costly victory to result in some tangible success which would also relieve some of the stress on the national finances. ‘The people demand the recovery of Freiburg,’ he hectored, ‘and something more solid – above all, the establishment of quarters for your army across the Rhine’34 (i.e. on enemy territory at enemy expense). Given the garrison of just 500 men, Freiburg would be theirs for the taking. However, Condé showed real strategic genius by declining this most obvious option. Instead, he realised

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408  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 that he had the opportunity to strike a much more significant blow at France’s Spanish enemies in a move against their lower Rhine valley garrisons at a time when no field army was available for their protection. The Freiburg campaign had, on the face of it, produced nothing at great expense, but Condé’s hard-won victory produced ‘strategic space’ and he was able to use the leeway it gave him to deal with another key strategic link in the Spanish Rhineland. Space was created because Mercy was in no position to intervene: his army was exhausted and without food, equipment, guns, munitions or baggage wagons; as he admitted, ‘the cavalry as well as the infantry is so fatigued because of the constant work and fighting that they are pitiable, which is why it would be nice if the enemy would leave us in peace’.35 It would take time and money to re-equip the army. At least his soldiers would have time and ‘peace’ to recuperate. The key link in the Spanish chain was the fortress of Philippsburg, with its precious Rhine crossing, whose capture would be the pay-off for the costly campaign. Condé’s decision also reflected the political preference of the Mazarin regime which, following on from Richelieu’s policy, was always to seek alliance with Bavaria rather than crush them. The Spanish surrendered the fortress on 12 September. Turenne then raided on the left bank, ambushing a Spanish force going to reinforce the garrison of Frankethal; 500 soldiers were captured. In short order, the surrounding region was occupied by the French army with Speyer, Germersheim, Worms and Oppenheim all falling to the attacks of mixed French and Weimarian units. The French captured the important Electoral city of Mainz which blocked the route to key ally, Hesse, then followed this by taking Kreuznach, and Landau (19 September). Condé moved lower still down the Rhine, capturing Neustadt, Mannheim and the strategic and picturesque riverside castle town of Bacharach some 30 kilometres downriver from Mainz. (The famous Lorelei can be seen a short bike ride along the towpath.) It was a lightning strike and the Bavarians, with just a small cavalry force under Wolf, were unable to respond; besides, the places captured were weakly garrisoned because the Spanish had not expected this strategic move and, with the Spanish Road blocked, they were short of men and money. The Rhine Valley had fallen and a process begun by Saxe-Weimar in 1638 was complete; the French controlled the river valley from Rheinfelden through to Koblenz. The Freiburg campaign had decisively shifted the advantage to France because a large economic base area for winter quartering had been cleared and the land link between the Habsburg forces in northern Europe was further broken. It now remained to be seen whether the diplomatic structure of the dual-headed Habsburg-Bavarian alliance could also be unpicked.

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The French and Dutch attack on Gravelines and Sas-van-Ghent, 1644

The capture of Arras in 1640 had begun to open up the French path to vital economic interests on the coast of Flanders. However, the switch in focus of the French strategy to the Spanish province of Roussillon on the southern Languedoc border meant a slackening of progress in the Flanders campaign. In 1644, with Mazarin securely in power, the strategic direction switched back again. The southern front was to be held while the main attacks took place in the north. The focus in Flanders would be on the Spanish-held north coast channel ports, which were vital to the Spanish Netherlands economy as well as to the extremely effective naval and privateer forces based in Dunkirk. An attack on the main Spanish naval base at Dunkirk would first require the capture of Gravelines, which anchored the Spanish fortress line on the coast, just along from French-held Calais. Unless Gravelines was taken, any attempt on Dunkirk, 30 kilometres farther on, would be compromised by the threat to supply lines. There was a further major strategic advantage for the French focus on the coast. They would be able to coalesce and benefit from the naval power of the Dutch fleet; it was a perfect marriage of strengths between the allies, whose joint actions had so far been woefully ineffective. Naval power was vital to a successful siege of a coastal fortress city, as Wallenstein had discovered at Stralsund. Not surprisingly, the Spanish had long been aware of the importance of their frontier fortress at Gravelines. Charles V had ordered important modernisations in the sixteenth century. A hexagonal trace of arrow-headed bastions was created, complete with flooded ditch, demi-lunes and hornworks built to cover the approaches to the main defences. Typically for towns along this low-lying coast, the difficulties of siege were added to by surrounding marshes and watercourses which impeded reinforcement and mutual support by the besieging units. The French focused their attacks from the nearest point of supply on the west side while screening the east. While the French took on Gravelines, the Stadtholder made another attempt on Antwerp. However, with an underpowered army of 22,000 this was never a bright prospect because it was a large city well defended by many outlying forts and a complex river system. The Dutch army stayed outside Antwerp and held de Melo’s army in place. It looked like another fruitless year but they then moved on to Ghent. On the 26th a floating bridge was set in place and a lodgement made on Gravelines’ main bastion. In the face of the inevitable final attack, and to prevent a massacre under the rules of war, the garrison surrendered. As usual the military events were closely tied to diplomatic negotiations. After Gravelines’ capture Mazarin confidently looked forward to the next campaign. Wanting to bolster the negotiating confidence of his delegates at Westphalia he wrote, ‘It is

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410  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 certain that if, in the next campaign the enemies lose Dunkirk – and the capture of Gravelines makes this task much easier – the whole of Flanders will have to capitulate to us, being lost without help’36 (i.e. Flanders would be cut off from any land or seaborne reinforcement). Also forming in Mazarin’s scheming mind was the diplomatic gambit to offer his Dutch allies a division of the territorial spoils in Flanders. An unintended consequence of this gambit was to severely alarm the Dutch, who were askance at the idea of France as a neighbour. Just when it seemed that the Dutch army would have to retreat back, on 25 July the Stadtholder launched a surprise attack on Ghent. The important city had a garrison of only 2,350, a fact that illustrated again the difficulty of obtaining troop reinforcements. Moreover, the English Civil War had led to the alignment of Parliament with the Dutch Estates, so England’s pro-Spanish neutrality was replaced by pro-Dutch neutrality. English flag-of-convenience vessels based in London would not transport Spanish troops. Before the Spanish could react, the Dutch army had established lines of contravallation around Ghent whose 2,000 remaining defenders surrendered on 5 September 1644. Frederick Henry noted on 5 October that ‘It was highly surprising they did not defend the place better.’ wrote the Stadtholder caustically, ‘because they were so amply furnished with soldiers, vivres [food supplies], ammunition, but it is probable that the soldiers were unwilling.’37 Frederick Henry had saved his face again: a significant victory at last. The ‘soft’ surrender showed that Spanish morale was cracking and their military situation in Flanders was crumbling.

The Battle of Jankov, Bohemia, 7 March 1645

For the 1645 fighting season, Torstensson was faced once again with the problem of how to attack Austria and end the war. He had now destroyed two full Imperial field armies as well as two corps-sized formations in four major engagements, as well as securing most of Silesia and the lower Saxon circle in the north-west. Although the Imperialists could still fill the ranks, precious veterans had been lost and morale was poor. Following the Danish campaign Torstensson pleaded with the Rad once again to be released. After nearly twenty-five years of non-stop campaigning, with rare visits home, he was exhausted and ill. In the last two years there had been almost continuous campaigning without any winter’s rest. His longsuffering wife, Beatta, had even come over from Sweden to attend him. The Rad replied to his request: You have done well.  … we value your services so highly, that for your pains and suffering we would gladly grant you immediately furlough and release. But your success in war, and authority over the foreign soldiery, are so great, and the circumstances so difficult, that we beg you have patience for some time further.38

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412  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 The letter is significant for the word ‘beg’: not just a formality in this letter, it was meant. As the conference in Westphalia reached a critical stage in negotiation, the last thing they wished to risk was a change in command, especially as Torstensson’s outstanding abilities had been proven. The Rad deemed Torstensson’s ‘authority’ over the fickle army to be essential for success given the massive preponderance of ‘foreign troops’ (i.e. Germans) in the army. Sweden could not afford another army mutiny at this juncture. Bound by duty he obeyed – just one more year. The strategic problem was the same one that faced Baner after Wittstock and Chemnitz; how to feed troops over sparse, often devastated, territory in circumstances where the army haemorrhages strength as it advances, losing its men from desertion, illness or garrison as it moves deeper into enemy territory. The enemy meanwhile will have shorter lines of supply, will have secured all surplus foodstuffs and will be able to concentrate their forces by pulling in garrison troops to their main body. It was the defining military conundrum of the Thirty Years War: the rubber band effect. Torstensson had hit on the solution in 1642 when he had established the forward strategic base at Olomouc, the Moravian capital, exactly for this purpose. Now, in 1645, he looked to use Olomouc as a springboard to attack Vienna. He linked up with Ráckóczy’s Transylvanians who were once more in diplomatic contact with the Swedes. Götz had turned back Ráckóczy’s previous raid in 1644, but in 1645 the Transylvanians would wait until the Swedish invasion was well advanced. Previously, Torstensson’s line of advance had been along the Oder and through Silesia, moving in an arc to the north of Prague before dropping down to Moravia. This time he would strike directly through Bohemia to relieve the besieged Olomouc, on a line running 50 kilometres south of Prague. Then he would strike down towards Austria, coalescing with Ráckóczy’s Transylvanian light cavalry for the attack on Vienna. Torstensson’s strategic objective for 1645 was simple: Torstensson writing to the Rad revealed that his purpose was ‘to attack the emperor in the heart, and force him to make peace,’39 but it had eluded every other allied general in the war. It was a bold strategy, a direct strategy and a risky one, not least because of the perennial unreliability of the Transylvanians who had let him down in 1643 just as Bethlen Gabor had done to his Protestant allies time and again in the 1620s. Could Prince Ráckóczy be trusted any more than his predecessor Bethlen Gabor? Early in 1645 Götz was ordered to work with Hatzfeldt as the second-incommand of the Imperial army, not a position he would have favoured. After his independent command on the Hungarian frontier with Transylvania it looked like a demotion. Götz was chaffing at the bit to show his mettle at the main battle front rather than on the Habsburg fringes of the Hungarian steppe, to fully restore a reputation that was, to say the least, chequered. Graf von Hatzfeldt, a Hessian Lutheran whose family were traditionally close to the Emperor, had been restored to command after the Gallas disaster

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   413 in 1644. Like Götz, his subordinate, he also had a reputation to restore after his defeat at Wittstock in 1636, although he had redeemed himself by destroying the English-backed force of Charles Ludwig Palatine at Vlotho in 1638. Hatzfeldt’s character and actions as a general showed him to be a safe pair of hands in terms of organisational ability and loyalty, a key point in Habsburg thinking since Wallenstein. Especially adept at management, he could be relied upon not to lose control of the logistical needs of the army, in contrast to Gallas, his alcoholic predecessor. Alert and professional, he was, however, a defensive and unimaginative general, following the tactical pattern set by Wallenstein, as his dispositions at Wittstock and Jankov demonstrated. However, his alacrity in slowing Torstensson’s advance through southern Bohemia and his rapid descent from Prague to block Torstensson from a favourable defensive position across the enemy’s line of march is testament to a soldier of some talent and energy. Orders from the Emperor in respect of the 1645 campaign were also defensive. Ferdinand did not want to lose another field army; this time its loss would leave Prague or Vienna defenceless. Hatzfeldt correctly guessed that Torstensson would make for Olomouc, which had been under siege for fourteen months. The Imperialists were aware through their intelligence that the Swedes would debouch into Bohemia from Saxony. But which pass would Torstensson use to invade Bohemia? Hatzfeldt was ordered both to screen Prague and keep the Swedes west of the Moldau river. The Habsburg brotherly duo, the Emperor and Archduke Leopold, who were wintering in Prague, did not wait to find out the result. They decided that discretion was the better part of valour and decamped to Vienna. There are two main passes through the Sudeten Mountains between Saxony and Bohemia. The picturesque Erzgebirge Pass with its sharp basalt rock needles was the main route on the way to Prague, the most direct route; the alternative was via the Pressnitz Pass on the way to Eger and Pilsen, a route which would make a southern arc on the way to Olomouc. Torstensson feinted at Erzgebirge pass (the left jab), securing it in an early winter thrust with a mixed force of 1,000 cavalry and 300 dragoons40 which overwhelmed a large picket of musketeers and Croat horsemen. Then the Swedish army passed through the Pressnitz on 19 January (the right punch) and captured Landswart Castle where they found plentiful stores including 8,400 bushels of grain; much of the Swedish equipment and seventy guns were sleigh-drawn over the snowy roads. Campaigning was beginning in mid-winter; January was the worst month for travel on Europe’s roads. Why did Torstensson choose to do this? It was highly unusual to conduct such a winter campaign, but an early start in the year would both surprise the enemy and give him a full campaigning year, in which great strategic gains or even outright victory might be secured; better also to travel on hard frost roads rather than the mud of the spring thaw. Torstensson was clearly intent on finishing the war in 1645. He may well have believed that he could not survive another season. His forces amounted to 20,000, half of which were

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414  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 cavalry. While Torstensson tried to slip past Prague without interference, he could have had little doubt that the Swedish army would have to face a trial by battle at some point in the campaign. No doubt he welcomed the chance. Imperial outposts in the Eger valley fell like skittles with Hatzfeldt unable to help, because he was following orders and prudently covering Prague. Losing Prague just as the negotiations in Westphalia were reaching a delicate moment would have been a diplomatic disaster. However, Hartzfeldt was prepared and informed of Torstensson’s progress. As the Swedish army passed Eger and feinted towards the Bavarian border, Imperial units covered the Swedish army’s advance, which had been slowed on muddy roads by an unexpectedly early thaw. Once the real direction of the Swedish army was established, Hatzfeldt intended to descend rapidly from Pilsen, where his army was centred, and cut them off, which he did by blocking the way in strong defensive positions at the river Wottawa and the Moldau. Torstensson’s movements, which were normally rapid and energetic, continued to be hampered by intermittent thaws that turned the roads to sludge. When the freeze returned, he sidestepped quickly, then stole a march on the enemy, crossing by the frozen Moldau before Hatzfeldt could effectively intervene to use the river as a defensive barrier. Despite failing in this aspect of the Emperor’s orders, Hatzfeldt reacted quickly and decisively by marching his soldiers 80 kilometres in two days in harsh late-winter conditions over the steeply undulating south Bohemian countryside, to a position south west of Prague. Ahead of Torstensson now, on 6 March 1647 he blocked the road with strong defensive positions. On a high plateau amidst pine-covered hills, at the village of Jankov, he drew up his army astride the road to Olomouc. Hatzfeldt had correctly calculated Olomouc to be the objective of the Swedish army. The fact that in deep winter he was mobilised, and ready to move so quickly to block Torstensson shows him to have been a well organised, professional and capable commander. Possessed of both a good system of intelligence and sharp anticipatory understanding of the methods of his opponent, Hatzfeldt had parried well and contained Torstensson. A cavalry clash between patrols alerted each side to the other’s presence. Torstensson drew his army up beneath the pine-forested Dzbany massif. Then a long-distance cannonade between the two sides occupied the rest of the 6th. The battlefield at Jankov is probably the most beautiful setting for any battle of the Thirty Years War. Little has changed in this quiet backwater of southern Bohemia. The steeply rolling hills on the Jankov plateau are still heavily forested, and the series of fishponds that played a central role in the battle remain. Conifers predominate on the higher hills and slopes, but lower down the trees become more deciduous. There are many oaks. Wild game, including deer, still bound around the fields and forests; birds of prey circle lazily on the breeze and red squirrels sit up and look round nervously before darting up oak trees. From the high point of the initial Imperial positions there are wonderful sweeping

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   415 views of valleys, hills and mountains. Behind the village of Jankov and the river Jankowa, on the ridge overlooking the town, Hatzfeldt had positioned his much larger 16,000-man army, including 8,000 cavalry. Looking up to the Dzbany massif to the north, Hartzfeld would have seen the Swedish army arrayed on the lower slopes. Looking directly west from his battle line, there were several strings of fishponds branching out west of Jankov village. In the distance, beyond the ponds, were more forested peaks below which sits Chapel Hill, some four kilometres distant, just above the hamlet of Vickovice. The road leading around the massif to the town of Benesov runs through the hamlet. The importance of the coming battle was emphasised by the presence of 4,000 Bavarian troopers under Werth, sent by Maximilian to reinforce his ally, an action which showed how well the Imperial-Bavarian high command was coordinating their operations. On the defensive now, the ability to optimise troop deployment on interior lines between different fronts was one of the strategic advantages enjoyed by the Imperial-Bavarian alliance at this stage of the war, as their territories shrank. There were also a few Saxon cavalry regiments, who remained with the Imperial army despite the Elector’s truce agreement with Sweden, under a temporary but bizarre dispensation clause. With the height advantage, entrenchment and a stream in front, the position looked a strong one, akin to Meade’s position on the third day at Gettyburg. The Swedes would need to cross the village of Jankow, and the stream, then ascend a long flat slope, devoid of cover, in the face of the numerically superior enemy dug in above; the Imperialists would enjoy the advantages of height combined with a perfect field of fire, while their flanks were secured by the ponds on the left and a copse on the right. An attack would be suicidal. Torstensson’s way was blocked so his surprise forcing of the Pressnitz river had earned nothing except the free passage of the Moldau. The problem was that he either had to attack a superior enemy head on, who had manoeuvred to optimal defensive positions, or he could retreat, or try to manoeuvre around the problem. A wide manoeuvre in deep winter across the front of the enemy could destroy the army. Staying still, with food stocks running down in winter, was not an option either. This was the critical point in the decision to attack, as he wrote in his report after the battle, ‘but as the enemy … on the march, kept by us and from the incessant cold winter, ruin might at last have ensued on our side’.41 However, Torstensson, with a keen general’s eye for terrain, noticed that he could slide his forces over the river below a bend, south-west of the Imperialists with the folds of low hills masking his deployments. If he could occupy an excellent defensive position on Chapel Hill, which was unoccupied by the enemy, he would have turned and made redundant the entire Imperial defensive position. Torstensson was deploying Gustavian qualities of manoeuvrability, initiative, flanking attacks, and speed. In making this manouevre he would shield

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416  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 himself from direct enemy attack on his line of march, thanks to the woods and ponds interposed between the hill and the enemy. From the hill he could drive westwards skirting a large pine forest and regain the road to Olomouc or confront the enemy on better terms in the open field, where there were no prepared fieldworks. Before launching his forces across the Jankova stream to take Chapel Hill on 7 March, Torstensson feinted towards the Imperial left, which pulled Hatzfeldt over to that side of the field; however, using the screen provided by the fold of hills and trees, the bulk of the forces were already moving at right angles to the established front, crossing the first line of ponds unopposed and establishing themselves on the hill. In his post-battle letter to the Emperor, Hatzfeldt ‘claimed’ that ‘I was well acquainted with the enemy’s mode of action, who generally did not intend to march to the quarter whither he made most noise of proceeding’.42 (Emphasis added.) As always, Torstensson drove for the initiative just as his great mentor Gustavus would have done; but if Hartzfeldt knew what Torstensson was about, why had he not acted to forestall his move? Hartzfeldt claimed later that he understood the importance of Chapel Hill and detected this danger: by his own account he had ordered Götz to put an outpost on the hill but, by the time he came round to doing it, the Swedes were already in occupation. Someone had made a serious mistake. Nonetheless, Hatzfeldt had not been on hand to direct Götz or make sure of possession of Chapel Hill that he deemed so important. If he had really been aware that the move by Torstensson on his right was a feint, why did he not take special care by moving himself to his left flank instead of the right, so ensuring compliance with the order that he claimed afterwards to have given to Götz? Whether he gave the order or not, Hatzfeldt had failed to make sure of the security of his left flank despite his claim that ‘I had advised him [Götz] to do [occupy Chapel Hill] as speedily as possible as the sole expedient left’.43 This sounds like exculpatory desperation after the fact rather than an order precautionary to the fact. The truth was that Torstensson had outfoxed Hatzfeldt. Götz, perhaps chastened and humiliated by his oversight in failing to occupy the hill on his own initiative, decided that he must attack and throw the Swedes off Chapel Hill to disrupt the crossing of the river: but his move was far too late because the enemy were already positioning cannon on the top of Chapel Hill to dominate the wooded valley and broken ground through which any attack would need to be made. No doubt fearing another court martial, Götz in a typical bullheaded fashion ordered a major attack on the Swedish-controlled hill over ground that had not been properly reconnoitred. It was too late to make the limited manoeuvre that Hartzfeld envisaged, but Götz surpassed his orders by moving his entire wing to make an unsupported attack. Any attack would have to pass narrow defiles between the ponds where there was hardly room for four foot soldiers or two cavalrymen to advance abreast. The verges around the

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   417 ponds were thoroughly waterlogged (and still are at this time of year), so the narrow tracks built up on dykes were the only practicable means of access. Nor would Hatzfeldt be able to support an attack with the troops he had detached from the centre for the purpose, except through a thick forest. Hatzfeldt had been off on a personal reconnaissance for several hours to check what turned out to be mere feints on the north-east side of the battlefield. When he returned to the army, he was amazed at the turn of events. He asked Colonel Pompeji, Götz’s deputy, what was happening, but was brushed off by the reply that they were acting ‘on Götz’s orders and would undoubtedly serve the Imperial advantage’.44 Eventually Hartzfeld caught up with Götz and the two had a furious exchange. Nonetheless, he backed down and deployed troops from Suys’s centre to help out by advancing through the forest on Götz’s left from where they would emerge, it was hoped, on the Swedish flank. However, without preparation or reconnaissance, this was a risky, even foolhardy, move. Typically, for the time of year, in the gloomy pine forest the snow had not melted. In attempting to move through with artillery, nine Imperial cannon became so ensnared in the tangle of undergrowth and deep snow that they had to be abandoned altogether, along with large amounts of ammunition.45 When the infantry emerged from the woods with their formations disordered, they launched piecemeal attacks in support of Götz’s men in the boggy hollows. They were mown down in the crossfire of Swedish cannon as they emerged into the bright daylight. From Chapel Hill the Swedes would easily have spotted Götz’s belated attempt to challenge them. Götz’s isolated attack was funnelled into the perfectly positioned Swedish batteries, which would have been moved below Vickovice to zero in on Götz’s cavalry and Suys’s infantry as they debouched from the forest or the gap between the ponds. The Imperial left flank was obliterated in a maelstrom of cannon fire. Troops jammed tight together in confined clumps on narrow tracks were excellent targets for the Swedish guns and musket salvoes; plunging fire tore into the massed ranks. Götz was slain by two musket balls and his corps was driven helter-skelter from the field, scythed down as they struggled through the quagmire around the blocked dykes. Realising the hopelessness of the attack, Hatzfeldt, who had followed up on Götz’s initiative, pulled back his supporting troops. Swedish units in hot pursuit stormed over successive hills before being called to order and proper formation. Many of the fleeing enemy had been cut down in the chase; as Torstensson noted in his battle report, ‘they lie scattered here and there on the hills and woods for a length of two miles very thickly’.46 Hatzfeldt realised the hopelessness of continuing; new positions would have to be established much further back, to stabilise the front and prepare for a withdrawal at night. He pulled back his army to a ridgeline east of Jankov village, facing west now, in a line parallel to the main road exiting the village. Realising the danger before he was enveloped, Hatzfeldt had swung his army

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418  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 round at 90 degrees to the left of their original position. Instead of being lined up behind Jankov and the stream, under the protection of redoubts, they would have to form up in the open, something that must have dampened morale as the troops contemplated the quite different circumstances under which they would fight. Hatzfeldt had intended that the right should rest on the village. However, due to confusion and demoralisation in an army in retreat from the failed attack on Chapel Hill, it had to be hastily reformed some two kilometres east southeast of the village. Jankov was set on fire to deny it to the enemy and blind the attackers with smoke. Imperial musketeers in the forward centre of his new front quickly dug earthworks on a small hill topped with a copse, with the aim of fending off or disrupting enemy attacks. Otherwise the second battlefield was located on only a mild slope in favour of the Imperialists. Hatzfeldt’s nerve had gone. As he remembered Ferdinand’s instructions to remain on the defensive, he decided to skedaddle in the night, reckoning that the Swedish army would not be in any position to continue the battle quickly or bring up their cannon until late afternoon. The first phase of the battle, having started at 7.00 a.m., was over sometime around mid-morning. The two armies had swung about for stage two of the battle with Imperialists against Swedes in a north-south direction instead of an east-west direction. In the ensuing second phase, the Imperial forces were dislocated and in disarray following the defeat of Götz’s corps and the alteration of positions; it cannot have been good for morale to have to abandon prepared defensive fieldworks, then rush from one side of the field to the other, then retreat to new unprotected positions. Forming up hurriedly in the open field, and without the benefit of fieldworks to deal with an unexpected threat, with the shadow of defeat hanging over from the morning, was a poor way to start a battle. Moreover, the army was weakened: the left wing and some of the centre had been shattered by the hopeless attacks on Chapel Hill, in which their experienced deputy commander had been killed. Hatzfeldt’s battle report attests to the confusion in the Imperial ranks: I through my adjutants ordered all the commandants of the different troops to separate, disengage the soldiers belonging to this several corps and [promptly] reform them in their original order because while they stood behind that mountain they had become intermingled in consequence of their hurried movement, retiring to their positions and the rout of Götz’s divisions.47 Armies who are surprised and have to improvise new positions are often defeated. General Montcalm’s men must have felt similar unsettling apprehensions when Wolf ’s redcoats suddenly appeared on the Plains of Abraham, or the Union Army when Jackson appeared on their flank at Second Bull Run: nor did the

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   419 Imperialists have time to properly redeploy their artillery which was in any case being prepared for retreat under cover of night along with the baggage train. The secondary battle started when Torstensson, who had thought the Imperialists to be in retreat, sent forward 400 musketeers and ten small regimental guns to clear the Imperial musketeers infesting the copse on hill 548 in the centre of the battlefield. It was a sort of reconnaissance in force. With the light failing, he would have doubted his chances of bringing the retreating Imperialists to battle again. However, luck intervened when Hatzfeldt issued an order to take back the copse in front of his lines. But, once again, there was bad communication. Misinterpreting the order, perhaps wilfully, Bruay who had replaced the dead Götz and Suys in command of the centre, launched a full-scale attack on the copse at hill 458. This action effectively committed the entire Imperial army to another battle but their artillery was unprepared and in the expectation of retreat there had also been no time to prepare defensive field works. Losing battlefield control again was something Hatzfeldt was desperate to avoid. The copse was duly taken and the Swedish musketeers dispersed, leaving behind ten small regimental field guns. Torstensson realised that he now had time to fight a second battle before darkness closed because the Imperial army had been drawn forward by the little skirmish in the centre. There would be no chance now for Hatzfeldt to disengage if Torstensson attacked, which he promptly did. The Imperial officers presumed that a Swedish attack was probably impossible without supporting field artillery – 6- or 12-pounders. There was little chance of cannon and munitions being brought up along rough tracks for six or seven kilometres from the morning battle in reasonable time for the resumption of the battle in the afternoon, especially as it was still winter and darkness would close in after 4.30 p.m. So, when the Imperialists arrived at the copse in full force, they were amazed to be pounded by the entire Swedish artillery deployed on the hill opposite, the same location which had been at the centre of their line in the morning. In early modern warfare cannon were traditionally left where they were positioned initially at the outset of the battle. The most that could happen was that they might be turned around if captured, or have their aim redirected. Nobody until Torstensson had conceived of the possibility of mobile horse-drawn field artillery with newly introduced limbers which better distributed the weight over four wheels so allowing more rapid cross country movement of gun and ammunition especially on the hardened frosty ground. Covering the ground in just a few hours from Chapel Hill, the Swedesh guns were in position to open fire by 1 p.m. If the enemy did stand and fight it would give the Swedes about three hours of light to fight the battle. Torstensson’s introduction of limbers would see widespread use in all subsequent wars, including the world wars of the twentieth century. ‘A commander essentially has two means of accomplishing his objective; firepower

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420  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 and manoeuvre, almost always in combination.’48 For the first time in the history of artillery, Torstensson combined both firepower and rapid manoeuvre, aided by his only unit composed entirely of highly-trained Swedes and Finns. The elite Swedish gunners poured a hail of shot into the Imperial ranks before charging in with cavalry and infantry. Bruay, who had succeeded Götz and was on the right of the line, was killed and his demoralised command beaten back for the second time in the day. Suys’s infantry was also pushed back. The shaken and depleted Imperial army was now devastated by concentrated Swedish artillery fire in support of the general attack. However, Werth’s cavalry on the Swedish left wing, the only major Imperial units which were fresh, caught Wittenberg’s cavalry on the Swedish right by surprise; the Bavarians broke through the enemy line. It seemed that victory might after all be theirs, but they failed to exploit the advantage. The Swedish line was pierced but not defeated. Instead of maintaining discipline for a second phase attack, Werth’s Bavarians charged on wildly to raid the Swedish baggage train where they captured both booty and the unfortunate Beatta Torstensson. However, as the Bavarian cavalry became disordered, the winning battle habit of the Swedish army started to assert itself. Wittenberg, under Torstensson’s direction, rallied his second echelon and his defeated first-echelon troopers for a counter-attack. When the Bavarians were chased down by the reformed Swedish cavalry reserves, they were swept away and bundled out of the baggage train. Beatta returned unharmed. Meanwhile, in the centre and on the left, the armies collided and pikes locked amidst the billowing clouds of gunsmoke; pennants and flags with their religious, regional and political motifs fluttered in the winter wind; Imperialists chanted the war cry and battle sign of ‘Santa Maria’ while the Swedish-German Protestant army replied with ‘Help Lord Jesus Christ’. Everyone, especially the Catholics, understood the desperate importance of this battle deep in the Imperial hereditary lands; they were defending their homes. ‘It became,’ according to Torstensson’s report, ‘very hard and bloody combat such as has not been seen of late years and will not soon be seen again.’49 Charles Gustavus, Palatine, Christina’s former beau and future king of Sweden was in the thick of the melee, struck by musket and pistol balls on his armour and through his clothing. Battered by Sweden’s guns, the Imperial army was nonetheless overwhelmed, gripped in a deadly vice. One of Torstensson’s German officers, the constitutional and political theorist von Chemnitz, described how the Swedish forces enveloped the left and centre of the opposing army, ‘enclosed by the enemy … in a half moon of horse, foot, and guns’.50 Victorious cavalry from both Swedish wings closed around the Imperial infantry. Many infantrymen were shot down in rows by salvoes of cannon and musket; the remainder surrendered. Hatzfeldt fled into the forested hills behind the Imperial positions pursued by two Swedish army troopers. He was chased down and cornered. In relieving him of considerable quantities of cash, the two corporals realised that

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   421 they were probably dealing with someone worth a good ransom, so, instead of killing him, they took him back to camp. In the interim, Torstensson was busy rounding up 4,450 other Imperial prisoners including seven colonels. Imperial losses were devastating; apart from prisoners, 4,000 were killed or wounded. The entire infantry was destroyed and 5,000 troopers were killed, wounded or captured. Testament to the severity of the fighting, Swedish army casualties in dead and wounded totalled 3,000, including eight colonels. It was the only one of three major battles in the war where the opposing commander was captured. (Rheinfelden and Nordlingen were the others.) Götz was dead and, in time-honoured fashion, he would carry the blame for the catastrophe because Hatzfeldt’s self-serving, contradictory and illogical despatches created the historical record. The reality was that Hatzfeldt had been outsmarted by one of the canniest generals of the war. The Imperialists lost all twenty-six of their field artillery pieces, the ammunition train, forty-two standards and twenty-six cavalry pennants. The last reserve of experienced Imperial troops and officers was gone. Of the 16,000-man army, only 2,697 mustered in Prague a week later.51

Advance to Vienna, March 1645

The Empire was never again to put a major field army worthy of the name on to the field of battle, although Piccolomini did scrape together a somewhat credible force at the war’s end. After the battle the Swedish army had moved quickly to exploit its victory to seize towns and castles, to capture supplies and to raise contributions. Taking advantage of the favourable dice of war, Torstensson looked to sweep the table as quickly as possible while the enemy was stunned. The immediate impact of the victory was the raising of the sixteen-month siege of Olomouc by Waldenstein (Wallenstein’s nephew), who pulled back his regiments towards Vienna. Four of those regiments would be set upon and captured just thirty kilometres from the capital. Neuhaus was taken, as was the fortified mansion of Leibnitz. The Swedish army recruited new soldiers from the disaffected and oppressed Protestant community. Znaim was stormed. At the town of Iglau 60,000 Reichsthahler was extracted and a further 2,200 prisoners taken, wounded and sick left behind by the Imperial army. A baggage train with a huge haul of supplies, abandoned at Tabor, was mostly captured as it tried to flee. Durnstein on the Danube and its historic castle,52 was captured (there, in 1193, minstrel Blondel is supposed to have discovered the place of imprisonment of the English King Richard I). Around Durnstein, Torstensson’s troops occupied the picturesque Wachau wine region. The soldiers marching with the victorious army must have been amazed at the wealth and harmony of these bountiful, unspoilt lands: vineyards running down to the Danube, orchards, neat cottages and onion dome topped church steeples. Not surprisingly, there were plentiful logistical stockpiles to be taken to feed the army, especially at Korneuberg and its

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422  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 fortress of Creuzenstein where 20,000 jars of wine were secured, together with huge quantities of grain and oats, and 6,000 florins worth of salt. Twenty-two guns were taken along with abundant quantities of gunpowder and munitions. It was just fifteen kilometres from Vienna. At the castle of Seitz further stores of grain, corn and wine were captured; people living off the fat of the land made their acquaintance with the din of cannon and musketry, and the tramp of uncouth, thieving soldiery. Torstensson’s cannon took a grip on Danube river traffic, blocking supplies bound for Vienna or even capturing laden vessels. The Swedish army spread along the north bank of the Danube to seal off Austrian communications to the Austrian and Bohemian provinces north of the river, and Moravia to the northeast. Laub, fifty kilometres north of Vienna was captured as well as Nikolsburg; on 17 March the castle of Ralensburg, sixty kilometres to the north-east of Vienna, was taken, yielding up ‘contribution’ and 200 cannon. Only one key Imperial military position remained on the north bank; this was the heavily fortified outwork around the Wolf ’s Bridge that guarded the crossing to Vienna. It was stormed and captured on 28 March, whereupon the Emperor fled yet again, this time to Graz in the Alps, followed by 1,000 wagonloads of possessions. With the enemy at the gates of Vienna, and Rákóczy set to re-enter the war from the Hungarian border 400 kilometres distant, the Imperial cause had reached its nadir.

Diplomatic tremors after Jankov, June to August 1645

After Jankov, perhaps the most important and decisive battle of the war, the Emperor surprised the peace conference by conceding two of the main preliminary points which were holding up the commencement of negotiation on the substantive issues. Ferdinand ordered his council to make a complete re-evaluation of Imperial policy but, more immediately, he dealt with the casus belli; Sötern, the Elector of Trier, was released and his lands restored, satisfying French demands. It signalled an immediate willingness to start substantive talks and make big concessions. The first credible signal that he would accept terms, accept defeat. He was not quite ready to split from Madrid or Munich, but he was on the way. Secondly, the Emperor agreed on 11 April that the mainly Catholic ‘deputation diet’ could move to Munster; the Emperor had opened Pandora’s box. Other states clamoured for admission to the conference, and would arrive there of their own volition, or at the urging of France and Sweden who sent open letters of invitation. On 29 August the Emperor bowed to the inevitable and invited the Estates of the Diet to join the conference at Westphalia as independent delegates with freedom to negotiate. Hesse had won one of their main demands on protocol. Diplomacy, in Münster and Osnabruck, was soon to become as muddy as the streets of those small cities, as the issues increased exponentially with the influx of states – domestic, political, constitutional and

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   423 religious questions could not now be excluded. Previously, the Emperor had entered the peace negotiations for tactical reasons while entertaining high hopes for a reversal of fortune on the battlefield. The Emperor covered his humiliation by decreeing the conferences as an extended sitting of the Diet whereby the treaties would, under monist legal principles, pass directly into the law of the Empire. The defeat in 1645 at Jankov had shattered his last illusions.

Imperialist popular mobilisation, Spring 1645

Despite the cowardice of Ferdinand III, the threat posed by the invader galvanised the Habsburg state. Leopold acted with energy to seal the south bank of the Danube against an enemy crossing. Gallas was brought out of retirement to muster new troops, and outlying garrisons were called in to defend the capital. Four thousand militiamen were raised from citizen soldiers, plus 2,000 students. Soon, 35,000 troops had been gathered for the defence of the realm and Imperial patrols were guarding the Danube, frustrating Swedish attempts to cross. The first major counter-attack was launched at the end of May. Having started the siege of Brno (Brunn) in April, the under-manned Swedish army was thinly spread, so, exploiting this weakness, Imperial troops stormed the first outwork at Vienna’s Wolf ’s bridge fortification on 28 May, then seized the main redoubts on 6 June. Buoyed by their triumph, Imperial troops recaptured Stein and laid siege to Krems where several assaults were repelled on 3 June. The main result from these successes was that access was gained to the north bank, which would embolden the newly-energised Imperialists to send supply columns and mount relief attacks against the Swedish siege lines at Brno; not always successful, one column was wiped out in ambush. A national consciousness had developed under the impact of war. Like the French reaction to the invasion by Gallas’s Imperial-Spanish army in 1636, it seemed that war was developing alongside state modernisation and identity politics, the stirrings of modern nationalism.

The battle of Mergentheim (Herbsthausen), May 1645

Turenne emerged from winter quarters on 24 March seeking out the army of Franz von Mercy. It was well known that Mercy was short of about 8,000 men who had been detached to deal with the threat of Torstensson in Bohemia. Mercy, with only 6,000 men, retired into Swabia where he overran the Rothenburg/Würzburg area. As ever, peace talks in Westphalia and renewed side negotiations between France and Bavaria were dominating strategic thinking; Mazarin proposed an aggressive campaign ‘to heat up this negotiation … the best means … is for you to act vigorously, such that neither the duke [Maximilian] … nor the others see any possibility to improve their situation except through an accommodation’.53 The Mergenheim campaign would pitch two of the war’s great commanders against each other. However, Turenne was enjoying his first unfettered

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   425 independent army command while Franz von Mercy had been the Bavarian commander since 1639: moreover, he came to the campaign with the confidence born of the trouncing and destruction of de Guébriant’s Franco-German army at Tuttlingen the previous year. Like most commanders of this era, Turenne was most concerned that his horses should be well fed; as cavalry numbers and importance increased this issue became paramount. After a hard winter, there was a particular problem because ‘at the end of April there was no more grass’ and as a result his officers ‘strongly urged Turenne to permit the cavalry to disperse to small towns with the baggage’.54 Dispersion was the only way to deal with it. But ‘to speak the truth,’ wrote a contemporary and biographer, Mr de Turenne decided too readily that the cavalry should not suffer for want of forage, his great desire was that they should quickly get into peak condition, with the units reporting that they [the enemy] were dispersed, he was encouraged unadvisedly to have them [his cavalry] forage nearby [the enemy].55 The rumours about the scattering of the Imperialists into garrisons were untrue; Turenne had been trapped by a ruse. Mercy, reinforced and with garrisons pulled in, concentrated twice the number of troops available to Turenne and attacked in the early morning of 4 May. Turenne, who was apprised of Mercy’s sneak advance at 2.00 a.m by Rosen’s patrols, realised too late that he had been tricked; he should have taken note of Mercy’s expertise in surprise attacks after the Tuttlingen success in 1643. Forming up his army in the early hours, Turenne urgently recalled dispersed cavalry but ‘a great many of the troopers having caused their horses to be blooded, on account of the season, the regiments could not mount a horse back soon enough to come to the battle’.56 Turenne counted on the arrival of 3,000 troopers who were billeted in the locality but they did not arrive in time for the battle. Turenne only had time to bring up 6,000 men while his cannon could hardly be deployed in time. He packed his own left with cavalry to attempt a knockout blow against the enemy right; an aggressive-defensive battle plan. If he was lucky reinforcements would arrive in time from his scattered army. Even in this risky disposition he had brought on the battle in unfavourable circumstances because his line of troops was caught too far forwards, as Colonel Rosen his Weimarian cavalry colonel, pointed out critically: ‘[Turenne] sent for the cavalry to come and join on him on the other side of the wood; which surely he would never have done had he thought the enemy’s army was so near.’ When the fight opened at 7.00 a.m the French were easily outflanked and overrun by Werth’s cavalry, which resulted in the right and centre of the French position crumbling in disorder. Werth was able to wheel around the French army and then attack Turenne’s strong left wing from behind. Having initially made good progress in smashing the attack made by Mercy’s right wing, Turenne’s

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426  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 cavalry wing was simultaneously attacked in the front and flank by the Bavarian right wing’s cavalry reserve and from behind by Werth. By 9.00 a.m the French cavalry had fled. A significant victory for Franz von Mercy, the French lost most of their 3,000 foot plus 1,400 cavalry. A further 2,700 troops were captured after the battle, and ten guns. That more did not succumb was only due to the arrival of three French cavalry regiments who, too late for the battle, covered the retreat. Turenne fell back on his ally Hesse-Kassel with the cavalry, while the remaining infantry were despatched to Philipsburg. Napoleon’s comments on the battle are surely apposite (and endorse Rosen’s): ‘His real error was the rallying point he fixed for his army.’57 Having retreated earlier in the campaigning season, Mercy now turned hunter, following Turenne towards Hesse some 150 kilometres to the north over the Oldenwald Mountains. Too weak in numbers, he pulled up, soon deciding to consolidate in Franconia below the Main. At this point the traditional see-saw of the war re-asserted itself because the French-Hesse-Kassel coalition was able to energise its base area advantage. In this emergency, France needed to mobilise its allies and muster reinforcements. Hesse was given further subsidies and the Dutch were also induced to make a rare excursion outside their border to pick up the slack that would be left by the absence from the field of Hessian units. The Landgravine of Hesse provided military support to Turenne, her cousin, who quickly rallied a reconstituted army of 15,000. It concentrated on Kassel, with France’s 5,000 troops, 6,000 Hessians and a further 4,000 Swedish army troops under Königsmarck who had been rushed over to support their ally. Amelia’s prompt aid to her ally and co-religionist Turenne would in due course be repaid by a grateful cousin. Under cover of this move to support the French, Hesse would start the Hesse civil war by invading their Lutheran cousins in Hesse-Darmstadt territory. The French alliance system had demonstrated its durability, flexibility and operational cohesiveness. Supportive of his generals, unlike the unforgiving Richelieu, Mazarin indicated his confidence in Turenne; it was one of Mazarin’s finest moments as the supreme commander. When Condé joined Turenne at Mannheim with 7,000 fresh troops, after his rather more comfortable winter spent at court in Paris, the allied army once more became the hunters. They chased Mercy back over the Odenwald through Heilbronn and back again to the Rothenburg region, whence they had come. Such was the elasticity of the Thirty Years War. Mercy took up a number of defensive positions, firstly near the pretty medieval town of Dinkeslbühle. From there, Mercy fell back into the Danubian plain where his army eventually came to rest at Allerheim, west of Nordlingen. The defeat at Mergensheim was not without diplomatic effect because it upset the delicate secret negotiations which were proceeding with Bavaria, on whom the pressure to negotiate a truce or armistice with the French was eased. It also gave hope to the Imperialists. ‘Without this accident,’ Servien wrote, ‘we would

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   427 be able to make advantageous peace in six months.’58 However, as French armies had advanced again towards his precious Bavarian principality, Maximillian who had always held the traditional ‘French alliance’ proposals in reserve for a rainy day, began to show some interest in diplomacy. He saw the victory as an opportunity to secure more reasonable terms from the French at the Westphalia peace congress. Writing a letter to Piccolomini in the Netherlands the Bavarian Elector remarked that he ‘would be happy if the victory facilitated the armies of Spain and the Imperialists in forcing France to accept more reasonable and Christian peace terms’.59 Conversely, some diplomatic fine tuning was needed upon re-uniting the coalition to deal with Mercy’s Bavarian threat. It needed some softening of French inter-allied demands, for example, pressing the Swedes to moderate their terms and paying due attention to Hesse’s Westphalian negotiating demands in recognition of their increasing military contribution to the alliance. As Servien wrote to Brienne, the French foreign secretary who reported to Mazarin, ‘the accident that occurred recently [Mergenshiem] … forcing us to reunite ourselves more tightly with our old friends and to assure ourselves of their affection by new indulgences [favours and money] does not permit us to dispute with them everything that we would have been able to dispute before’.60

After Jankov: Joining Rákóczy and the siege of Brno, April–August 1645

Torstensson’s plan for the 1645 campaign had been to join up with Rákóczy’s Transylvanians to attack the capital. After signing an alliance treaty with Sweden on 26 April 1643, Rákóczy had been brought back into the war to make diversionary attacks during Torstensson’s war with Denmark (1643–44). Swedish subsidies had sweetened the deal. His advance into Habsburg Hungary in 1644 had been defeated by General Götz, so his interest had waned somewhat. But after the smashing Swedish victory at Jankov and French subsidies, the opportunistic Hun was reinvigorated. He would despatch 6,000 troops to join Torstensson at Brno in Moravia on 24 July 1645. Instead of moving on Vienna, these troops joined with the Swedes in the siege of Brno in Moravia, the point of which was to widen the Swedish occupation of the province beyond the base at Olomouc. Unfortunately, Hungarian light cavalry were not much use; little had changed in fifty years from Count Barbarino’s comments in 1605: ‘The cavalry did not want to obey the command; some refused to march with carts … and some even opposed the slow march itself – in other words they wanted to do as they pleased’.61 Brno represented an opportunity for Torstensson to take a major tangible gain out of his great victory at Jankov. As a base for operations against Vienna it was preferable to Olomouc, being surrounded by rich farmland in the Brno valley just one day’s march from Vienna. Brno’s capture would deliver the whole of Moravia’s rich province. Additionally, any approach to Vienna

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428  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 from the Swedish base at Olomouc would, unless it was captured, have the powerful citadel of Brno astride its communications. Brno was an undertaking of exceptional difficulty; even if the town were taken, the exceptionally strong Spilberk citadel would likely take much longer to starve into surrender. Brno was the most important city in Moravia, both economically and strategically. It was well guarded by double walls, five-sided bastions, ravelins and covered ways; exceptional natural defences enhanced what was already a formidable fortress. Brno was a compact city set up on high ground, but surrounded on three sides by the Brno river, a natural water barrier which also meant that the ground was marshy and waterlogged, adding to the difficulty of digging approaches. On the city’s open south side there was a very strong citadel, the Spilberk castle, set on a high hill that dominated the entire countryside; using flags, the defenders could discover and quickly communicate any sign of enemy activity. The fifteenth-century St James church’s 92-metre tower provided yet another vantage point. Brno was almost totally surrounded by a tangled topography of high hills, narrow valleys and forests, which meant that guarding the approaches to the lines of circumvallation was almost impossible. Imperial cavalry would easily be able to make raids or slip in reinforcements or supplies through overstretched lines because their approach would not be discovered till too late. Storming the place quickly was not feasible. Torstensson had to settle for a long hard slog to surround the place with lines of contravallation, outposts and vedettes to prevent escape or re-supply. Parallels were dug up to the outer defences; siege cannon pounded the fortifications and mines were dug under the walls, but the defences were guided by an exceptional talent. City commander Louis Redoit de Souches, a Huguenot exile from la Rochelle, used his experience of the terrible siege of 1627–28 for the benefit of the Empire. The siege lasted from 3 May to 14 August, but failed when Rákóczy suddenly withdrew from the alliance under pressure from the Sublime Porte. The Ottomans, who had been on the point of intervening in the Thirty Years War with 10,000 janissaries massed at Buda, became pre-occupied with the conquest of Crete and war with Venice, having been persuaded by Imperial diplomat Count Czerzin to accept a continuation of the Truce of Szony (1606–1642). Czerzin, who arrived before the Sultan on a stretcher, near the point of death, brought expensive gifts to bribe the Sultan’s important eunuch officials. The Count recovered. Then by a stroke of luck the Sultan’s ire was drawn elsewhere. Some knights of Malta intercepted and captured a Turkish convoy containing the chief eunuch and his favourite slave girl.62 After this ‘outrage’, the miscreants fled with their captives to Venetian-held Crete: so, it was to be war with Venice, not the Empire. This was the War of Candia. The Sultan did not want any complications brought on by his Transylvanian ‘satrapy’, whose raiding had turned into something substantial enough to threaten the involvement of the Porte in a wider two-front war. Rákóczy, already disheartened by the static

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   429 and costly siege at Brno, may have been relieved to receive a despatch from the Sultan on 1 August; it told him to disengage. Stretching his discretion, Rákóczy did not quit immediately, but instead sought to finesse the terms of his exit. He wanted to be bought off for the highest price. As part of the Treaty of Linz signed on 16 December 1645 with the now desperate Ferdinand, Rákóczy snapped off large chunks of Habsburg Hungary (present day Slovakia), about 75,000 square kilometres; Transylvania’s territory increased by about 35 per cent. The twelve ceded counties, seven of which had previously been given to Bethlen Gabor for his lifetime only, were ceded in perpetuity. Transylvania’s wily despot could return to his wife and their shared passion which was horticulture and gardening. For the Emperor, it was a diplomatic coup of great significance because it saved Brno and possibly Vienna. Wrongfooted, Brienne, a senior French diplomat, expressed surprise: ‘Before I did not believe that the Porte’s commandments were so pressing that they would make Transylvania make peace.’63 Reduced by plague and desertions, without the numbers to make the taking of Brno a practical proposition, Torstensson raised the siege on 14 August and decided to make another assault on Vienna. Torstensson laid waste to thirty square kilometres on the outskirts before he retreated. The Austrians had broken a truce to allow the burial of the dead in the area to prevent the spread of plague, so Torstensson punished them for their breach of faith. With his army reduced to 10,000, the Swede had to pull back to winter quarters in Thuringia, and consolidate his holdings in Silesia, while being followed warily by an army of 20,000 Imperialists and Bavarians. Worn out and ill, usually carried in a litter, Torstensson could be imposed upon no longer. He resigned his command and returned to Sweden. Army command was handed over to Swedish Admiral Wrangel on 23 December 1645. Königsmarck would operate another independent column. Lionised by Queen Christina, whose faction on the Rad he joined in opposition to Oxenstierna, Torstensson continued to participate in matters of state. More than any other single factor, his victories brought the Austrian Habsburgs to the negotiating table: choosing aggressive and hazardous strategies, he had, since taking command in 1641, utterly destroyed four irreplaceable veteran ImperialBavarian armies. The emperor had accepted defeat; the only question now was just how much he would have to give away on territory, money and political concessions. Servien, France’s diplomat at Westphalia, was on tenterhooks as to the outcome of Torstensson’s campaign, especially when the experience of such deep penetration campaigns had, Gustavus apart, been poor. Servien noted that Torstensson ‘is now master of the campaign, but it is necessary to reflect on what would have become of him had he been defeated in Bohemia, being so far from secure retreat: our situation would be as bad as the emperor’s is’.64

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430  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 John George lost hope of victory. He grabbed at the chance for peace, signing the Armistice of Kötzschenbroda on 27 August 1645, the terms of which were suitably moderate. All territorial possessions except Leipzig, which was held as surety, were handed back. The Swedish garrison at Leipzig would be financially underwritten at a cost of 11,000 Reichsthaler per month. Free passage of the Electorate was granted to Sweden’s armies. For practical purposes John George had changed sides again. Attrition was working against the Imperialists at last. Nonetheless, diplomats like Servien were wary of fortune’s wheel and even considered whether a truce would be advantageous at this juncture ‘to avoid the chance and uncertainties of battles’. However, Mazarin the gambler had no intention of breaking his winning streak, disingenuously writing that ‘His majesty [Louis XIV] and his allies are not thinking of diminishing the fires of war by a truce, but extinguishing them altogether by a good peace’.65 Ferdinand III instructed his representative at Westphalia, Count Trauttmansdorff, to offer realistic peace terms. To exit the war, the Emperor was even ready to cut loose from Spain, his dynastic cousins and blood allies.

Battle of Allerheim, 3 August 1645

Once again, the three great commanders Mercy, Condé and Turenne would meet in battle. With the Imperialists on the ropes after the main Imperial army had been wiped out at Jankov, Mazarin ordered his star commanders to exploit the void left by the withdrawal of Leopold and Imperial units to shore up the defences of Vienna. Bavaria would be alone, so the allies decided to concentrate for a knockout blow. The Hessians were paid to release elite cavalry units. At Mannheim, Condé joined the allied army to take command on 2 July; this was followed soon after by the departure of Königsmarck who had orders from Torstensson to knock the defenceless Saxony out of the war while the main Swedish army was engaged against the Imperialists in Bohemia and Moravia.66 Nonetheless, the remaining allied force was strong enough to pursue Mercy who retreated from his northern quarters back onto his Bavarian bases. A decisive win for Condé would knock Bavaria out of the war or at the least secure quarters on enemy territory on the right bank of the Rhine, a base for the knockout blow in the following campaign year. Mercy, whose army was smaller and distinctly weaker in cavalry, stood on the defensive, but the French generals were only too aware of Mercy’s ability to capitalise on any mistakes. From a strategic point of view Mazarin sought to dominate Swabia and the Danube basin as a feeding and logistics base for the Franco-German army. It was also a vital region for contributions and logistics for the Bavarian army; without it Maximilian would have to make peace. Avoiding battle, Mercy retreated, trading space for time as he fell back towards the Bavarian heartland. At the opportune moment, Mercy turned to offer battle on very advantageous terms, after being reinforced by 6,000 troops under Imperial General Geleen.

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432  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 The Bavarian/Imperial army eventually came to rest in a magnificently strong defensive position on a steep ridge flanked by a knoll at either end, with the hamlet of Allerheim in the centre at the foot of the incline and forward of the controlling crossroad. Allerheim was just 10 kilometres to the south-east of Nordlingen and the battle is often referred to as the second Nordlingen. The village was heavily fortified. ‘There was a village in the middle of the plain in which they filled the houses and church with infantry,’ noted General de Gramont, ‘and to defend it they raised a sort of entrenchment, where they placed their large infantry corps on the right and on the left.’67 On each flank, as if built for the purpose, were two tall round hills, perfect natural bastions to protect each wing from outflanking attacks. The right bastion, the Weinberg, was also made impassable to flanking manoeuvre by the river Wemitz, on which it rested, while the old castle of Allerheim enhanced the left flank’s natural bastion. Infantry units were posted amongst the cavalry on both wings. The centre behind Allerheim was a small plain, where the Bavarian Imperial infantry was posted.68 Looking at the place today, it seems astonishing that Condé should decide to attack such a strong position with the daunting incline of its slopes. The village located forward of centre of the Bavarian line would break up and hinder any general attack in the same way as the castle in front of the lines at Alte Veste 1632, or la Haye Sainte farm in front of the centre of the British lines at Waterloo in 1815. Even Napoleon, who was not averse to bloody battles of attrition, noted that Condé was wrong ‘in attacking Mercy in his camp with an army composed almost entirely of cavalry, and with so little artillery’.69 Mercy, in the tradition of Habsburg armies during the war, a practice borrowed once again from Wallenstein’s tactical concepts, threw up fieldworks along the whole front, then lined them with units of musketeers. Behind the fortified line were the squadrons of cuirassiers ready to smash the enemy in a counter-attack. Both armies were drawn up in two main cavalry echelons on either side of the village with the Imperialists sitting up on the high slopes of the hill. The opposing infantry would have to contest the centre around the village of Allerheim. Turenne wrote ‘our cannon were brought up that we might not be annoyed by those of the enemy: but as the cannon which are not planted have great advantages over those that march, those of the enemy did a great deal more damage than ours.’70 Bavarian infantry there ‘had made holes for firing out of the houses’71 and numerous cannon were placed behind gabions and earthworks in the central churchyard. On the right side of the French line, where Gramont commanded, the terrain was reported to be impassable due to gullies between the opposing cavalry wings that stood on the defensive. Turenne commanded the Franco-Weimarian and Hessian cavalry on the left. The infantry on both sides were in the centre, in front of, or in and around the village. Gramont pointed out that it was ‘believed to be impossible to attack their cavalry, which was flanked by their infantry from

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   433 the village without taking over the village; it was resolved to attack although this appeared hard and difficult’.72 The battlefield advantage to the defender was significant as the slopes were very steep and it is extraordinary that Condé should risk a battle at a site where there was no opportunity for turning movements. It is hard to imagine Turenne doing anything so obviously foolhardy and wasteful of life. Any battle in this terrain would be a battle of attrition. Had Condé learned nothing from experiences at Freiburg? With fortified positions and only a slight inferiority in his Imperial-Bavarian army of 16,000, including 7,200 cavalry, the battle was Mercy’s to lose. Nevertheless, Condé ordered his army of 17,000, including 9,200 cavalry, to attack. By 4.00 p.m. they were ready for battle, which gave them about five hours to settle the matter before nightfall. Condé was impatient to attack before the Bavarian defences became even stronger. The village had to be taken to prevent enfilading fire and attacks on the flanks of the French cavalry as they advanced against their opponents on the hill. The purpose of the attacks should have been to pin down the enemy as much as possible while not getting drawn into a battle of attrition which they had no hope of winning. From 5.00 to 6.00 p.m. Condé’s infantry duly attacked head on in the centre against the fortified village, overcoming light opposition in the outlying houses before being met by the central defences. Condé’s infantry was drawn into a maelstrom of gunfire. Packed into a confined space as they advanced through the village, the front echelons were wiped out by combined blasts of grapeshot from the fourteen masked cannon in the churchyard, plus salvoes of musket fire from musketeers firing from loopholes or fortified barricades. Condé, often at the front of his troops, survived miraculously as he led on wave after wave of infantry, ‘thus the fighting became very obstinate, with great loss on both sides, but less on that of the enemy, because they were lodged in houses … the Prince [Condé] came often into the village; he received a great many shots in his clothes, and had two horses wounded under him’.73 Bavarian and Imperial infantry positioned behind Allerheim were fed into the village as French pressure mounted. Condé was clearly overcommitted in the village. He even called in reinforcements from his right wing, perhaps believing that nothing much would happen on that front because of the gully which was said to separate the two opposing cavalry wings, as Count Gramont recounts: In the meantime the attack on the village became terrible, and duc d’Enghien pulled troops from the right wing to defend his infantry, which suffered greatly and was nearly broken from time to time. … on returning to his position, he saw that the enemy had brought down infantry from the hillock on which their cannon was placed, which had already begun to cause much damage to the squadrons on our right.74 Condé for his part could offer his troops little support by way of artillery cannonade; he only had six cannon. Again, French weakness in this department

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434  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 is notable. Repeated assaults failed. Thousands of French infantry were scythed down. As at Freiburg, Mercy had drawn Condé’s French infantry into another killing zone. With the centre of the French line so obviously annihilated, Mercy cried out, ‘They have delivered themselves into our hands!’75 Victory seemed assured. Only fate could now lend a hand to save the Franco-Weimarian-Hessian army. It did. At about 6.00 p.m., a few moments after Mercy’s cry of triumph, a random cannon ball smashed into the body of the Habsburgs’ last great commander, killing him instantly. Mercy had intuitive brilliance in defence and attack. Napoleon would later declare emphatically, ‘Had it not been for Mercy’s death the Bavarians would have remained masters of the field of battle.’76 Fame or the lack of it sometimes hangs on the random trajectory of a cannon ball. By contrast Turenne and Condé went on to great fame as generals. On the day of Allerheim, Condé’s almost suicidal martial courage in leading assaults on the centre meant that the chances of his being killed in the hail of shot and grape were infinitely higher than Mercy’s. The battle continued; on the left Bavarian cavalry launched an attack on Gramont’s weakened right wing. Much to the astonishment of the French cavalry and Count Gramont, the Bavarian squadrons ‘crossed the place that had been reported to be a near impractical gully: which caused such surprise and fright to all our French cavalry, that it fled two leagues ahead’.77 Things now went from bad to worse for the French. Condé’s right wing was smashed and dispersed by Werth’s veteran Bavarian cavalry. Gramont rallied the Fabert and Wal Regiments which held fast; an island of opposition as the French right wing crumbled. Gramont found himself surrounded on all sides, and with four horsemen who were going to kill him, arguing together over who would do so. … four aides de camp were killed, three of his pages, and all his servants who followed him were also killed at his side. Such is the result of affection for a muchloved master.78 Gramont was taken prisoner. The episode demonstrates the feudal loyalty of his retainers, the still surviving medieval and chivalric characteristics of the French army. Given that Condé’s army had lost two out of three parts of the battle, with only the third part to be decided, it looked as though Bavarian victory was assured. Nonetheless, would a leaderless Bavarian army be able to exploit its advantage? General de Werth on the victorious Bavarian left, a competent and experienced commander, was again not able to restrain his cavalry from the chase; the French were hunted all the way to their baggage train before Werth could pull up his troopers to lead them back to the battlefield. With Condé and Gramont both decisively defeated, any slim hopes for the Franco-Weimarian army hung on the attack made by the left flank of the French army under Turenne against the Imperial cavalry elements on the

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   435 Bavarian right wing. He would attack up the sharp incline in two echelons with the Hessian cavalry in reserve. As Mr de Turenne was continuing his march up the hill eight or nine squadrons abreast, the infantry which the enemy had at two extremes of the wing, gave fire, and the cannon had time to give three or four discharges, the first with ball, and the last with cartridge-shot, with which Mr Turenne’s horse was wounded, and he himself received a shot in his cuirass.79 Despite the enfilade fire, the cannon fire and the uphill attack, Turenne’s German cavalry echelons, the Weimarians, were still able to break through the first two lines of the enemy horse, though they were not yet scattered. It was a superb feat of discipline, management and timing to deliver such a charge uphill. However, the momentum was gone; the fight on the Bavarian right hung in the balance, some units being pushed back while others maintained their progress. It was the turning point of the whole battle. At first it seemed that things might now go badly again for the French because the Hessians, who made the main body of the reserve, were a little too far off; for which reason we were driven back a little, but without being routed …. When the Weimarian cavalry saw the Hessians approach, they rallied, and we all at once charged the whole body of the enemy cavalry …: we broke it and all the cannon upon the hill were taken: … Geleen, the general of the Emperor’s army was made prisoner.80 Three infantry regiments were also destroyed. Unfortunately for the Bavarian army there was no commander at hand with the experience to throw in the cavalry and infantry reserves to stop Turenne’s well-handled attack. His judicious and disciplined use of cavalry reserves put the whole Imperial wing to flight. Attention then turned to the victorious Bavarian infantry in the central position in and behind the village, who were virtually intact and had barely been used, while De Werth was far away collecting his men at the French baggage train. Turenne started to flank attack the Bavarian centre from a position located behind the infantry in the village. Leaderless, and thinking wrongly that the battle was lost, Bavarian morale was low. Turenne forced the surrender of the two enemy infantry regiments in the village who were persuaded that they were cut off, even though Werth’s cavalry, obscured by the murky twilight at about 8.30 to 9.00 p.m, had returned to a point just 500 metres away. ‘The sun was already set when Mr de Werth’s troops began to return behind the village,’ recounted Turenne and night coming up presently, the two wings had beaten what was before them; and as the cavalry of the King’s army [Louis XIV’s regency] was a little further advanced than the village [i.e. behind the village], some of the enemy’s regiments that were in the churchyard surrendered to Mr de

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436  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Turenne, and came forward without arms at twilight not knowing that their own troops were not five hundred paces off.81 Werth, who arrived back at the battlefield around 8.30 to 9.00 p.m was half an hour too late because he retraced his route rather than seizing the initiative by traversing the field diagonally to attack Turenne’s left flank in the rear. After the battle Turenne knew that he had been lucky because he noted If instead of returning by the place where he had first been posted and leaving the village on the left hand, he [Werth] had marched into the plain against the Weimarian and Hessian cavalry, we should not have been in a condition to make the least resistance, and our left wing, thus hemmed in [between the cavalry of Werth and the Imperialist wing of Geleen] would have been very easily put into confusion.82 Under the rules of war, it was a French victory, but a pyrrhic one. Surprisingly, Maximilian did not at first believe that he had been defeated. However, his Croat cavalry commander Frangepani was more realistic: ‘the battle of Nordlingen [Allerheim] has despite a promising start, an unfortunate conclusion. The worst loss in his eyes, the death of Marshal Mercy, a magnificent soldier.’83 The enemy retired not to Ingolstadt or Munich, but to nearby Donauworth for re-supply. The French army had been badly mauled with 4,000 dead, mainly infantry, and many more wounded. Almost all the dead were French infantry lying in heaps and rows in the village of Allerheim, many of their bodies torn apart by grape and chain shot. ‘It was some days before we could draw together above twelve to fifteen hundreds of all the French infantry,’ lamented Turenne.84 This implies that from total French infantry of 7,800, about 6,300 were casualties. The Bavarian-Imperial army lost just 2,500 killed, 1,500 captured and twelve guns. Once again Turenne, with the Weimarian and Hessian cavalry, had saved the day at the last gasp and by the narrowest of margins. Napoleon rightly says of Condé that ‘he did wrong in giving battle to Mercy in the position he occupied, he did right in never yielding to despair while he had brave men under his colours’.85 Hailed as a great victory in Paris, Allerheim was strategically a draw. Calamitous losses at Allerheim, and the usual chronic desertion ratios of French troops, left the remaining French army of 12,000 outnumbered by a regrouped Imperial-Bavarian force of 18,000 mustered under Leopold at nearby Donauworth. Soon the Bavarian-Imperial army would be advancing again with the elastic snap of the logistical war in Germany, while the French fell back on their bases of supply and reinforcement. Without infantry, an attack on Donauworth was not feasible, so Condé chose to take some low-hanging fruit as the prize of victory. Nordlingen, captured by the Imperialists following the destruction of the Swedish army in 1634, surrendered quickly. ‘We stayed seven or eight days at Nordlingen,’ remembered Turenne, ‘which is such a pretty and fine town, where we greatly refreshed

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   437 ourselves; we found some arms, harness, abundance of horses for baggage, and plenty of medicine for the wounded.’86 This is a rare reference by a senior officer about care for the wounded, but typical of Turenne’s tenderness towards his men. The Queen’s confidante, Madame de Motville, who lost two relations and friends in the battle, noted poignantly that while strolling in Palais Royal ‘Some of my acquaintance came to tell me that a battle was won, but also a great many killed. The first feeling in all is joy, then followed fear, and each for himself seemed already regretting a friend or relative dead’.87 De Bussy-Rabutin, who was involved in the battle, noted that ‘after I had taken some leave, I assembled a recruitment of thirty troopers, to help me with army enlistment, to replace the cavalry killed or injured in the battle’.88 Despite the gloss put on the victory in despatches, Mazarin for one was realistic about the result of the battle; he told a prematurely elated Queen Anne, ‘Madame there are so many dead that your majesty can scarce rejoice at this victory.’89 After two defeats due to being caught out while the cavalry foraged, Turenne would take no chances. He wisely retreated to Philippsburg for winter quarters on the left bank of the Rhine, losing all the year’s gains in the process. The moment was not entirely wasted because Turenne exploited strategic space to attack the Spanish again. Making a 120-mile march over hard frost to secure the capitulation of Treves from the Spanish on 19 November, he denied winter quarters to Charles of Lorraine’s small army while making his own comfortable in the well-provided and picturesque Moselle valley. His horses grazed there at leisure and in security. Turenne had once again created strategic space at the end of the year, which for him was a decisive phase of a campaign because it was ‘the time which decides so many things in Germany, because then you can gain command of a tract of territory in which you have all winter to refresh and remake your army’.90

In Flanders field 1645

Frederick Henry decided that 1645 would really be the year of Antwerp’s capture. The Dutch army crossed by barge to Flanders again but immediately the Stadtholder started to worry about his relative deficiency in cavalry, so the troops came to a halt. While French commanders Gassion and Rantzau captured Fort Mardyk, which was an outwork of Dunkirk, the Dutch dithered. With Artois towns made frail by tiny garrisons, the French went on to capture Bapaume, defended by just 200 soldiers. The new Spanish commander, the Count of Castel Rodrigo, effectively abandoned Artois. Bypassing Dunkirk, the French pushed on up towards Bruges, an action which panicked the Dutch who started to fear French power. The Stadtholder was energised into attacking Hulst which surrendered on 3 November with its 1,600-man garrison. Having threatened invasion of central Flanders, the French army withdrew into winter

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438  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 quarters. In December, the Spanish recaptured Fort Mardyk. The key point of the campaign was the French occupation of most of Artois and increasing encroachment in Flanders. As contemporary Van der Capellen noted, ‘people [in the Dutch Republic] began to be more apprehensive about the proximity of France, through her occupation of Flanders together with the other Spanish Netherlands [Artois]’.91

Diplomatic consequences for the Peace of Imperial defeats in 1645

The beginning of the conference was a process whereby both sides opened diplomatic fronts as a secondary option to fighting. France and Sweden submitted their written demands to the congress only in June 1645. The Emperor’s willingness to negotiate was equivocal and his mood fluctuated with every military engagement. By May the Swedish and Transylvanian threat to Vienna had waned while Bavarian General Mercy had destroyed Turenne’s army at Mergensheim. The Emperor had fled from Prague to Vienna to Graz in the face of Torstensson’s advance and the Transylvanian threat. Following the renewal of the Austrian–Ottoman Treaty of Zsitvatorok, pressure was eased on the Hungarian border. Despite the Imperial recovery, the Emperor’s morale was badly shaken. War between Venice and the Ottomans did break out in June 1645 when the Turks invaded Crete and captured three of the main towns. Only Candia with its modern defences held out. It was just such an eventuality that had made Venice volunteer as mediator. Contarini at Westphalia had every incentive to help end the Thirty Years War as soon as possible so that Venice could try to divert Austrian attentions towards traditional concerns on the Balkan frontier with Turkey. Moreover, the turn of the Ottomans towards the west for the first time in a generation must have deeply shocked Vienna just at a nadir in their fortunes. The Emperor’s decision to concede Alsace to France was probably a direct result of the Allerheim defeat, as Croxton writes: ‘It does seem significant that it [the decision] should have been decided precisely at this moment, and in the context of a discussion of the actions to be taken after the battle.’92 However, the Emperor’s decision reflected the accumulation of defeats in 1644-45; having been forced to evacuate his person from both Prague and Vienna within months, he was losing heart. On the Swedish side, Salvius, the most experienced Swedish delegate, encouraged the French to pursue the war more vigorously against Bavaria to help put pressure on the Emperor, a sensitive matter for Mazarin because Bavaria was still sought after as an ally. This constant jockeying for optimum negotiating power, which continued right to the end of the proceedings, helped to drag them out as each party in turn waited for more favourable battlefield developments, which never seemed to be in sync with the negotiations at Münster and Osnabruck. The hardest part of the general agreement was the satisfaction

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War and Peace: Mazarin, France and Sweden Ascendant   439 of Swedish territorial demands, the Pomeranian question and monetary demands; the Swedes needed to pay off the army of occupation. A further bonus for France from the victory at Allerheim was the friendlier disposition of the Parlement, which, after some hard bargaining in a lit de justice on 7 September, approved some new edicts on taxation: they provided a temporary cash injection to lubricate the creaking French war effort. The return of Hesse’s victorious troops and the reduced threat from Imperialists led Amelia to launch further attacks on Hesse Darmstadt. This kicked off a civil war within a civil war and in particular the fight for the longdisputed Marburg patrimony. Turenne returned a favour to his relative. He entered the conflict in Amelia’s support. Marburg and its citadel were captured on 11 November and 26 January 1645. Amelia duly presented her negotiating demands at Osnabruck. These demands included a mix of territorial demands, notably Marburg, a demand for legal recognition and equality for the Calvinist faith, and constitutional demands including an amnesty and the rebalancing of the Imperial court system to give equal representation to Protestants: the hardest element of the peace negotiations. Amelia would secure most of her demands.

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Chapter XXII

Setting up the Conference 1643–1645

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he French delegation arriving in April 1643 found no one there so they returned to Paris. There followed six months of wrangling as to the protocols and procedures, but there was delay again due to the invasion by Sweden of Denmark, one of the ‘mediators’ of the Osnabruck conference. The Congress of Westphalia was officially opened on 11 July 1643 with great fanfare but serious negotiation on substantive issues only got going in 1645 after the Franco-Swedish first proposition on 4 December 1644. The Emperor wanted the Imperial electoral seat of Frankfurt as the location of the conference in order to maintain the charade that this was a Diet session under his auspices. Münster and Osnabruck were eventually chosen because they were located in a politically and religiously mixed area of north-west Germany, well away from the main battle fronts even if they were located in an area of lively local conflicts.

The delegations

At the conference, 109 states were represented directly, and there were 176 plenipotentiaries in total representing 194 states, plus 3,000 Imperial knights to be taken into consideration. There were also twenty-two lobby groups of various types, including, for example, the Hanseatic League. Münster alone suffered from an influx of up to 3,000 delegates and the city was so crowded that beds had to be shared. Rents were astronomical. Delegation sizes ranged from 400 plus for the French, plus attendants, to sole representatives. Food supplies often ran short, causing sharp spikes in food prices, especially when convoys were hijacked by ill-disciplined cavalry patrols or when Königsmarck’s army approached near to the de-militarised zone around the cities. The conference nearly had to move for these reasons alone, if not for the fact that most of the delegates detested the pumpernickel bread that was the local staple. Axel Oxenstierna, with a lifetime of human and emotional investment in the war and the experience of running it, wanted full value for the cost and efforts invested by his nation and himself, his personal ‘blood, toil, tears, and sweat’. The nation needed a ‘return on investment’; it was clear to the Emperor that ‘satisfaction’ was the main issue for the French and Germans but he misunderstood the extent to which their constitutional and political demands were necessary for their future alliance structure and balance of power needs. On 21 November 1640 Oxenstierna told the Council that the acquisition

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Setting up the Conference 1643–1645  441 of Pomerania was ‘not so important as gaining and retaining the Princes’ affection and restoring them to their former state’. On 16 April 1641 he told them, ‘Satisfactio we have insisted upon least of all. The main objectives were amnesty and the contentment of the soldiery.’ By 1645 Torstensson’s ‘brilliant victories’ had increased significantly the need for satisfaction. Underlying it all, ‘our main concern is security’ (letter 16 April 1641).1 That Sweden gained Western Pomerania and other properties, giving them four votes within the Imperial estate, was a severe blow to Habsburg prestige.2 The Dutch negotiated in a sideshow with Spanish ambassador delegate Count de Peñaranada whose accreditation France tried to prevent; they wanted to split the Spanish from the Imperialists. Despite French objections, the Spanish were there and both countries engaged in extensive diplomatic negotiation. Discussions followed, to the extent that through late 1645 to the end of 1646 it seemed as if Europe was on the cusp of peace. The Spanish also occupied their time by raiding the lodgings of the Portuguese delegates from their ‘rebel’ province, from where they stole the body of the recently deceased Portuguese representative.3 By contrast to the pomp and luxuriance of the French delegation, the Spanish by economic necessity had to keep a low profile. The Spanish team included Saavedra and the French-hating jurist from Franche-Comté, Antoine Brun, who were unified in their gloom. Peñaranda arrived in the spring of 1645 at a low point in Spanish morale. Soon after arriving he noted, ‘It is indispensable to make peace … we no longer have the means of making war.’4 Everything seemed to be on the table. The Spanish delegation’s mood was no better in November 1645 when Saavedra in desperation even exclaimed to his counterpart Servien, ‘For God’s sake, let’s make peace, we don’t deny that we need it but the affairs of the world are subject to such revolutions, that one should not press one’s luck.’ ‘By all means,’ Servien replied, ‘just accept our demands.’ Keeping ears to the ground on political developments in France, Spain’s government, like a gambler running down his chips, held out for a dramatic change in luck. The military situation for the Spaniards looked doomed. Gravelines, Artois and Rhineland fortresses were lost. Luxembourg was threatened by the loss of Thionville. In addition, Condé and Turenne overran the Mosel and Arras was captured. The way looked open for an advance into the heart of Flanders, or the capture of the vital port of Dunkirk. Spanish Flanders was being slowly garrotted, twist by twist, in an increasingly effective Franco-Dutch blockade by land and sea. No progress was being made in recapturing the rebel provinces of Catalonia and Portugal. Roussillon-Perpignan was lost and much of FrancheComté occupied. The situation in Italy was poor and their long-suffering ally Duke Charles had been evicted from Lorraine. Likewise beaten down, the Emperor did not mention specific defeats in his reasoning for making substantive offers in his instructions to count von Trauttmansdorff on 18 October 1645, but he referred to ‘the ever increasing growth of the enemy’s arms and forces and on the contrary, the ebbing of mine

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442  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 and my allies: the almost complete lack of resources’. The Emperor’s delegate and plenipotentiary, Count von Trauttmansdorff, arrived at the congress only in November 1645 when the military situation following the disasters of Jankov and Allerheim demanded it. It was typical Habsburg obstinacy, pride and footdragging; in Trauttmansdorff, a man dignified with four lines of titles in the Treaty, the Habsburgs had a wily and dignified advocate. Trauttmansdorff was supported by Dr Volmar to deal with legal matters; it was a strong team and, unlike the other delegations, they had a unity of purpose, heightened by the circumstances of military crisis and defeat facing the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs. Trauttmansdorff was given a full mandate to achieve at least the following conditions, which the Emperor had given him in writing; he insisted on his constitution role, ‘1. The estates of the empire are united as limbs, with me as the head and father to them’, (Emperor’s instructions to von Trauttmansdorff) but at the same time emphasised that any compromise on religion would not include his hereditary lands, his primary focus in the negotiations. The Emperor would agree to religious balance in the Aulic Court but only with the inclusion of Lutherans – a deliberate attempt to split the Protestant alliance. Trauttmansdorff should settle the Marburg issue in favour of Hesse Darmstadt, not Amelia’s Calvinist Hesse, to refuse general recognition to the Calvinist Church. In another major breakthrough, the Emperor was willing to concede an eighth electorate to solve the Palatine issue; an idea for peace originally proposed by James I at the start of the war. On the territorial question he was now happy to trade away the interests of others in the Empire to satisfy Sweden: ‘all of Pomerania could be conceded to them … something from the archdiocese of Bremen could also be added on to Stralsund, Wismar and Rostock’ (This was point ten in Emperor’s instructions to von Trauttmansdorff); they were not Habsburg hereditary possessions as such. Most importantly, in point 15, the Emperor made clear that he could be willing to split from Spain and sign a separate peace: something that had previously been anathema. ‘All our enemies designs, intentions, efforts, and work go toward separating the German and Spanish lines from each other … the count will … represent to them the danger, the impossibility of continuing the war, and the necessity for peace.’5 In other words, Austria was prepared to ditch Spain if necessary. It was the crucial moment of war and peace; the final acceptance of defeat. Habsburg Imperium in Europe would end. The unbreakable dynastic alliance was dead and with it, Habsburg dominion in Europe. On the Swedish side Salvius, the senior Swedish delegate, encouraged the French to pursue the war more vigorously to help put pressure on the Emperor; each party in turn waited on more favourable battlefield developments that never seemed to be in sync with the negotiations at Münster and Osnabruck. Unknown to the Franco-Swedish alliance they already had won.

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Setting up the Conference 1643–1645  443

Main issues at the conferences 1645

France and Sweden presented the second round of propositions on 11 June 1645. It was a closely co-ordinated diplomatic event, but it could not entirely hide the differences in primary interests and emphasis between the two states, which emerged most clearly over Hessian demands and questions of religion, where France was concerned not to alienate its Catholic German ‘client states’, nor the Papacy, nor her dévot faction at court. The most difficult problem to be resolved were the terms under which Sweden’s territorial claims or satisfaction would be recognised. In particular, the problem of Pomerania where Brandenburg had a strong and prior legal claim would occupy much time, as would the size of the monetary recompense for Sweden to enable it to demobilise its army; the Swedes claimed 20 million Reichsthaler for reparations but had been offered just 1.6 million. France’s claim to the Habsburg-controlled bishoprics of Verdun, Sedan and Metz on its eastern border would also be an important sticking point. However, the central and most difficult negotiating tussle would be over France’s claims to Alsace and the Breisgau (on the right bank of the Rhine including Freiburg). Additionally, the fortresses of Breisach and Phillipsburg would only be ceded with a struggle. In respect of Spanish territory, the possession of Roussillon, Artois and Franche-Comté were high on Paris’s list and Mazarin was scheming for a partition of Flanders. One of the toughest issues to negotiate, and Amelia’s foremost demand, would be the principle of Calvinist legal recognition: in 1638 she told her ministers, ‘we see clearly that the entire peace project rests almost entirely and solely on the point of religion’ and ‘the land incurred the most extreme ruin … in order to assure their freedom of thought and the free exercise of their traditional religion.’ The Landgravine Amelia would be subject to ferocious pressures from allies and enemies alike. ‘[I] am blamed for everything and charged that I do not wish to see a peace. Each week comes one warning after another,’6 she moaned. Written in 1638, this refrain was still relevant and true eight years later. Her demands were unflinching. The concession would be made; the two underpinnings of the Holy Roman Empire, the great Imperium, its dynastic unity under the Habsburgs and their guardianship of papal interests and Catholic purity in Germany and the European continent were finished. Through 1646 to 1648 there was some volatility in military development and the increasingly frosty Franco-Dutch relations held out some hope. Trauttmansdorff ’s political antennae had picked up the cadence of the developing diplomatic situation; writing to Archduke Leopold, he noted, ‘The French envoys put it about that he would keep the territory they occupied. Nevertheless, there was no need to be fearful if peace is finally concluded between Spain and the United Provinces, the French will give up, and the PaysBas are ready to sign this peace.’7 A separate peace and Habsburg split would be uncomfortable but there was a silver lining.

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Chapter XXIII

Peace and the End of Habsburg Supremacy in Europe

Germany 1646–1648

T

he war in Germany fizzled out over the final three campaign seasons. Turenne, Wrangel and Königsmarck ranged freely over the south German landscape, especially Bavaria which eventually submitted to France and exited the war. Maximilian tried to wriggle free from his truces and peace bargains, struggling to the last to retain the alliance with Vienna, but duplicitous once too often, he succumbed at last to the terrible onslaught of Turenne and Wrangel’s armies. After Melander was killed and his Imperial army cornered and trounced by Turenne and Wrangel at Zusmarshausen on 17 May 1648, Piccolomini scraped together an army which fended off Swedish forces seeking to avoid risk as the war closed and peace treaties were penned. In Spain, Condé was defeated in his attempt on Lerida at the Catalan border with Castille; it was the highwater mark there for France. Thereafter there was stalemate on this war front. Attention switched back to Flanders where French and Dutch armies would attack at will in Artois and Flanders against an increasingly limp Spanish response. Mazarin’s gambit to take Napoli was thwarted by popular revolution there which was led by an itinerant fishmonger.

The Dutch triumph

Dunkirk ‘was only a small town, but great in valour, the terror of Holland and the persecutor of the navies of all our other enemies; [Dunkirk’s] invincible boats, the ruin and destruction of the Dutch fleets, on the other hand, supply and enrich these provinces.’1 Possession of Dunkirk would be a major blow to Spanish interests and the loss of it would remove the last major point of leverage on the Republic. Aided by the Dutch fleet’s blockade, Condé captured it after an epic siege on 11 October 1646. With the Spanish position in Flanders crumbling, a settlement was made at Münster on 30 January 1648 by which Contrary to their treaty with France, the Dutch made a triumphant separate peace with Spain after eighty years of war and ditched their ally, France. It was a blow to France’s negotiating stance.

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446  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

Peace at last, October 1648

With Prague in Sweden’s grasp and another Spanish-Imperial army smashed by Condé at Lens on 20 August 1648 this might have been a good moment for the French and Swedes in their turn to press for better terms, but various diplomatic and internal events forced Mazarin’s hand. As the victory Te Deum rang out in Notre Dame, Mazarin with support from Condé decided to exploit the victory by arresting two leading parlementaire who were blocking new taxes to fund the army. A great mistake analogous to Charles I’s attempt to arrest the five members just before the outbreak of civil war. Following public outrage in Paris, the arrests had to be retracted, however the damage was done. In Paris an uprising was starting – the Fronde which would turn into a civil war. Madame de Motville noted that ‘The people were overwhelmed by taxes of all kinds; the kingdom was impoverished by long wars; everyone was discontented. The courtiers hated the minister [Mazarin]; all wanted a change, more from unruliness of mind than from reason.’2 As with Spain, France had reached breaking point. This was no time to finesse the negotiations any further. With all sides facing immediate and urgent pressures for peace, the Treaties of Münster and Osnabruck were signed as a consolidated document on 24 October 1648. An enormous run by the standards of the day, 42,000 copies, was printed to satisfy the demand from around Europe. The peace was met with universal relief and popular joy in the length and breadth of Germany and Europe, being marked by 180 festivals within the Empire and twenty outside it. Bells were rung, there were religious ceremonies and banquet feasting. However, Catholic celebrations for the Treaty already known as the ‘peace of exhaustion’ were muted; they knew they had lost. Pope Innocent X was aghast. For Mazarin, despite some disappointments, the treaty was a triumph. Having invested relatively little in the German campaign, which was mainly fought by proxy, using Germans and other foreigners, he had secured major concessions, political and territorial, and dramatically changed France’s geo-strategic profile. He had been lucky in his military subordinates and in the brilliance of his ally’s General Torstensson, not to mention the fateful cannon ball that removed General Franz von Mercy. For the people of Germany there was relief, celebration, memorial and valedictory sermons. The conflict in Germany got out of hand by repeated interventions of foreign powers determined to uphold their own strategic interests; Pastor Georg Dorsch, of Bad Peterstal, Black Forest, preaching on the occasion of the Peace of Westphalia noted lyrically that ‘They came marching, this day then that, one from sunrise the other from sunset, he from the south and they from north, and have wanted to contain and assuage the fire, but only increased its fury.’3 However, in the memoirs of Madame de Motville, Madame de Montpensier, de Campion, de BussyRabutin, de Retz and others, the Peace of Westphalia does not even rate a mention. France was pre-occupied by revolt and political manoeuvring at court

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Peace and the End of Habsburg Supremacy in Europe   449 as well as the continuing war with Spain. For France, Germany had already become a sideshow by the war’s end. The Peace of Westphalia left some very significant loose ends, not least the continuing war between France and Spain, the revolts in Catalonia and Portugal, and the unresolved position of Lorraine. The Dutch Republic’s global struggle with Portugal for dominance in trade would continue, so there was unfinished business on the global stage as well, in Brasil and Asia. Feisty Portugal would recover its African and Brasilian assets. Mazarin is a controversial and remarkable figure in history. Some see him as a warmonger who extended the conflict unnecessarily. Others, such as historian Paul Sonnino, regard him as a risk-taking bungler who lost the opportunity for peace with Spain. Croxton describes him as an astute statesman who secured a very good deal for France at Westphalia. A contemporary, Tauttmansdorff, himself a much respected diplomat, regarded him highly declaring that ‘Cardinal Mazarin … has done more against us and negotiates now with much more rigour than Cardinal Richelieu or any other French subject’.4 Mazarin’s change in war strategy with its focus on Germany hastened victory; he naturally bargained for more than Richelieu because he had the superb victories of Torstensson, Condé and Turenne behind him.

Bohemia betrayed

The great diaspora of Bohemian émigrés had so often come close to realising their dreams in the Thirty Years War. Protestant forces recaptured Prague in 1632 and again in 1648. But hopes melted away on both occasions. Wallenstein’s forces evicted the Saxon-Swedish army in 1632 and in 1648 Prague was only half taken. During the war Bohemian émigrés had volunteered in droves for service in Bohemian regiments under Swedish command. Under the mischievous genie and chancer of the Bohemian revolt, Count Thurn, Czech soldiers, who still numbered 30,000, saw service at major battles and sieges in Saxony and Silesia especially. Thurn, the original ‘defenestrator-in-chief ’, attended the congress in person; but he got nothing except an extension of the amnesty to Bohemia (Peace of Westphalia; Article LII IPO). Thurn had not only started the Bohemian revolt, he had in the end betrayed it: he was just a greedy aristocratic landowner, high on ambition, low on ability and political principles. He left in his wake a deeply disillusioned and embittered diaspora. The moral and intellectual champion of the Bohemian exiles, Comenius, wrote to Oxenstierna, ‘we are abandoned, you hold our liberty in your hands, and you are handing it over to our oppressors.’5 It was the outburst of an ingénue in international politics, wondering how the military occupation of Bohemia could have led to such a result. Czech identity only stirred again nearly 300 years later when the Czech Legion took over the Trans-Siberian Railway in the Russian civil war as the Habsburg Empire collapsed.

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450  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648

Last fighting

Karl Gustav had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Swedish army in 1648 in a power play by Queen Christina who wished to have her cousin and former beau succeed her on the throne, in furtherance of her leanings towards abdication. He launched assaults on Prague’s New Town just as the peace was being signed into effect, even continuing attacks for five days after news of the Peace arrived from Westphalia. However, the arrival of Piccolomini’s relieving army of 20,000 helped buy time even though it was repelled. The diversion stabilised the front in Prague in the nick of time. The shooting stopped. While in Prague, the Swedish army under close supervision of Queen Christina in Stockholm systematically looted the Hradčany Palace of its massive art and library collection, built up by Emperor Rudolf II, including hundreds of pictures, fifty of which she would later take into her Italian exile. The haul included Tintoretto’s ‘The Origin of the Milky Way’, and paintings by Dürer, Titian, Cranach and Brueghel. Greedy for culture, on her orders, 500 paintings, 370 scientific instruments, seventy bronze statues, thousands of jewels, medals, and curios, tableware and a lion were loaded onto barges for the long haul up the Elbe to the Baltic. But books were her passion. Anxious to acquire the treasures before the signing of the Treaty, in which amnesty and standstill clauses for the looting of chattel had been negotiated (IPM Article XLVII), Christina hurried her soldiers, ‘Do not forget to procure and send me the library and the rarities there in Prague. These, as you know, are all I really care about.’6 Apart from a religious text by Jan Hus, with Hus’s handwritten anti-German annotations in the margin, the most famous book amongst Rudolf ’s many treasures was the Codex Argenteus, the Silver Bible. The sixth century book, in which the four gospels were illuminated in gold and silver, was probably assembled for Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, just before Justinian’s reconquest in 535–554 AD. The medieval Codex Cigas (Devil’s Bible) was amongst the treasures and has in recent years been on loan from Sweden to Prague for an exhibition. Czech President Václav Havel tried in vain in recent years to have the treasures permanently returned. In the dying days of the war, this ‘grand larceny’ at the Hradčany palace was rushed through before the peace was signed. Christina chivvied her cousin Karl Gustav, ‘It is absolutely imperative that you get everything on the water as quickly as possible.’ 7 Signing of the Treaty was imminent. With just twenty-four hours to spare, the booty was loaded onto barges and shipped north. Ironically it was one of the last monstrous acts of the war, taking place in the very spot where it had all begun. The perpetrator of this cultural atrocity was a young bisexual Swedish woman, Protestant monarch, libertine and closet Catholic, who was supposedly the foremost advocate of peace, reason and the enlightenment. Starting in Prague and finishing in Prague, the Thirty Years War ended as it had begun, in utter cynicism, moral confusion, and realpolitik.

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Peace and the End of Habsburg Supremacy in Europe   451

End of the Habsburg Imperium

Though France’s fight with Spain would continue unabated, Habsburg Imperium in Europe was truly over. The idea itself of the Holy Roman Empire with Europe and the world as a united Christendom had become an anachronism. Its temporal power, the Habsburg alliance, had been split asunder. In politics and culture, the idea had also been overwhelmed by proto-nationalism, identity politics, by literacy, the printing revolution, secular achievement and state modernisation. It would never be reconstituted. Despite France’s straitened financial circumstances in 1648, and the resulting chaos of revolution and civil war (the Fronde) over the next few years, the reality was that a new power was emerging in Europe. The Fronde simply delayed the inevitable. Vienna had conceded considerable new powers and independence to its leading princes; the umbilical political link to Bavaria had been decisively cut. Bavaria moved decisively into the French camp. Sweden was well established with considerable territories inside the Empire with control of three of the four most important German rivers. The Habsburg Imperium had also lost the last vestiges of religious uniformity in the Holy Roman tradition; already impaired by the legalisation of Lutheranism at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the Calvinist ‘Reformed Church’ was, as a result of the Peace of Westphalia, then recognised in Imperial law. The revolutions in Catalonia, Portugal, Napoli, Palermo and Messina severely diminished the Imperium’s global pretensions. Portugal’s departure with its empire would be permanent, denoting the end of aspirations to a global kingdom. Spain’s collapse in a welter of revolution was related to Imperial overreach and consequent financial collapse. France had marginally won the war of attrition, though the date of the official victory was to be postponed until 1659. Territorial gains were not huge, but the shift in European power had begun even if it would not reach its apogee until Napoleon’s emergence. Sweden, the third element of the victorious triumvirate, had resisted the Counter-Reformation and now dominated the Baltic. A superior military power to France in 1648, they did not have the muscle to remain pre-eminent. However, the vulnerability of their bantam size would only be exposed some seventy years later when confronted by Peter the Great at the battle of Poltava in 1709. The reality was that Sweden had been used to establish French dominance in Europe just as Britain would use Prussia to create its global empire a century later. The introduction of absolutism in France and the failure to make sweeping political and economic reforms laid up a store of problems for France whose ramshackle feudal structure remained intact. The Fronde was an early warning of the tensions in French society which would erupt 130 years later in the French revolution. Vienna and the Habsburg Empire was clearly defeated, but they nevertheless emerged from the debacle stronger, more unified politically and socially. Unified under an oligarchic elite committed to the Austrian Habsburgs by

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452  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 vested interest, a nexus of cross-territory patrimony or family connections and a common commitment to the Counter-Reformation, the Habsburg patrimony was transformed between 1618 and 1648. Deft diplomacy at Westphalia saw them shelter behind their Imperial status to consolidate their hereditary lands while negotiating away the interests of the Empire, which were not central to their crucial existential and dynastic needs. An Austrian imperial state identity rose from the ashes, in the name of which the citizens of Prague fought the Swedes to a standstill in the streets of their city. As individual states, both Austria and Spain would make recoveries, as would the Empire as an effective multi-lateral political entity. Despite all the changes, the ultimate question of Europe would be asked again. Which polity would presume and attempt hegemony in Europe? Who will be next? Or is the European Union the end of history, the moment when a Federal Democratic Europe unifies the great continent under one sovereignty in perpetuity? It may be noted that periods qualified above as ‘brief ’ were exceptional. They were temporary dominant alliances formed to restore a European peace and power balance, by non-Western-European (or non-continental) powers following the overthrow of the would-be hegemon seeking to control Europe, notably the Habsburgs, Napoleonic France, Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany. The objective was not long-term domination and control per se, apart from the USSR’s attempt at domination in 1945–1950, which was successful in Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1980. On a global scale, the Treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza were now dead letters, quaint feudal reminders both of vainglory and ignorance. Habsburg universalist aspirations around the globe were undone in the first decade of the seventeenth century and their colonial assets were progressively degraded in the course of the war. South America remained Catholic, but was split between the antagonistic Spanish and Portuguese powers. North America was hardly developed, but France, the Dutch and the English were establishing a presence. The Caribbean Sea was no longer a Spanish lake. Trade had long been broken open by Dutch and English traders. Africa had been opened to several Protestant powers including the Dutch, English, and even the Duchy of Courland. Portugal’s Asian monopoly, never complete because Moslem traders had continued to operate through the Levant to Venice and Constantinople, was broken open to the Dutch, English and Danes. The Habsburg Imperium was dead. Even Bavaria, champion of the CounterReformation, had split with Vienna and their Habsburg cousins. Medieval Europe had, during the course of the Thirty Years War, transformed into a Europe that was recognisably modern in thinking and concepts of polity. Bedchamber finance and treasure chests, full of gold and silver dinner plate, were no longer the basis of state finance. In the course of the wars in the early seventeenth century, the nascent states of Europe had, to a greater or

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Peace and the End of Habsburg Supremacy in Europe   453 lesser extent, grown professional administrations and specialised expertise in finance, tax, law, diplomacy, logistics, industry and war. This was a Europe that we know and can easily understand: sovereignty, state, international law, international finance, religious toleration, national identity, firepower, absolutism and constitutional monarchy (in England, Scandinavia and Poland). Polities became more focused on trade, economics and warmaking. Dynasty was lessened as a factor in polity, as was religion. Trade was king and the kings of trade, Holland and England, were Protestant maritime nations. These things did not happen overnight; the tendrils of change reached far back into the early Renaissance and the invention of printing, which was a most significant force, swooped headlong on the wings of war, in the acceleration of change in the early seventeenth century. Nor was the transformation complete; vestiges of the medieval mind and habits took a long time to die out. The Empire’s strong sense of legitimacy continued; states still vied to become Electors and the legal system functioned. In the next century, even maverick Hesse would be elevated to Elector status. More than anyone, the Pope recognised exactly what had happened at Westphalia. The dream of an ordered world under the dual direction of emperor and Pope was utterly and finally crushed: its underpinning by the Habsburg dynasty in Madrid and Vienna had collapsed. The Counter-Reformation could no longer be carried forward at the point of a sword. A livid Pope Innocent X, whose status, world view and most particularly his religious property in Germany was much reduced, declared bitterly in a Papal bull on 26 November 1648, Zelius Domus Dei, that the Westphalian Treaties were ‘null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time’.8

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Chapter XXIV

Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity Europe and hegemony; the struggle to master Europe

S

ome powers or nations have sought hegemony in Europe; for others the idea grew gradually, piece by piece or they inherited it or stumbled across it. However they got there, there was always a determined unwillingness to give it up. Spain and the Emperor clung on to their status with grim determination; such was their ferocious pride that it would only be wrenched out of their grasp by the utmost efforts. The nature of the Empire is still a matter for debate: some, such as Euro-federalist historian Professor Brendan Simms, denigrate the Holy Roman Empire: ‘Will Europeans persist in regarding the EU as a modern day Holy Roman Empire, which enables them to coexist more easily than before but is incapable of effective collective action.’1 But for Professor Peter Wilson and others the modern consensus is that it was a successful model for decentralised government, which commanded great loyalty from its component parts and citizens despite the centrifugal pressures. The European Union itself has chosen a twin track of legitimacy, emphasising ‘common cultural heritage and geographic space’, the Carolingian roots and the legends of Charlemagne as the first Emperor and creator of ‘Europe’, as well as the legacy of the Roman Christian Europe; they appropriate the tradition and have added the mantra of ‘peace’ after two disastrous world wars. Approximately seventy years old, the EU tradition is still young in historiographical terms. Like the Roman Church or the Cao Dai, the EU even has its eleven ‘canonised’ and official founding fathers: they include, in the first rank, Schuman, Monnet, Spaak, Adenauer and Spinelli. Bizarrely and erroneously, obviously for political reasons, the list includes Winston Churchill. It is a carefully constructed story, the creation of a legend as deliberate in intention, i.e. the creation of legitimacy, as was the Habsburg-Papal nexus of shibboleths. Struggle for identity often involves violence when the competing views clash, as identity is often exploited as a metaphor or as a front for power; thus, the latent potential for war cannot be overlooked. When identity involves aspirations of ‘hegemony’ the potential for instability and violence increases still more. A.J.P. Taylor wrote in his history Struggle for the mastery of Europe 1848–1918 that ‘the struggle for mastery in Europe is the essential Hobbesian spring to political action in Europe’. Secondly Brendan Simms, Cambridge University and

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Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity   455 founder of a Munich based, German corporate-backed pro-European Federalist foundation, argues that Germany and Germany’s internal order has always been central to inter-European relations and the issue of domination. To avoid Germany’s tendency to domination, federalism had to be thoroughgoing and anchored in a democratic Europe. Admitting Germany’s current hegemony, Simms asserts that ‘Today, the question of whether Europe will go forward into a closer Union or will remain a confederation of states, will primarily be decided in and by Germany’.2 (Emphasis added.) Simms’s historical writings have been heavily criticised for historicism and political polemic by Richard Evans. The governing idea for European union is that Europe needs to be unified in the face of China, the USA and Russia, large enough to project power, protect its interests and uphold European values and identity. In Europe the identity is complicated by centuries of individual cultural identities and similar to the multi-layered power structure of ‘the Empire’. Simms quotes Hitler who noted in 1943 that ‘Whoever controls Europe will seize the leadership of the world … Europe can only be given a coherent structure through Germany’.3 He also proffers the rather sinister suggestion that the new state should have the monopoly on violence, i.e. military power. (Yet the acceptance in principle of a European army by France and Germany in 2018, an idea first mooted in 1950, could be seen as the first ‘salami slice’ in the realisation of that ambition). Simms, of course, like the German political elites, sees the ‘balance of power concept’ as the bane of European history, something others see as its saviour from megalomanic evil. Simms’s is a grandiose Euro-max vision framed as a sort of ‘Teutonic Mackinderism’. In a Guardian newspaper article Professor Richard Evans (who famously exposed the historian David Irving) wrote of Simms’s work, ‘A history of Europe characterised by constant Darwinian competition is right-wing and wrong-headed’.4 Simms, he argues convincingly, has a deterministic and historicist idea that Germany should run Europe. This is an idea that seems to approximate to ideas strongly promoted by the historicist xenophobes of nineteenth century including German historians, political scientists and philosophers who dominated intellectual life in Imperial Germany; Herder, Ranke, Fichte, Droysen, Weber and many others. However, Simms does touch on the central issues raised in the Thirty Years War. What is Europe? What is its shape, its identity and its destiny? Can the multi-layered European polity continue without disastrous stresses and strains, or does it need to centralise to survive? And who controls it? It is the story of European history since the Romans first threw a thin cloak of unity over the warring tribes in the European geographic space, a 500-year heritage in law and culture that was reinforced by Emperor Constantine’s tilt to Christianity that developed into a spiritual power based in Rome and the construction of the concept of the Holy Roman Empire with the Habsburgs as the temporal guardian. For Simms, unification under German tutelage solves the balance of power problem in Europe: in this he seems to agree with Hobbes, ‘the simplest solution

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456  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 as Hobbes held is that one power should subsume all the rest.’ [A.J.P. Taylor, Struggle for Mastery] In a sense the EU solution to peace is just that, the balance of power alternative A.J.P. Taylor summed up thus: No one state has ever been strong enough to eat up all the rest; and the mutual jealousy of the Great Powers has preserved even the small states, which could not have preserved themselves.5 The result has been a permanent tendency to war even though for half the time, A.J.P. Taylor argues that the balance of power helped keep the peace. Many have tried to become the European unifier, but all have failed due to the mechanics of the balance of power, a concept that is, for obvious reasons, much hated in Germany, and which the ‘European project’ is supposed to abolish. Europe is not always about hegemony. For fleeting moments in time it was about idealism. If the European project is now mired in self doubt, existential angst, in realpolitik, cynicism, lobby power of large corporations and money politics, the start of the European project was an optimistic message of hope. This theme was trumpeted by Jean Monnet, who along with Robert Schuman was the outstanding prophet of the European Union. In a speech by the great French technocrat Jean Monnet, President of the High Authority, at the opening session of the Common Assembly (Strasbourg, 11 September, 1952) he declared that: In these days when the first supranational institutions of Europe are being established, we are conscious of the beginning of the great European revolution of our time: the revolution which, on our Continent, aims at substituting unity in freedom and in diversity for tragic national rivalries, the revolution which tends to stop the decay of our civilization and to initiate a-new renaissance. (Emphasis added) It was a message of hope and modenisation which was to have huge resonance, almost a Christian revivalist and spiritual resonance, in the wreckage of postwar Europe. It was a fervour which paralleled in some senses the ideas of the Habsburg alliance and the counter-reformationary zeal of the emperor in particular. The problem comes in a multi layered and fractured polity when others do not share that zeal and have other aims; especially when a centralized polity, even if federated, is the ultimate aim. These ‘hard questions’ should be addressed by federalists…and perhaps they have? But not openly or democratically? As for internationalist christian democratic politics it has collapsed in France and Italy. Only the CDU remains in Germany but transformed into an essentially conservative and secular party. The other hard question which has come increasingly into focus as German ‘power restraint’ has been abandoned under Chancellor Merkel, is whether the idealist European Union is just a front for a new attempt at hegemony’, just as the Zollverein was a front for Prussian ambitions and the Counter Reformation

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Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity   457 a front for Habsburg ambitions? The answer would be ‘no’ in theory as Europe moves to ‘ever closer union’6 (Treaty of Rome Preamble 1957), however the lack of Franco-German intent and planning for the dissolution of their axis and the folding of their power into a sovereign European government raises questions as to the integrity of their motivations. And given that someone always wants to be top dog, how will the Franco-German axis develop? It might be denied by the hegemons or by those with vested interests, but Europe today, and since inception, is a Franco-German hegemony where any state in its geographic orbit is subject, whether members or not, to the rules of the EU, including paying tribute (‘contributions’); they include Norway, and Switzerland. The descent into two power hegemony in the EU was fixed in treaty in the unilateral by the bilateral Elysee treaty signed by Germany and France in 1963. It was reinforced later by their bilateral treaty at Achen in 2019. Essentially it established parallel bilateral decision and policy making mechanisms (a secret institution in fact) independent of EU insitutions. Not unlike the Emperor’s partnership deal with duke Maximilian of Bavaria on 8 October 1619, it was the official establishment of a hegemonistic structure within the EU (analgous to the Austrian-Bavarian partnership in the Empire) and while not always successful it has been effective in setting the agenda, driving EU integration and pushing the minnow countries into line – until recently. The deal has been oiled with German money. A much-vaunted and genuine Federal Union would obviate such blatant hegemonistic actions; but while the ideal of Union is held out as justification for the leadership role of the Franco-German Axis there are few signs of them genuinely trying to give up their privileged position of power and let go. Only a genuine federal government would end the fiction and provide some hope for unity, but that in itself might not be enough to prevent the centrifuagal forces of separatism. The essential weakness of the glue of legitimacy and the lack of homogeneity in culture, laws and language would continue to pull the Union apart. The comparison to the Habsburg Empire is stark; the Empire enjoyed considerable linguistic, racial and cultural unity and a deep-seated sense of legitimacy based on over 200 years of Habsburg rule under the Golden Bull constitution. But even then, it was difficult to hold together because of the religious schisms of the sixteenth century and selfish ambitions of its component polities. Historical experience necessarily poses difficult existential questions for the European Union as currently constituted especially as it aims for a centralised federal state which was only momentarily, partially and hesitatingly the aim of Emperor Ferdinand. Ferdinand’s confusion and his mistake was in thinking that he could unleash counter-reformation, in the shape of the Edict of Restitution, without devastating political consequences. He was not exceptional in believing the medieval mantra that cohesive and stable polities required a common religion.

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458  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 The current intended European system, based on Weber-ian post-Rankean concepts, is not so different from communist China’s treatment of peripheral states – Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Philippines, Vietnam etc. As we know too well, Russia seeks the same dominance in its sphere; the USA likewise. Weber’s ‘machstaat’ requires compliant minnows. If China’s neighbours do not obey, they are punished, in Myanmar’s case by the unleashing of tribal rebel groups on Myanmar’s long Chinese border and in the case of the Philippines and Vietnam by naked military aggression on the Scarborough shoals and Paracel Islands respectively. Likewise, recalcitrant members of the EU, or non member neighbours such as Switzerland or Norway, are browbeaten by threats and they pay what is in effect ‘tribute’ for the ability to trade with the EU. Since the 2016 referendum the UK is being disciplined to understand the new EU rules of the game as an EU rule taker in the EU’s sphere of influence. The price of freedom, it seems, should have been economic vassaldom and taxation without representation until that idea was thrown out by the British electorate and the removal of Prime Minister May. The ultimate political horror is of course Putin’s use of cruel military force to terrorise Ukraine into satrapy and compliance. Spheres of influence and balance of power in Germany were established in favour of Sweden and France by the Treaty of Westphalia; the malign result was that France in particular would regard intervention and invasion of Germany as a right for the next two hundred years. The FrancoSwedish pax replaced Habsburg hegemony in Germany which Ferdinand II had been in process of strengthening by military action. It is worth considering whether the obliteration of Magdeburg, something welcomed by many in Imperialist circles has comparative resonance with the tragedy of Mariupol. The Thirty Years War era is still a live question amongst the intelligentsia and polemicists of the current European debate rather than the Peace of Westphalia, which ended it, is a reference point for all discussions on systems of international relations, and international law. Most importantly, interpretations of the war’s meaning play into Europe’s introspective tussle over self-identity. Following on from the war’s historiographical exploitation by nineteenth/twentieth-century nationalists, the Kaiser, the Nazis and Hitler, the story of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia has now re-emerged as a propaganda tool for the post-war generation of European federal ‘idealists’. On 12 May 2000 Joschka Fisher, German Foreign Minister, and Green party leader, speaking at the Humboldt University in Berlin, said The core concept of Europe after 1945 was and still is the rejection of the European balance of power principle and the hegemonic ambitions of individual states that had emerged following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a rejection which took the form of closer meshing of vital interests and the transfer of nation state sovereign rights to supranational European institutions… (Emphasis added)

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Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity   459 Taking off his official foreign minister that he insisted on: The transition from a union of states to full parliamentarization as a European Federation, something Robert Schuman demanded 50 years ago. And that means nothing less than a European Parliament and a European government … However, not everyone has rejected the idea of the primacy of nation states in Europe, including the two hegemons France and Germany, and even if they did there is still no clear idea of where ultimate sovereignty lies between the two tiers of European governance; and balance of power games are still played with the EU. Similar problems affected the Empire; unclear sovereignty and a multi-layered political structure is ripe for conflict over powers, although it does provide flexibility as it did in the Habsburg Empire. Even if there is a central legal structure there is the question of enforcement especially if the proto state does not have the monopoly of violence. The Holy Roman Empire in the seventeenth century did not enjoy a monopoly of violence, except notionally in respect of fighting the Ottomans; as a polity it demonstrated that multiple identities are possible and that a political structure can handle competition and strife for an indefinite period. However, the history of the Empire is also one of war, including one of the widest and bloodiest in European history, the Thirty Years War. Some see benefits in the competing nation states of Europe. As Nial Ferguson points out in Civilisation, Europe became dominant in the world because, in straining for competitive advantage against each other, they developed culturally and technologically ahead of other civilisations. He writes, ‘This multi-level competition, between states and within states – even within cities – helps to explain the rapid spread and advancing technology of the mechanical clock … and as with military technology, competition bred progress.’ 7 Attachment to historical hocus-pocus as to European history was illustrated in a Financial Times opinion article by the German correspondent, who claimed that after Westphalia, the Holy Roman Empire continued as an empty shell until it was formally dissolved some 150 years later. The Thirty Years War brought about the fragmentation of continental Europe, followed by 300 years of utter carnage … . The Thirty Years War shows that we Europeans have been delaying making the necessary hard decisions for a long time.8 (Emphasis added) In fact, after the Peace of Westphalia the Holy Roman Empire functioned well until Napoleon destroyed it with hegemonistic megalomania, something that for many Europeans finds an echo in President Macron’s antics. Munchau means ‘hard decisions’ about identity and power; the need for centralised federalism. There is no questioning of the role played by hegemony in causing

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460  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 the Thirty Years war. Was the Holy Roman Empire a success in decentralised multi-layered and multi-cultural government as claimed by some historians? The answer depends on the time perspective. When asked whether the French Revolution was a success, Chou En Lai answered, ‘It is too early to tell.’ Munchau’s idea is the common German view, similar to Chancellor Merkel’s; as with others of the German elite and in the tradition of German political leaders of the nineteenth/twentieth century, she harks back to the Thirty Years War, always a good proxy for discussing other more painful and recent subjects. Indeed Europe has become an increasingly risky place. At a secret CDU Parliamentary meeting on 17 April 2018, the Chancellor ruminated pessimistically about the future, using analogies with Germany’s troubled past, about the bloody confessional wars that followed the Reformation and only came to an end with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. At the time, Merkel said, people had the false belief that the period of strife and violence was behind them. ‘But then the generation that had experienced all the misery before religious peace died,’ Merkel said. ‘They were gone. A new generation came that said: “We don’t want to make so many compromises. This is all too difficult for us.” What followed was the catastrophe of the Thirty Years War, which broke out in 1618.’9 For her, Europe needs to show ‘solidarity’ and not move to the extremes, such as the dogmatism of the Catholics or the Calvinists before the Thirty Years War. Merkel is the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. She did not, of course, raise any analogies or questions as to the danger or threat of Habsburg hegemony or refer to the dangers of current German ‘dominance’. But this is not a question German leaders inquire of because they have no doubt that what is good for Germany is good for Europe; ‘solidarity’ means supporting Germany; It is her favourite word. She declared in her farewell speech on 1 December 2021 that democracy depends on ‘solidarity and trust, including the trust in facts.’ so when Germany unilateraly invited about one million migrants in 2016 to tramp across fellow members, territories and not liking the result when they all tipped into Germany, Merkel demanded ‘solidarity’ by using the EU bureaucracy to impose quotas on neighbouring ‘minnow’ countries who disagreed and had never been consulted. From an east European view point it looked like bullying hegemonic behaviour. Following the normal dynamic of balance of power politics, the East Europeans energised their Visegrad Grouping which has been increasingly at odds with German and the EU bureaucracy over immigration and many other policies. With similar dynamics, Protestant polities had set up the Protestant Union in 1608; a precursor to the Thirty Years War. The Nordic block and the Dutch have also increasingly been aligning against hegeomic tendencies in the EU with calls for limiting the ‘ever closer union’. The EU multi-layered polity has failed to annul balance of power politics or hegemony, which was one of the much-vaunted benefits of the ‘project’.

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Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity   461 The historiography of the early modern epoch and the myths of unified Christendom lie at the centre of today’s political debate in Europe. The history of post-war Christian democracy is not untouched by this idealised idea of Europe, hence the strong resistance to allowing Turkish EU accession (another throwback to seventeenth-century thinking). The idea of a centralised Europe, unified by tradition, law and culture in the name of peace, seems a reasonable proposition. However, others suggest that the EU’s effort to assert European identity in a welter of historical polemic is just another front for an attempt at European hegemony, this time with the Franco-German axis as its protagonist. In ways similar to the pre-Civil War stresses between the states in 1860s America or Federal Yugoslavia after Tito, issues and strains at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire were symptomatic of permanent competition and struggle in multi-layered sovereignty. History is replete with the story of multi-layered polities assembled and disassembled by violence or civil strife. It is the continuing conundrum facing the European Union if it were to become a genuine centralised Federal state, where sovereignty and power has irrevocably shifted to the centre. Even under the threat of a common European army, where neither secession nor exercise of Article 50 would be allowed, would such a federal state, even a democratic one, stop balance of power plays, stresses over resource allocation, internal attempts at hegemony (e.g. the Franco-German axis) or threats of secession? Why would political dynamics be any different to those experienced in the ‘United States’ in the 1850s and 1860s. States do not like secession. The loss of patrimony threatens both national pride and vested interests as well as posing the risk of more secession and turbulence. So, the Spanish Habsburgs were determined to crush the Dutch, and both they and the Ausrian Habsburgs felt an existential need to crush Bohemian secession at all costs as well as those German Paladins who would support them. Olivares’s Spain attempted unsuccessfully to crush Catalonian and Portuguese secession: ‘democratic’ Spain with the support of the EU crushed another bid for Catalan independence in 2017. It is not unusual, there are many examples; in more recent history, the USA, armed with only contentious legal rights, stopped secession of the south in a bloody civil war costing 500,000 lives, Nigeria crushed Biafran rebellion, Serbia failed to crush Slovenian and Croatian secession. Buddhist Burma’s military tries to crush 30 separate rebellions and secessionist movements, many of them Christian. Muslim Indonesia crushed Christian, South Moluccan secessionism but failed to defeat Christian, East Timor’s rebellion. Putin’s Russia, still smarting from the break up of the USSR, has launched a succession of cruel wars to re-establish its primacy. It is really about Russian racism; Yugoslav communist leader Milovan Diljas in post war negotiations with Stalin noted that the great dictator always referenced his country as Russia not the USSR. The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) which was a construct derived from ideological work produced in 1913 under Stalin’s name but heavily edited by Lenin, was always a front for

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462  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Russian national ambitions. A question could be posed, is the EU a front for power ambitions of France and Germany, just as the Holy Roman Empire and the Counter-Reformation might be characterised as a front for the power ambitions of the Habsburgs? China supresses theocratic Tibet and Muslim Uighers. The only three states in the world to have contemplated a peaceful break up are Czechoslovakia and the UK, the former separating in 1993 and the latter holding a binding referendum on Scottish independence in 2014 (which was defeated). The Malay states permitted Singapore to become independent in 1965. Yugoslavia broke up untidily after a failed attempt of the Serbian military to hold it together. Given the militancy of the EU to Brexit, there can be little doubt that the goal of the European federalists would eventually be for an irreversible Union, along the lines favoured by President Lincoln. The question for the EU is whether this is also a front for nationalist ambitions of France and Germany? All this poses difficult questions for the European Union and the future identity of Europe. The big unanswered question is: what Europe would do if it has developed a European army and developed further elements of sovereignty. At what point does a European Lincoln emerge who will say ‘No!’ and enforce union via its monopoly of violence. It is the undiscussed ‘elephant’ in the European geographic space. Given the anger, bitterness and virulence of the reaction to Brexit of the Brussels and hegemonic elite, who could doubt that violence might in the distant future be used in similar situations if practicable? Vitriolic in language, EU actions have been designed to punish, teach a lesson, or subjugate to vassaldom, have been revealing of the fraught psychology of Brussels eurocrats and the Axis power interests in the background. Former Greek finance minister’s Yani Varoufakis’s insights on the mechanics of EU power in the Greek debt crisis are very revealing.10 Can there ever be a sovereign and federal Europe until it is tested by violent conflict? Are multicultural and diversified states not always forged in blood? Do we think that such momentous political constructions can be made just by economic power and sleight of hand or will it involve enforcement by use of the sovereign monopoly of violence? That was the method by which Spain dealt with Catalan and Basque secession and France with Corsica. But perhaps the EU will be an exception. There are two recent examples of a successful state fusion by peaceful means, both involving federal systems. After the First World War, Yugoslavia was brought together by a pan Slav grouping of intellectuals in combination with the Serb kingdom who ended up on the victors’ side having been overrun early in the war. Similarly originated by an intellectual elite, Czechoslovakia, which incorporated both Slovakia and Ruthenia was also constructed out of the wreckage of the Habsburg Empire following the World War. Rumania suffered a similar dismemberment of its Moldovan and Bessarabian provinces but recovered Transylvania which, with Nazi compliance, had been snagged by Admiral Horthy’s revanchist Hungary during the Second World War. The

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Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity   463 Treaty of Trianon of 4 June 1920, following on from the Versailles Treaty confirmed these political constructs. However, the first two of these states have since split asunder, one with violence, the other by agreement. Similar and highly complex assimilations and secessions have affected the Dobruja, the Voyvodina, Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia and the Banat regions of the Balkans. As to the role of the Franco-German axis, is it not reasonable for ‘machstaats’ to exercise their power on behalf of others for the ultimate benefit of all? Was not modern Germany created by Prussia and Italy by the House of Savoy? Surely great projects and historical destiny need a helping hand sometimes? It is a plausible argument for those on the federalist side of the European project, just as it was plausible for President Lincoln to enforce the Union with violence, concentration camps in Missouri, scorched earth invasion and suspension of habeas corpus, in the face of the democratic wishes of 13 separatist states. Lincoln is lauded. It all turned out well in the end? If Putin succeeds in reconstituting Imperial Russia will he be lauded and reinstated by history? It all raises questions as to the morality, legality and limits of the uses of power by large polities in respect of their neighbours or recalcitrant minorities; the same issues rose in the Thirty Years War both within and without the Holy Roman Empire, where these issues within a multi-layered polity were especially sharp. The ultimate problem is that constitutions and political structures build up vested material interests and emotional interests; pride. Yet human beings develop and the dynamic of history can outrun and challenge static political structures. It is a challenge for any polity but especially a challenge for multilayered and multi-cultural political entities. The Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Imperium was rent asunder by the dynamics of religion, new political ideas, identity politics and economic development which its constitution could no longer reconcile. The Empire was prevented from unification under Habsburg control in the seventeenth century by the ‘balance-of-power’ machinations of France and Sweden. Like the Roman Empire which preceded it, the Holy Roman Empire’s achievement was in lasting for so long, which was both the result of flexible constitutional arrangements but with the disadvantages of indecision and ossification; but its longevity was not cost free, nor was it without help, because in the end the key surrounding powers at Westphalia decided to support it as a fractured but loosely unified entity. Nonetheless, the post-Westphalian example demonstrates that a multi layered sovereignty can work well and is capable of building up a great store of constitution legitimacy and allegiance of the membersip despite occasional fraught and fractious infighting. Sixty-five years on from the Treaty of Rome, the EU has clearly established significant elements of ‘political legitimacy’ with most European citizens having clear majorities in favour of membership. Even in sceptical countries such as Poland and Hungary such legitimacy can be enhanced by external threats; in the sixteenth and seventeenth century that

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464  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 was the Ottomans; for the EU Islam has also posed a threat but the USSR and now Russia have been helpful binding agents. Essentially, the Holy Roman Empire model came to be more confederal than federal; Ferdinand II’s political decisions over religion and religious property reversion alongside a counterreformation agenda threatened ‘kingly-state absolutism’. It was against this threat, real and perceived, that Protestant Germany, including constitutional loyalists, had rebelled. The question posed for the EU is whether the ‘salami slice’ progress towards a single and centralised federal sovereignty will tip some recalcitrant members into rebellion especially if the ‘glue’ of German money evaporates. An important difference with the Habsburg system to the EU was the essential binding of common German language, culture and ethnology. This begs the question as to how the much greater problems posed by a polity which is both multi layered, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic can be managed? However fractured and parochial in practice, there was nonetheless a German consciousness which was more or less advanced in the various parts of the Empire but it was essentially a Protestant construct from the dominant religious culture; in the previous century Lutheranism had indeed been propelled by an element of xenophobia as well as the vernacular rendition of the bible. Going beyond loose confederacy to a federal model will be difficult and the signs of rebellion against federalist Franco-German axis are indeed appearing even if that is not translated into a desire to exit. The parallels to moderate Protestant states in the Thirty Years War are clear; they rebelled against autocratic behaviour but not against the concept and constitutional structures of the Holy Roman Empire as such. If Scotland leaves the UK it will be by agreement and democratic process. However we should recognise that such a process is the exception not the rule and contrary to the mainstream of European states’ culture. Statist Europe’s default response to secession is violence by use of police and military power; no different in fact to the reaction of Ferdinand II to the secession of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia in 1619. The standard German view of the Thirty Years War is of a civil war in a divided Europe in which Germany suffered special degradation and social catastrophe. Having consolidated itself, the quest for Germany’s special selfappointed destiny as Europe’s consolidator continues; Max Weber, Germany’s most influential political scientist and economist of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century opined on the need for Germany to be a machstaat surrounded by minor powers which it dominated. But after two world wars, German ambitions and nationalism have changed just as Weber’s xenophobic outlook changed when facing defeat in the First World War. As Isaiah Berlin notes in his essay on German nationalism, the EU is a ‘new direction and ‘a new centre for self-identification’ after the traumatising calamities of the twentieth century. Words such as Gemeinheit and solidarität are used to pressure those who challenge German views on policy and European identity while France now

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Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity   465 accuses recalcitrant smaller countries of ‘behaving like Britain’. As if they were the owners of the cherry tree, the Franco-German axis accuses others of ‘cherry picking’. The interesting point is the still current power struggle, including control over the narrative of European identity and dominion, where the recent Brexit vote is perceived and painted by many as just another bitter chapter in a story of divisive and overblown nationalism; as if France and Germany did not have nationalist ambitions? Substituting ‘Holy Roman Empire’ for the ‘EU’, historian Timothy Garton Ash’s words might have emanated from an Erasmus or von Chemnitz. ‘Most Europeans now have little idea where we’re coming from; far less do we share a vision of where we want to go to. We don’t know why we have an EU or what it’s good for.’ The question to be posed is whether there will be or can be an overarching central sovereignty in Europe. Can Europe continue as a fractious multi-layered sovereignty? Does it need a final destination in federated centralism? Or will it settle on a loose and fairly minimalist confederation like the Holy Roman Empire in its heyday? Could it be that, as Timothy Garton Ash suggests, European idealism has the answer, ‘The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities’. Ash, for whom the ‘Union Jack leaves me cold’, was awarded the Charlemagne Prize in 2017 after the Brexit vote. However, while multiple identities may appeal to mobile transnational elites who are doing well out of the system, will it be so appealing to those local subjects who are lower down the pecking order and do not feel that the sytem is looking after them? What we do know from history so far is that true sovereignty or dominion in a ‘sovereign’ Europe requires force of arms, a monopoly of violence and a single currency. A multi-layered and unresolved polity must forever be a polity of backroom and unsatisfactory compromises – not necessarily a bad thing at all, because of its flexibility, but potentially unstable. Mutual miscalculations and a failed backroom deal cobbled together by Merkel and Cameron led to Brexit and what is becoming a long running sore in the European geopolitical space. A new federal democratic Europe with a dominant sovereignty might settle this great and long-lasting question but the risks of serious political discord remain both on the journey and afterwards. In 1618 the Holy Roman Empire structure was a ticking political bomb because of a lack of clarity on the issue of ‘sovereignty’, as was the pre-1860 USA. The Habsburgs set about causing the explosion because they believed they could exploit the Defenestration of Prague for the re-establishment of their traditional status and hegemony in Europe. Starting a war is usually easier than finishing it and, as ever, the outcome is rarely predictable, especially because the secondary calculations regarding interventions are very difficult to compute. Olivarez and Ferdinand aimed to transform the Empire into a more effective political force; whether Ferdinand intended to create an absolutist state is not clear but ‘threat’ of absolutism was certainly felt by Protestant polities; his military

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466  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 victories led to policies and actions in respect of the Edict of Restitution and forced ‘contributions’ for his military that tended in the direction of absolutism. Military success develops its own expanding dynamic; limited objectives expand with mission creep and greed. But the story was mixed; Ferdinand set up a separate chancery for the hereditary lands which were run on absolutist lines but he was reactive to constitutional pressure from non-hereditary states in the Diet of 1628 at the height of his military success. For notable political scientists, the Thirty Years War represents a huge religious or ideological struggle in which the question of democracy, freedom and class struggle against Habsburg absolutist oppression were fought out. Some like Polisensky see a Marxist class struggle. Writing of the époque, Anthony Pagden notes that, It was the first time that peoples of Europe had confronted one another not over dynastic claims to rights of succession but over differences in belief. From the war of the Schmalkalden [alliance of Protestants v Emperor Charles V] in 1546–47 until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which finally brought to an end the Thirty Years War, one or another region of Europe was convulsed by the most bloody and ferocious civil and ideological struggle in its history before the outbreak of the Second World War.11 In contrast, for Henry Kissinger the Thirty Years War ushered in the age of Machiavellian realism in interstate relations, as espoused by his hero Cardinal Richelieu: ‘Following the Peace of Westphalia … the doctrine of raison d’état grew into the guiding principle of European diplomacy.’12 Important here is the emphasis on ‘state’ which was a new concept only just coming of age in the early seventeenth century, something detached from dynasty and private feudal interests. A study of the ending of Habsburg dominion in Europe is informative as to the central problems of Europe’s history and destiny. Whether controlled by a hegemon or an axis, or remaining as nation states or continuing to develop into a multi-layered or multi-identity/sovereign polities, the future is likely to be as changeable and contentious as always; currently the EU is held together by a determined Franco-German axis plus German money; in the first half of the seventeenth century it was an alliance (or axis) of the Habsburgs plus Bavaria to restore Habsburg power in Germany and Europe in tandem with the Counter-Reformation. Today, important elements of the French and German elites have no intention whatsoever of giving up ultimate sovereignty, let alone the French their ‘force de frappe’ or UN seat, or the Germans their control of their own fiscal budget – despite the recent European bond issue. The EU may not produce a final solution, or a genuine single federal sovereignty and may continue to be a front for hegemonic sovereign state ambitions; this will suit neither genuine federalists nor those smaller states who lack a voice, feel

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Postscript: The Struggle for the Mastery of Europe and European Identity   467 exploited or overridden, or resent the way (in their perception) in which the club of twenty-seven is mainly run for the benefit of two. Many EU subjects resent unequal application of rules; France does not follow euro budgetary-cohesion rules ‘because’, as EU Commission President Junker put it, ‘it is France!’13 Robert Schuman, French foreign minister and architect of the European project proclaimed on 16 May 1949: we are carrying out a great experiment, the fulfilment of the same recurrent dream that for ten centuries has revisited the peoples of Europe: … eternal peace … . The Roman church of the Middle Ages failed finally in its attempts that were inspired by humane and human preoccupations. Another idea, that of a world empire constituted under the auspices of German emperors, was less disinterested. (Emphasis added) Schuman’s historical depiction of the Roman Church is somewhat nostalgic and ridiculously inaccurate. Unfortunately his ‘idealism’ and historicist appropriation was replaced by realpolitik when General de Gaulle made the critical decision, having initially set France on the path to the revanchiste Indo-China war in 1946, to redefine France’s world role within a Franco-German alliance rather than by imperialism in Algeria. France was set on becoming the dominant force in the EEC when he turned decisively away from his post-war imperial vision towards his vision of a neutralist Europe, standing between the USA and USSR, which excluded the despised ‘Anglo-Saxons’. Schuman’s vision was meant to have been established ‘without any hidden motives of hegemony or the selfish exploitation of others’ but de Gaulle decisively subverted that idealistic vision. The formation of the Franco-German axis and caucus through the Élysée and Aachen Treaties 1963 and 2019, with formalised structures at the back of the EU project, was seen as necessary to progress and has indeed been effective. But it could also be the fatal flaw in the ‘project’ as it was for the Habsburg-Bavarian alliance in respect of Ferdinand II’s vision for the Holy Roman Empire. Schuman and Monet’s ‘experiment’ has gone a long way, but even today it is referred to by federalist adherents as the ‘European project’. The problem is that some of the ‘guinea pigs’ might one day wake up from the German-cashinduced anaesthetic under which they have slumbered. On Germany’s part the bargain was about securing export markets to replace those lost in Eastern Europe; hegemonic ambitions have until recently been hidden, but Chancellor Merkel’s hectoring and lecturing style has revealed a more assertive Germany sitting alongside an assertive idealism which has been reinforced by increased power in the European bureaucracy through powerful officials federalist officials such as former Secretary General Martin Selmayr and van der Leyen, both German nationals with hands on the operational levers of power in the EU. Their federalist agenda is as politicised as was the Prussian bureaucracy’s determination to unite Germany. The conundrum is that the EU only seems to work because of Franco-German hegemony allied

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468  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 to the bureaucratic machine, which means that the EU in tandem with the integrational bias of the European Court is developing some of the same resentments and failings that festered under the Habsburg Imperium. The goal of European Union is a plausible and valid goal and the costs may be worthwhile; it may develop the longevity of the Holy Roman Empire but the vital questions and problems are not being faced or raised in an open democratic debate but forced through by bureaucratic and hegomonistic sleight of hand. The reaction is probably upon us. When fundamental laws and the locus of sovereignty are questioned, when the strictures and punishments offered by the EU are applied inconsistently there are real dangers for the future of the ever-closer Union. When Poland is singled out and threatened with heavy punishment for declaring legal sovereignty where Germany and other EU states do not receive sanctions or the threat of them for the same thing, then the mask starts slipping from the actual power mechanics of the ‘European ideal’. The effect of the Ukrainian war has been to throw back Europe into the arms of the USA and NATO security umbrella; like the Ottomans, Putin has galvanised Europe into unified action. However substantial German rearmament will raise its own issues and looking ahead the idea of the European army is likely to be reinforced with the backing of the EU and the Franco-German axis. This may in time pose problems for European identity: a security umbrella that seems to work in contrast to the tokens offered by politically equivocal and militarily weak Germany and France in the face of Russian aggression. This will cause a new polarity as some countries follow the dream of a German -French based European military superpower while others hark after the more reliable transatlantic security and identity. While there are very good reasons to be part of the EU the inherent instability in a multi-layered sovereignty construct means that the idea of leaving it is much less risky than commonly supposed, (even discounting trade threats and vengeful actions), in comparison to the risks of staying, including the self-interested or mistaken actions of Merkel’s Germany in respect of Russian energy supplies, as well immigration, security, Brexit and diplomatic policies. If the glue of German money disappears as eventually it will, what then for the future of the European geographic space? Should she and President Macron be compared to the hapless, arrogant and bungling Emperor Ferdinand II? The glue of culture and habit might, like the habit of legitimacy and tradition in the Holy Roman Empire, provide enough ‘solidarity’ to maintain the EU structure but it might not, especially in a multicultural Europe and in the face of extreme economic problems and selfish hegemonic behaviour? This study and comparison of the problems of the Holy Roman Empire does not seek an agenda or a point of view but rather it raises the eternal questions of Europe’s ‘identity’ and ‘political structure’ because History is not dead. The struggle for European identity and unity continues; the outcome is unclear; ‘the game is afoot’14 and there is all to play for because there is no final solution.

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Notes Introduction   1. Trantje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, A documentary History, 2009, Martinitz p.16   2. Ibid Martinitz p.16   3.  Ibid Martinez p.17   4. Gerhard Beneke, Germany in the Thirty Years War (documents), Arnold,1978, p.12   5. Trantje Helfferich, A documentary history, Hackett, 2009, p.18   6. Peter Wilson, sourcebook, Palgrave Mcmillan 2010, p.35   7. Trantje Helfferich, A documentary History, Hackett, 2009, p.19    8. Ibid p.29, an apology of the bohemian estates, 29th May 1618   9. H.G.Koenigsberger, The Habsburgs and Europe 1516–1660, Cornell 1971, p.2   10. Dennis Flynn, Arturo Gildarez, Born with a Silver Spoon: The Origin of World Trade in 1571, Journal of World History, University of Hawaii Press 1995  11.  A lessandro Barbero, Charlemagne, Laterza and Gigli 2000, Folio ed 2004, p.86  12.  Hugh Thomas, World without End, the Global Empire of Philip II, Penguin 2015, p.208   13. Sixty mines still operate on the Cerro Rico Mountain, half of them primitive and very dangerous cooperatives employing 11 year olds, the other half owned by multinationals. The percentage of silver is now only 1–2% of the extracted ore.  14. Hugh Thomas, World without End, the Global Empire of Philip II, Penguin 2015, p.410  15. H.G.Koenigsberger, The Habsburgs and Europe 1516–1660, Cornell 1971, p.10   16. Marie Noelle Faure, La Guerre de Trente Ans, Ellipses 2019, p.230  17.  Geoffrey Parker, Emperor Charles V, Yale 2019. p.106   18. Marie Noelle Faure, op.cit. p.230   19. Martin van Gelden ed Howell Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, Simon Hodson, J.H.M. Salmon, European Political Thought 1450–1700, Yale 2007 p.384–385  20. Ibid p.385.  21. J.H. Elliott Spain and its World 1500–1700, Yale 1989 Chapter I: Habsburg Imperium and the challenges   1. Peter Borschberg, Singapore and the Malacca Straits; violence security and diplomacy in the seventeenth century, NUS, p.65   2. Ibid p.32.   3.  J.H. Elliott, Olivares, Yale, 1986, p.6   4. Ibid, p.64   5. Gabor, Agoston, Ottoman Warfare in Europe 1453–1826, p.135    6. Robert Von Friedbburg and Michael Seidler, ed Howell Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, Simon Hodson, J.H.M. Salmon, op.cit. p.117   7.  Josef Polisensky, The Thirty Years War, Batsford 1970

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470  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648    8. Erasmus, querela Pacis, 1516. Robert Von Friedbburg and Michael Seidler, ed Howell Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, Simon Hodson, J.H.M. Salmon, op.cit. p.381   9. Jean Calvin, Treatise on relics, 1543  10.  Ibid  11.  Ibid  12. NRNN  13. NRNN  14. Caspar Hirschi, The Origins of Nationalism, Cambridge 2012, p.203.  15.  NRNN   16. Hilde de Weerdt, Catherine Holmes, John Watts, ‘Politics c1000–1500: mediation and communication’, Past and Present vol 238, Chapter 1 para 5, 4 December 2018  17.  David Bell, Recent works on Early modern French national identity, Yale   18. Ed Howell Lloyd, Glenn Burgess & Simon Hodson, European Political Thought 1450–1700, Diego Quaglioni and Vittor Ivo Comparato, Chapter 3 Italy, p.79, p.58–101.  19.  Sarpi, Trattato dell’ Interdetto, 1969 p.383n, ibid p.93   20. Diego Quaglioni and Vittor Ivo Comparato, ibid, p.93.   21. Botero (1598) book II p.383  22. C.V. Wedgewood, The Thirty Years War, Pimlico 1997 1st 1938, p.61   23. Prof Peter Wilson. Europe’s Tragedy, Gotthard, Allen Lane, p.214   24. Jayne E. Boys, London News Press and the Thirty Years War, Boydell Press p.212   25. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War. A sourcebook, Palgrave Macmillan 2010, p.23  26. Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.40  27. Robert Bierley, The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War, Cambridge 2007, p.91   28. Maurice Derechman and Hans-Joachim Voth ICREA/Universitat Pompeu Fabra and CEPR   29. ed Anja V. Hartmann and Beatrice Heuser War Peace and World Orders in European history, Anja Hartmann, Routledge, 2001, p.156   30. Barbara F. Walters, ed, Barbara Walter, Jack Snyder, Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, Columbia 1999, p. 305   31. Stephan van Evera Hyoptheses on Nationalism and War p.273, Theories on War and Peace, 1998 by MIT Press (MA) ed Brown 1998  32. Jack Snyder and Robert Jarvis, ed, Barbara Walter, Jack Snyder, Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, Columbia 1999, p.24   33. Brennan C. Pursell Winter King Ashgate, p.11  34. Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy, Cambridge 2010, p.58  35. Nicholas Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism: change and continuity in Early Modern Europe, Longman 1992, p.127  36. Prof Peter Wilson, Absolutism in central Europe, Routledge 2000, p.46  37. Brendan Simms, The Struggle for Supremacy in Europe, Basic Books 2013, p.21  38. Ibid, p.530  39. Henry Kamen, Spain 1469–1714, Pearson 1991, p.207   40. Graeme Murdock, op. cit. p.3   41. Bruce. D. Jones, Military intervention in Rwanda’s Two Wars, Civil Wars Insecurity and Intervention, Walters & Snyder ed. 1999, p.135

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Notes 471 Chapter II: Habsburg domains, Ferdinand and the defenestration of Prague   1. J.H.Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716, Arnold 1963, p.316   2. Henry Kamen, Spain 1469–1714, Pearson 1991, p.207    3. Sir Benjamin Rudyerd 1572–1658, University of Michigan 2003, British Library   4.  J.H. Elliott, Olivares, Yale 1986, p.24   5. Ibid, p.42    6. J.H. Elliott, op. cit. Sir Walter Aston 1622 English ambassador, p133   7.  J.H. Elliott, The World of the Favorite, New Haven 1999, p.118   8. R .A.Stradling, Spain’s Struggle for Europe, 1598–1668, Hambledon Press 1994, p.67–93   9.  Machiavelli, The Prince 1551–2, p.19   10. R.A.Stradling, op. cit. p.77  11.  A.T. Mahan, On Naval Warfare, selected writings 1840–1914, Alan Westcott, US Navy War Academy, 1999, abridged reprint of 1941 ed  12.  J.H.Elliott, Spain and its World, Yale 1989, p. 257  13. Henry Karmen, How Spain became a world power, 1492–1763, Perennial 2004, p.211  14. Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001, Olivares, p.170   15. Peter Borschberg (ed.). The Memoirs and Memorials of Jacques de Coutre: Security and Society in 16th and 17th century Southeast Asia, trans. Roopanjali Roy, Singapore: NUS Press, 2013   16. James C. Boyijiian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs 1580–1640, John Hopkins 2007, p. 217   17. Lerma to Salazar 26 August 1618  18.  J.H. Elliott, Olivares, Yale 1986, p.58  19. Samuel Rawson Gardner, Letters and documents, Sir Isaac Wake to Sir Robert Naunton, Kessinger Publishing, July 1619, p.170   20. J.H. Elliott, op. cit. Yale 1986, p.60; Geoffrey Parker, Europe in crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.125  21. Erasmus, Preface to Seutonius, Rotterdam, 1517   22. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War Sourcebook; John Lynch, The Hispanic World in Crisis, p.94, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p. 80  23.  Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.40   24. Geoffrey Parker, op. cit. Funeral oration of Philip II 1598. Cited feros, Blackwell 2001, p. 32   25. Peter H Wilson, op. cit. op Papal nuncio Caraffa, 1628, Palgrave 2010, p.32  26.  Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis, Yale 2013, kindle loc 1695  27. G. Pagés, Thirty Years War, A&C Black 1970, p.47.  28. Ibid, p.24  29. Thomas Mun, A Discourse of Trade from England unto the East Indies 1621. Mun was an economist-mercantalist and MP.  30. Oscar Gelderbloom and Joost Jonker, ‘Completing a financial revolution: the finance of the Dutch East India Company and the rise of the Amsterdam capital market’, The Journal of Economic History, Sept 2004, p.664   31. A ntonio Borges Coelho, Inquisicao de Evora 1533–1668, Caminho 3rd ed 2018, p.572  32.  J. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 150–1750, Littman 1998, p.51  33. Dagmar Freist, The Dutch Century, Spinoza, a theological-political treatise, EGO 2012

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472  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648  34. Immanuel Wallerstein, Mercantilism and consolidation of the European world economy 1600–1750, UCLA 2011, p.41   35. Hidalgo, César A. Hausmann, Ricardo (2011). The Network Structure of Economic Output   36. Immanuel Wallerstein, op. cit. UCAL 2011, p.55   37. C.R. Boxer, papers of Antonio Alaida, Opera Minora I, Fundacao Oriente, p.285   38. F.C. Spooner, ‘The European Economy’, ed J.P Cooper, The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War, Cambridge 1970, p.97  39. Nadler, Spinoza, A Life, Cambridge 2001, p.38   40. Henrietta de Bryun Kopps, Spirited Exchange: the wine and brandy trade between France and the Dutch Republic 1600–1650, Brill 2007  41. Martin Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism vol I, Structures of everyday life, Collins 1988   42. Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa, Brill 2011, p.262   43. A ndrew Pettegree, Arthur de Weduwen, The bookshop of the world, Making and trading books in the Dutch Golden Age, Yale 2019, chapter 4   44. Ibid, chapter 15  45.  Immanuel Wallerstein, Mercantilism and consolidation of the European world economy 1600–1750, UCAL 2011, p.43   46. F.C. Spooner, ‘The European economy’, ed J.P. Cooper, The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War, Cambridge 1970, p.95   47. Trip’s daughter’s portrait by Rembrandt hangs in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.  48. Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism vol I, The Structures of Everyday Life, Collins p.395  49. Oscar Gelderbloom and Joost Jonker, ‘Completing a financial revolution: the finance of the Dutch East India Company and the rise of the Amsterdam capital market,’ The Journal of Economic History, Sept 2004, p.648  50. Stephen Nadler, Spinoza, A Life, Cambridge 2001, p.39,   51. ‘Repo’ is short for repurchase agreement, whereby a security such as a VOC share is sold with an agreement to repurchase, i.e creating a loan,   52. Oscar Gelderbloom and Joost Jonker, op. cit. Sept 2004, p.663  53. Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, Yale 1951, Section 3 XXXII kindle loc 6871, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals: Ein Beitrag zur ökonomischen Erklärung des Imperialismus, 1913   54. Stephen Nadler, op cit. p.33/34   55. Immanuel Wallerstein, op. cit. p.45   56. ed Frank Tallett and D. Trim, Olaf van Nimwegen, European Warfare 1350–1750, Cambridge 2010, p.69  57. Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, Dedalus 2005, p. 3   58. Rijks Museum Amsterdam Chapter III: The Thirty Years War   1. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War Sourcebook, Palgrave Macmillan 2010, Anhalt, p.63   2. Ibid, p.67   3. Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War, Penguin 2018    4. ed Janos Szarbo and Zsolt Schafer, Soldiers from the age of Gabor Bethlen, Mare Temporis Tortenelmi Hagyomanyokert Alapitvany, p.50   5. Sir James Ferguson, Scots Brigade vol I, p.310

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Notes 473   6.  Charles Carlton, Going to the wars, Routledge 1994, p.14.   7. Francis Watson, Wallenstein: A Soldier under Saturn, Appleton 1938, p.118   8. Francis Watson, Wallenstein, A Soldier under Saturn, p.149   9. J.H. Elliott, Olivares, Yale 1986, p.78  10.  A ndreas Kraus, Maximilian I, Styria/Pustet, p.146  11. A ndreas Klaus, Maximilian, Styria/Pustet by Ibid p.147  12. David Parrott, Business of War, Cambridge 2012, p.129  13. Golo Mann, Wallenstein, Andre Deutsch 1976, p. 273  14. Robert Monro, His expeditions, Praeger 1999, p.209  15. David Parrott, Business of War, Cambridge 2012, p.102  16.  Prof Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.403  17. Francis Watson, A Soldier under Saturn, Appleton 1938–Kessinger, p.132  18. Ibid, p.132  19. Ibid, p.132  20.  Monro, His Expeditions, p.82 Chapter IV: Gustavus, the war in the Baltic   1.  Michael Roberts, Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697, State Papers, Arnold 1968 p.14   2. Ibid, p.16    3. Michael Fredholm von Essen, The Lion from the North, The Swedish army during the Thirty Years War, Helion & Co, p.192    4. Michael Roberts, op. cit. p.15   5. Thermosticles, ed R. Andrews, Columbia Book of Quotes, 1993, p.894, when demanding tribute from the people of Andros: historian Herodotus Histories, bk. 8    6. Michael Fredholm von Essen, op. cit. p.32 Chapter V: The emergence of France, Wallenstein, The Edict, and the Mantuan War   1.  David J. Sturdy, Richelieu and Mazarin, Palgrave Macmillan 2004, p.10   2. Ibid, p.25   3.  Francois-Tommy, l’eglise et l’etat en France vol II 1872, Megariotis reprints Genevre, editions de Paris 1872, p. 448   4. ed Howell Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, Simon Hodson, J.H.M. Salmon, European Political Thought 1450–1700, Yale 2007, p.487   5. Lloyd Motte, Louis XIII, University of California 1991, p.178   6. Ibid, p.177   7.  Mack P. Holt, Rennaissance and Reformation in France, Oxford 2002, p.207   8. Ed Anja V. Hartmann and Beatrice Heuser p.180, F. Dickmann Friedenrecht und Friedensicherung: Studien zum Friedens, problem in der Geschichte, Gottingen, Vanderhoek & Ruprecht, 1971.    9. Robert Bireley, ‘The Peace of Prague and the Counter Reformation in Germany’, Journal of Modern History, vol 48. no 1, March 1976, p.31–70, University of Chicago Press p.7   10. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.447  11. Robert Bierley, The Jesuits and the Thirty Years War, Cambridge 2007, p.90   12.  Hans Medick and Benjamin Marschke, documents, Bedford 2013, p.53   13. Prof Peter Wilson, op. cit. p.114–117

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474  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648   14. Prof A.E. Beller, ed J.P. Cooper, The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War, Cambridge Univ Press 1970, p. 326   15. Madamoiselle de Montpensier, Memoires, Archive internet section 50   16. Elizabeth Marvick, Louis XIII, The Making of a King, Yale 1986, p.138  17.  J.F. Hayward, The Art of the Gunmaker, vol I 1500–1660, Barrie and Rockcliff, p.143  18.  Lloyd Moote, Louis XIII, University of California 1991, p.85  19.  de Motville, Memoires, p.31   20. David J. Sturdy, Richelieu and Mazarin, Palgrave Macmillan 2003, p.33   21. Lloyd Moote, op. cit. p. 274  22. Francoise Hildesheimer, Richelieu, Flammarion 2004, p.297   23. Lloyd Moote, op. cit. p.164–5   24. De Rochefoucauld, comte de, Memoires, Chapter I   25. Sir Isaiah Berlin, the Originality of Machievelli, Sansoni editore, 1972   26. ed Howell Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, Simon Hodson, Machievelli, European Political Thought 1450–1700, Yale 2007, p.482  27. Lloyd Motte, Louis XIII, University of California 1991, p.114   28. Carl Jacob Burkhardt, Richelieu, Vol I, Allen and Unwin 1940, p.157  29. Ibid. p.143  30. A nthony Levi, Cardinal Richelieu, Constable and Robinson, p.216   31. Francisco de Vitoria, de Jui Belli Hispanorum in Barbaros 1532   32. Carl Jacob Burkhardt, Richelieu, Vol III, Allen and Unwin 1970, p.350   33. Mme de Motville, Memoirs, p.147  34. Ibid   35. Marie-Catherine Vignal Souleyreau, Anne D’Autiche, Flammarion, 2006, p.82  36. Rochefoucauld, Memoires, chapter I  37.  Carl Burckhardt, Richelieu, His Rise to Power, Allen and Unwin 1971, p.18  38.  Noel Williams, A fair conspirator, NY Charles Scribners Sons 1913, p.4   39. Rochefoucauld, comte de, op. cit.  40.  Ibid  41. Paul Guth, Mazarin, Flammarion 1972, p.292  42. Peter Sahlins, Natural Frontiers revisited, American Historical Review, vol 95 no 5, p.1423–1433   43. Baramova, Maria, Interstate relations in Early modern Europe, Sofia University, EGO, Journal of European history 2010   44. Burkhardt, Carl, Richelieu, vol 1, Rise to Power, Allen and Unwin 1969, p. 344  45. Michael Roberts, From Oxenstierna to Charles XII, Cambridge 2002, p.25   46. Prof, Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, Sourcebook, Palgrave 2010, p. 214  47. Geoff Mortimer, Wallenstein, Palgrave Macmillan 2010, p.116  48. Ibid, p.113  49. Ibid, p.116  50.  Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, Secker and Warburg 1995, p.142   51. Thomas Barker, op. cit. p.78   52. Lloyd Moote, op. cit. p.170   53. Carl Walter Bukhardt, op. cit. 1940, p.371  54.  Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 1990, p.150   55. Carl Walter Bukhardt, op. cit. 1940, p.382   56. James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France, Cambridge 2009, p.61  57. Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 1990, p.179

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Notes 475  58.  De Motville, Memoires  59.  Ibid  60. Jean-Marie Constans, C’etait la Fronde, Flammarion 2016, p.63   61. Jayne E.E. Boys, London News Press and the Thirty Years War, Boydell Press 2011, p.214 Chapter VI: The Dutch Front and Naval War   1.  Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution, Cambridge, 1996, p.13   2. John Stubbs, Reprobates, Viking 2011, p.106   3.  Ibid, p.107    4. ‘Flag of convenience’ is use of foreign vessel registry by cargo or shipowners to disguise ownership and origin of ship or cargo.    5. Prof Peter Wilson, op. cit. p.367    6. Jayne E. Boys, op. cit.   7. Ibid, p.42   8. R .A Stradling, The Armadas of Flanders, Cambridge 2002, p.50   9. A.T Mahan, On Naval Warfare, selected writings 1840–1914, Alan Westcott, US Navy War Academy, 1999, abridged reprint of 1941 ed   10. R.A. Stradling, op. cit. p.58   11. Michel Thomas Poirier
 Commander, USN
20 Oct 1999, U-boats 785 lost, out of 1158, and 2828 +175 [naval] enemy vessels sunk Chapter VII: Gustavus invades Germany   1. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, Sourcebook, Palgrave Macmillan 2010, p.119   2.  Tryntje Helfferich, Pastor Christohorous Thodanus, The Thirty Year War, documents, Halleck 2009, Giurecke, p.111   3.  Ibid, p.109    4. Michael Fredholm von Essen, The Lion from the North, The Swedish army during the Thirty Years War, Helion & Co, p.162   5. Lord Acton, ed A.W. Ward, Cambridge Modern History IV, 1906, Chapter V, W. F. Reddaway, The Vasa in Sweden and Poland   6. Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, The History of Sweden 1611–32 vol II, Longmans Green and Co 1958, p.89   7. Ibid, p.89   8. Immanuel Wallerstein, Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World Economy, 1600–1750, UCLA 2011, p.208   9.  Ibid, p.209   10. John A. Lynn II, Women, Armies, and Warfare in early modern Europe, Cambridge 2008, p.71   11. Michael Fredholm von Essen, op.cit. p.164  12.  Steven Murdoch, Scotland and the Thirty Years War, 1618-48, Brill 2001   13. Robert Monro, colonel, The Memoirs of Colonel Robert Monro; Monro his expeditions with the worthy Scots Regiment called Mac-keys 1637  14. Robert Monro, His Expedition, p. 189, Mo II 62   15. Ibid, Mo II 61–2  16. Sydenham Poyntz, A True Relation of the German Warres, Ken Trotman Publishing 2005, p.57/58 f 11/12

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476  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648   17. Salvius 1631 Arkiv II  18.  Louis DiMarco, War Horse, Westholme 2008, p.170   19. Robert Monro, op.cit. p.193  20. Ibid, p.196  21. Ibid, p.116,   22. Ibid, p. 194  23. Keith Roberts, Adam Hook, Pike and Shot Tactics 1590–1660, Osprey 2010, kindle loc 323   24. Jayne E.E. Boys, London’s news press and the Thirty Years War, The Boydell Press 2011, p.147–48  25. Golo Mann, Wallenstein, Andre Deutsch 1976, p.557  26. Ibid, p.557  27.  Ibid, p.555   28. Sydenham Poyntz, op. cit. f22 p.71   29. Michael Roberts, op. cit. II p.587  30. Guthrie, Battles of the Thirty Years War, Vol I, Greenwood Press 1953, p.165   31. Tryntje Helfferich, op. cit. p.285 Chapter VIII: Wallenstein returns and the battle of Lutzen   1.  Carl Walter Burkhardt, Richelieu, Allen and Unwin 1970, part II, p.378/379   2. Golo Mann, Wallenstein, Andre Deutsch 1976, p.571   3. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.506    4. Hans Medick and Benjamin Marschke, documents, Bedford 2013, p.142   5. Louis DiMarco, War Horse, Westholme 2008, p.180   6. Sydenham Poyntz, A True relation of the warres in Germanie, p.72/3 f23   7. Ibid p. 72/3 f23    8. Golo Mann,op. cit. p.664    9. Hans Medick and Benjamin Marschke, documents, Bedford 2013, p. 149  10. Ibid, p.140–42 Chapter IX: Oxenstierna takes over and the road to Nordlingen   1.  K arl J Burkhardt, Richelieu and his Age part II, Harcourt, Allen and Unwin 1970, p.402   2.  Ibid, p.402   3. Golo Mann, Wallenstein vol II, Andre Deutsch 1976, p.661   4.  Ibid, p.742   5. Frances Watson, Wallenstein, Soldier under Saturn, Appleton 1938, p.409   6. Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.173   7. Geoff Mortimer, Eyewitness accounts of the Thirty Years War 1618–48, p.41    8.  Hans Medick and Benjamin Marschke, documents, Bedford 2013, p.120   9. Olaf Asbach and Peter Schroder, Ashgate Companion to the Thirty Years War, Sigrun Haude chapter 20, Ashgate 2014   10. Dr Ruth Altmann, Landgraf Wilhelm V von Hesse Kassel, im kampf gegen kaise und Catholicismus 1633–1637, NG Elwertssche 1938. ST. A.M: Sweden 1631–1639  11.  Carl Burckhardt, Richelieu, His Age, vol III Allen and Unwin 1970, Harcourt Brace and World NY, p.440  12.  Ibid, p.440  13. Vicomte de Noailles, Bernard de Saxe-Weimar, Perrin & Cie 1908, Kessinger, p.287

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Notes 477  14. Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis, Yale 2103, Kindle loc 1339  15.  Carl Burckhardt, Richelieu, His Age, Allen and Unwin 1971, Harcourt Brace World NY, p.440  16. Sydenham Poyntz, A True relation of the Warres in Germanie, Ken Trotman Publishing 2005  17.  Ibid p.112  18.  Geoff Mortimer, Eyewitness accounts of the Thirty Years War 1618-1648, Palgrave Macmillan 2004, 1618–48, p.40  19. Ibid, p.34  20.  Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, Hackett 2009, p.289   21. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.549  22. Suhl Museum, German Hunting Gun Society, History of Gunmaking in Suhl, Website   23. Tryntje Helferrich, op. cit. p.151  24.  Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War Turenne LRT, LRT edition 2008, p.19  25.  Carl Burkhardt, Richelieu and his Age vol III Allen and Unwin 1971, p110  26.  Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War Turenne LRT, LRT edition 2008, p.20  27. James Collins, The State in early Modern France, Cambridge 2009, p.63   28. Johann Daniel Mink, Pastor of the Hessian town of Goss Biberau, In sudhessische Chroniken aud der Zeit des Dreisssigyahrigen Krieges, ed R.Kunz and W.Lizakek, Verlag, Larissa 1983, p.229–288  29.  NRNN   30. Olaf van Nimwegen, The Dutch Armies and the Military Revolution 1588–1688, Boydell 2010, p.240  31. Ibid, p.76–77   32. Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, Cambridge 2010, p.116  33. Konstantin Nossov, Russian Fortresses 1480–1682, Osprey 2012   34. Robert I. Frost, Northern Wars, Pearson 2000, Jan Moskorzowski, p.147  35. Geoffrey Parker, European Crisis, Blackwell 1979, p.157  36. Michael Roberts, From Oxenstierna to Charles XII, Cambridge 2002, p.41  37. Ibid, p.39   38. Count Alexandre Charles Arthur De Marsy, Oxenstierna et Richelieu a Compiegne, Traite de 1635, British Library, p.16   39. Prof Peter Wilson, op. cit. p.557   40. Steve Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thity Years War 1618–1648, p.72, Avery to Coke Nov 1635   41. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, Sourcebook, Palgrave 2010, p.194–5  42. Ibid, p.197   43. Prof Wilson, op. cit. p.570   44.  [iii] Hans Medick and Benjamin Marschke, documents, Bedford 2013, p.55 Chapter X: France declares war, Dutch alliance, Swedish crisis and the Peace of Prague   1. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, Sourcebook, Palgrave 2010, p.217   2.  Carl Burckhardt, Richelieu and His Age vol III, Allen and Unwin 1970, Harcourt Brace and World NY, p.61

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478  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648   3. Ibid, p.124   4.  R .A. Stradling, Spain’s Struggle for Europe 1598–1668, Hambledon Press, p.111   5.  Ibid   6. NRNN   7. Broer Jansz, Tijdinghen uyt versheyde quartieren (Tidings from various quarters) 11 June 1633. Andrew Petigrew and Arthur der Weduwen, Bookshop of the World, Brill 2019, p.78   8.  Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War, histoire et collections 2013 and David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army 1624-1642, Cambridge 2001   9.  NRNN  10. J. Israel, European Jewry p.529   11. Olaf van Nimwegen, cit, op, The Dutch Armies and Military Revolutions, 1588– 1688, Boydell 2010, The Dutch Armies and Military Revolution, Van Aerssen, p.243  12.  Ibid, p.246  13. Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare; Fortresses in Early modern Europe, Routledge 2004, p.123  14. Rochefoucauld, comte de, memoires, chapt II.   15. Olaf Van Nimwegen, Dutch Armies and Military Revolutions, Boydell 2008, p.250  16. Ibid, p.248  17. Ibid, p.248  18. NRNN   19. R.A Stradling, op. cit. p.117 Chapter XI: Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, and the taking of Breisach   1.  Carl Burckhardt, Richelieu and His Age vol III, Allen and Unwin 1970, Harcourt Brace and World NY, p.171   2. David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, Cambridge 2006, 293   3. Ibid, p.296   4. NRNN   5.  NRNN   6. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, Sources, Palgrave 2010, p.206   7. Ibid, p.207   8. Michael Roberts, From Oxenstierna to Charles XII, Cambridge 2002, p.42, footnote 129   9.  Ibid, p.43  10.  Ibid, p.45  11.  NRNN  12.  Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, History of Sweden 1611–1632, State Papers, Arnold 1968, p.150  13. Ibid, p.151  14. Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis, Yale 2013, Kindle loc 1771  15.  Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus, History of Sweden 1611–1632 vol II, Longmans Green 1952, p.665  16.  Michael Roberts, Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697, State Documents, Arnold 1968, p.153  17. Ibid, p.152   18. Oxenstierna to Baner October 1636, History of the Swedes, Eric Gustav Geijer   19. Peter Wilson, op. cit. doc 106 Minutes of the council of the realm, Sept–Oct 1635  20.  Tryntje Helfferich,The Thirty Years War, Documents, Halleck 2009, p.178

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Notes 479  21. Geoff Mortimer, Eyewitness accounts of the Thirty Years War, Palgrave 2002, p.37  22. Sir James Turner, Memoirs of his life and times, Nabu Public domain Reprint, p.9–10   23. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.592   24. Sir James Turner, op. cit. p.10   25. Prof Peter Wilson, op. cit. p.592   26. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, Sourcebook, Palgrave Mamillan 2010, p.226  27.  H.G. Koenigsberger, The Habsburgs and Europe 1516–166, Cornell 1971, p. 241   28. Prof Peter Wilson, op. cit. p.803  29. A ndreas Kraus, Maximilian I, Styria/Pustet, p.313   30. Ibid, p. 317 Chapter XII: French economic and military mobilisation   1. Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism, The wheels of commerce, Collins 1988, p.333   2. William Beik, A Social and Cultural History of Early Modern France, Cambridge 2009, p.99   3.  Vincent Maillot, Pouvoirs et Société dans La France d’ancien regime, Armand Colin 3rd ed 2007, p.19    4. Fernand Braudel, op. cit. p.358    5. William Beik, op. cit. p.128    6. Fernand Braudel, op. cit. p.186   7.  Rochefoucauld, comte de, Memoires, Chapter I   8.  John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, the French Army 1610–1715, Cambridge 1998, p.331   9. David Parrott, Business of War, Palgrave Macmillan 2012, p.222  10.  Herve Drevillon, Les Roi absolut, 1629–1715 Belin 2010, p.143.  11.  Ed De l’estime au cadaster en Europe L’epoque modern; comite pour L’histoire economique et financiere de la France. Mireille Touzery, Le marriage de La carpe et du Lapin: Le Cadaster de Haute-Guyene, une initiative d’une assemblee provincial en pays d’elections et de taille reelle, 1779–1789. p.392–397.  12.  Ed De l’estime au cadaster en Europe L’epoque modern; comite pour L’histoire economique et financiere de la France. Gilbert Laguier, Norms, production, et evolution des compoix terriens en Languedoc XVI-XVIII siècle, p.339.  13. Stephane Thion, French Army of the Thirty Years War, LRT editions 2008, p.80  14. Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis, Yale 2013, Table of popular revolts 1590–1715, Kindle loc 13052   15. James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France, Cambridge 2009, p.63  16.  Charles Tilly, Coercon, Capital and European States, AD 990–1992, Blackwell 1992, p.86   17. Herve Drevillon, op. cit. p.144  18.  Ibid, p.144  19. William Beik, A Social and Cultural history of Early Modern France, Cambridge 2009, p.208  20. Robin Briggs, Early Modern France, 2nd ed Oxford 1998, p.36  21. Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis, Yale 2013, Kindle loc 1171   22. Ibid, Kindle loc 13182   23. James B. Collins, op. cit. p.53

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480  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648  24.  Robin Briggs, Early Modern France 1560–1715, Oxford 1977 p.103  25. William Beik, A Social and Cultural history of Early Modern France, Cambridge 2009, p.220  26. Ibid, p.222  27. Henri de Campion, Contenant des faits inconnus sur partie du règne de Louis XIII Henri Campion 1613–63, Truetl & Wurtz 1807.  28.  Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War, LRT edition 2008, de Bassompiere, Memoires, p.82  29. Geoffrey Parker, op. cit. Chereul Letres, p.413–414, Mazarin to intendant of Guyenne   30. William Beik, op. cit. p.251  31. Jean Berenger, Turenne, Flayard 1987, p.211   32. Comte de Bussy-Rabutin, Memoires, mercure de France, p.43  33. Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War, LRT editions 2008, de Plessis, p.66   34. Ibid, p. 68  35.  David Parrott, Business of War, The Thirty Years War, Documents, Palgrave Macmillan 2012, p.226  36. Ibid, p.198   37. John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, the French Army 1610–1715, Cambridge 1998, p.330, Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War, LRT editions 2008, p.70  38. Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare, Fortresses of the Early Modern Europe, Routledge 1996,   39. Madame de Motville, Memoires of Madame de Motville, on Anne of Austria and her court, republished 1901 and 2009.  40.  Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States 990–1992, Blackwell 1992, p.97  41. William Beik, A social and cultural History of Early Modern France, Cambridge 2009, p.66   42. In conversation with Dr L.G. Mitchell, specialist in French history, Oxford.   43. William Beik,, Cambridge 2009, p.66, p.67  44. NRNN  45. NRNN    46. A. Loyd Moote, Louis XIII, UCAL 1991, p.210   47. Rochefoucauld, comte de, Memoires  48. A lfred Vigny, notes from MDCXLVIII, Cinq Mars, p.503  49.  Ibid, p.505   50. Rochefoucauld, comte de, Memoires  51. Christopher Duffy, Siege warfare: In the Early Modern World, Routledge 1979, p. 124   52. Ibid, p. 124  53. Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, documents, Hallek 2009, p.193   54. Henri de Campion, Memoires, Truttel & Wurtz p.79  55. Ibid, p.82  56. Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, documents, Hallek 2009, p.292  57. Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, documents, Halleck 2009, Hagendorf, p.290

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Notes 481  58.  Geoff Mortimer, Eyewitnesses Accounts of the Thirty Years War, Palgrave Macmillan 2004, Fritsch p.32   59. Henri de Campion, Memoires, Truttel & Wurtz p.93  60. Gregory Hanlon, The twilight of a military tradition – Italian aristocrats and European conflict 1560–1800, 1998  61. R andolph Head, Jenastche’s Axe, Rochester Press 2008, p.31   62. Carl Walter Burckhardt, Richelieu, vol II, Allen and Unwin 1970, p.190   63. ed Lord Acton, Horatio Brown, Cambridge Modern History – the Thirty Years War – the Valtelline, Cambridge 1906, p.58  64. Ibid, ed Lord Acton, Horatio Brown, Cambridge Modern History – the Thirty Years War – the Valtelline, Cambridge 1906, p.58   65. Gregory Hanlon, op. cit. Chapter XIII: Swedish Recovery and the emergence of Hesse    1. Carl Walter Burckhardt, op. cit. p.307   2. Michael Roberts, From Oxenstierna to Charles XII: Four Studies, Cambridge 2003,   3.  Prof Peter, Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.581    4. Steve Murdoch, Kathrin Zickermann and Adam Marks, ‘The Battle of Wittstock 1636,’ in Northern Studies, 43 (2012), p.80    5. Steve Murdoch & Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years War, Routledge (2016), p.76   6. Sir John Keegan, The American Civil War, Hutchinson 2009, p.181    7. Steve Murdoch, ‘Kathrin Zickermann and Adam Marks, The Battle of Wittstock 1636’, in Northern Studies, 43 (2012), p.81   8. Ibid, p.88   9. Murdoch and Grosjean. Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of The Thirty Years War, Routledge 2016, p.81, loc 2060  10. Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, Thirty Years War, Battle of Wittstock, an eyewitness account. A work of autobiograpical fiction, the passage quoted is probably based on direct personal experience.   11. Steve Murdoch, Kathrin Zickermann and Adam Marks, op. cit. ‘The Battle of Wittstock 1636,’ in Northern Studies, 43 (2012),fn 61, p.88  12.  R ichard Bonney, The Thirty Years War, Osprey 2002, p.57   13. Steve Murdoch, Kathrin Zickermann and Adam Marks, ‘The Battle of Wittstock 1636,’ in Northern Studies, 43 (2012), p.82  14. Ibid, p.83   15.  Steve Murdoch and Grosjean, op. cit. p86   16. Steve Murdoch, Kathrin Zickermann and Adam Marks, op. cit. p.82   17. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.583  18. Reported The Independent, 4 August 2007, evidence of Antje Grothe, chief archaeologist on site mass grave at Wittstock.  19. Michael Roberts, Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697, State documents, Arnold 1968, p.96–97  20. R abutin comte de Bussy-Rabutin; memoires mercure de france 2010, comte de Bussy-Rabutin   21. Henri de Campion, Memoires, p.96  22.  Ibid, p.98  23. Tryntje Helfferich, The Iron Princess, Amelia Elisabeth and The Thirty Years War, Harvard 2013, Chapter 12 Kindle loc 1120

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482  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648  24.  Ibid, p.243  25. Ibid, p.5   26. Ibid, Kindle loc 1718   27. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, sourcebook, Palgrave Macmillan 2010, p.201   28. Tryntje Helfferich, op. cit. The Thirty Years War, documents, Halleck 2009, p.203   29. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, sourcebook, Palgrave Macmillan 2010, p.230   30. Tryntjie Helfferich, op. cit. Chapter 6 Kindle loc 2612   31. Sir James Turner, Memoirs of his life and times, Nabu Public Domain Reprint, p.10 Chapter XIV: Saxe-Weimar breaks out and the battle for the ‘Spanish Road’   1. David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, Cambridge 2006, p.129   2. Olaf van Nimwegen, The Dutch Armies and the military revolutions 1588–1688, Boydell 2010, Willem van Nassau-Siegen, p.256   3. Ibid, p.256    4. Veit Hoser Kriegsbuch, and p.26 Anker fischer –Kettner, World of Sieges, p.93    5. Hans Medick and Benjamin Marschke, documents, Bedford 2013, p.87–90    6. Vicomte Amblard-Marie-Raymond de Noilles, Bernard de Saxe-Weimar 1604–39, Perrin 1908, p.256   7. Ibid, p.257    8. Henri, duke de Rohan, Le parfait capitaine, 1631   9. Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, documents, Halleck 2009, Hagendorf, p.294   10. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.603   11. Tryntje Helfferich, op. cit. Harvard 2013, Chapt An Amazing Consequence p.98 Kindle loc 1925   12. William P. Guthrie, Later battles of the Thirty Years War, Preager 2003, p.92   13. Girardot de Nozeroy, Guerre de dix ans, impr. d’Outhenin-Chalandreand 1651, Hervé Drévillon, Les Roi Absolu, Belin 2011, p.48  14.  Henri Campion Memoirs  15. William Guthrie, Later Battles of the Thirty Years War, vol II, p.86   16. Prof Peter Wilson, op. cit. p.608   17. Thomas Longueville and Francis Lloyd, Turenne, Puffendorf, Appleton 1908– Kessinger 2007, p.24   18. Carl J. Burckhardt, Richelieu and his Age vol III, Allen and Unwin 1970, p.215  19. Ibid, p.226  20. Ibid, p.226  21.  Ibid, p.230  22.  Ibid, p.232   23. Jayne E. Boys, The London Press and the Thirty Years War, p.234–5  24.  Ibid, p.231 Chapter XV: Global War    1. Caytano J. Socarras, ‘The Portuguese in lower Burma: filipe de Brito de Nicoten,’ Luso-Brazilian Review, winter 1966, p.3–24 univ Wisconsin p.12    2. Thomas Suarez, Early Maps of south East Asia, Periplus 1999, p.104   3. Ibid

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Notes 483   4. Peter Borschberg, The Singapore and Melaka straits, Violence War and Diplomacy in the 17th Century, NUS, 2010, p72   5. James Bender, Dutch warships in the Age of Sail, 1600–1714, Pen and Sword   6. Sanjay Subrahmany, The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500–1700, 2nd ed, Wiley Blackwell 2012, Syrium and Hormuz   7. C.R. Boxer, Papers of Admiral Bertendona, Opera Minora I, Fundacao Oriente, 2002, p.303    8. Peter Borschberg, ‘Maritime Intra-Asian Trade and the Estado da India,’ ed Blom Property, Piracy and punishment; Grotius and war booty, Brill 2005, p.31–61    9. Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge, Journals, Memorials and Letters, ed Borschberg, NUS 2015, p.234–236  10. Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio, A brief and truthful relation of events in the kingdom of Cambodia, published Valladolid 1604, p.14  11. Wild species of Nutmeg could be found in other Moluccan islands and New Guinea; known as long nutmeg and sometimes passed off on unsuspecting buyers.  12.  Geoffrey Parker, Empire War and Faith I Early Modern Europe, Allen Lane 2002, p. 203   13. Alfons van de Kraan, Murder mayhem in seventeenth century Cambodia, Silkworm Books, 2009   14. The voyages of Sir Henry Middleton to Bantam and the Moluco islands, Hakluyt Society, from the 1606 edition.  15. C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese in the East, Opera Minora, Fundacio Oriente 2002. p.271  16.  Giles Milton, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, Penguin 2000, p.257  17. J. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–1750, Littman 1998, p.87–8  18. Cornelis Matelieff, Jornals Memorials and Letters, ed Borschberg, NUS 2015, p.358  19. C.R. Boxer, Opera Minora II, Fundacao Oriente 2002, p.82 Jaoa Ribeiro  20. Lenin, Imperialism, The highest stage of monopoly capitalism, 1916  21. Cornelis Matelieff, Journals Memorials and Letters, ed Borschberg, NUS 2015, p.368–9   22. Professor Eric Jones, Crossroads lecture, Nov 2003  23. Sanjay Subrakanayan, The political economy of commerce in India 1500–1650, 1990   24. Peterzoon Coen, 1617, VOC records 1067 ff 3/v -35v   25. Dr Wo Dijk, The Dutch trade in Asian slaves, Arakan and Bay of Bengal 1661–65. An end to the history of silence? llAS Newsletter 46 (2008)  26. NRNN  27.  NRNN  28.  Martin Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism, The wheels of commerce, Collins 1988, p.405   29. C.R. Boxer, op. cit. p.90 Jaoa Ribeiro  30. A.T. Mahan, On Naval Warfare, selected writings 1840–1914, Alan Westcott, US Navy War Academy, 1999, abridged reprint of 1941 ed, p.90  31. A.J.R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808, John Hopkins 1998, p.23   32. Leopold Stampa Pineiro, Los galeones de las especias, espana y las Molucas, EG 2020   33. Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto, The Portuguese and the Straits of Malacca 1575–1619, NUS, 2010, p.120–121

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484  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648   34. Horacio da Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581–1786, Cambridge Yale 1961, p.144  35. Immanuel Wallerstein, Mercantilism and Consolidation of the European world Economy, 1600–1750, UCAL, 2011, p.55   36. C.R. Boxer, op. cit. p.279  37. Peter Borschberg, The Singapore and Melaka straits in the 17th Century, NUS   38. Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto, op. cit NUS  39. Charles Boxer, Fidalgos of the Far East 1550–1770, Martins Nijhoff (The Hague) 1948, p.72-91   40. C.R. Boxer, op. cit. 2002   41. Charles Boxer, op. cit. 1948 p.72–91  42. C.R. Boxer, From Lisbon to Goa valorium reprints London 1884, p. 389  43. C.R. Boxer, Dutch Seaborn Empire, 1500–1750, Port commerce and conquest, Penguin 1991, p.107  44. Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, Yale 1951, Section 3 XXXII kindle loc 6871 or p.454   45. Stephen R. Brown, Merchant Kings, When companies ruled the world 1600–1900, Douglas Mcintyre, D&M Quebec 2009,   46. Peterzoon Coen, 1621, VOC 849 ff 6v-27  47. Pieter Geyl, The Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century 1609–1648, Cassell 1961, p.181   48. The words are drawn from the indictment of accused war crimals in the Phnom Penh war crimes trial: ‘exercised power, influence, and control over’ persons committing war crimes. Proof of any of these charges would lead to conviction.  49. Willard A Hanna, Indonesia Banda, colonialism and its aftermath in the nutmeg islands, Rumah Budaya Banda Neira, p.56; Stephen R. Brown, Merchant Kings, When companies ruled the world 1600–1900, Douglas Mcintyre, D&M Quebec 2009, kindle loc 611 Chapter 1 first among equals.   50. Lodewijk Otto Petram, The World’s First Stock Exchange, Amsterdam University 2011, p.81&86  51.  A lfons van der Kraan, ‘Anthony van Diemen,’ The Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History, vol 26, no2 2004, p.12  52. Ibid, p.18  53. Ibid, p.5  54.  C.R.Boxer, Dutch Seaborn Empire 1600–1800, Penguin 1991, p.107  55. Ibid, p.97  56. Pius Malekandathil, The Indian Ocean and the Making of Early modern India, Manohar 2016 p.146–150, p.155–156  57. Willem Floor, The Persian Gulf, A Political and Economic history 1500–1730, Michele Membre, 1540, Mage 2006, p.61  58. Sanjay Subrahmany, The Portuguese Empire in Asia 1500–1700, 2nd ed, Wiley Blackwell 2012, Chapter 6, Kindle loc 4332   59. Edward Monnox journals, C.R. Boxer, Commentaries of Ruy Freyre de Andrada, Routledge 1930 and 2004, intro p. xviii-xliii.  60.  Gaastra, The shifting balance of trade p. 62–3. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Hapsburgs, John Hopkins 2007  61. Sanjay Subrahmany, The Portuguese Empire in Asia. 1500–1700  62. C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese in Asia, Opera Minora Vol III, Fondacao Oriente, 2002, p.287

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Notes 485  63. George Samson, A History of Japan 1615–1867, vol III, Standford 1963, p. 37–38  64. C.R. Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon, Centro Estudos de Macau 1988, p.163 and p.158–167   65. Quoted by Borschberg, University of Singapore Ethnicity, Language and Culture in Melaka after the Transition from Portuguese to Dutch Rule (Seventeenth Century). 15 Jan 2010, P.A Luppe, p.49  66.  Gaastra The shifting balance of trade p. 62–3. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Hapsburgs, John Hopkins 2007, p.113  67. Henry Karmen, How Spain became a World Power, 1492–1763, Perennial-Harper Collins, 2004, p.216  68. Réné Chartrand, The Spanish Main 1494–1800, Osprey 2006, p.4  69. Ibid, p.31  70.  Jon Latimer, Buccaneers of the Caribbean, how piracy forged an empire 1607–1697, 2009, p.92  71. Geoffrey Parker, Empire War and Faith in early modern Europe, Allen Lane 2002, p.205   72. Stephen Brown, op. cit. p.73   73. Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain, John Hopkins 1992, p.183  74. Ibid, p.187  75. Ibid, p.193   76. Mathew Parker, ‘Barbados, Cavaliers of the Caribbean,’ History Today vol 61 issue 7, 2011  77.  John Lynch, Spain under the Habsburg, p.110  78.  J.D Fage, History of Africa, figures sourced from studies by Curtin and Lovejoy, Folio Society 2008, p.259–261  79.  Malyn Newitt, A History of Portuguese overseas expansion, Routledge 2009, p.183   80. Carlos Ziller Camenietzki; Gianriccardo Grassia Pastore Topoi vol.2 no.se Rio de Janeiro 2006, 1625, Fire and ink: battle of Salvador in accounts of the war   81. C.R. Boxer, ‘The time of the Flemings: the Dutch in Brazil 1624–54,’ History Today, Vol 4 issue 3, 1954   82. D. Manuel Meneses: Relationship Restoration of Bahia in the anno 1625   83. Manuel de Faria e Sousa, 18 March 1590 – 3 June 1649 was a Portuguese historian and poet, frequently writing in Spanish.  84. Jan Gete, Warfare at Sea 1500–1650, Routledge 2000, p.175  85.  R .A.Stradling, The Armadas of Flanders, Cambridge 2002, Estimate made by Alcala-Zamora, p.107  86. Linda Heywood/ John K Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the foundation of the Americas 1585–1660, Cambridge 2007, p.140  87. Father Juan de los Angeles, O.P. (1643). Formosa Lost to Spain. In Fr. Regino Cortes, O.P.’s (Ed.), The Story of La Naval, p.  66–83. Quezon City: Santo Domingo Church. Chapter XVI: Stalemate on land, Dutch supremacy at sea and prelude to revolution   1.  J.H Elliott, Olivares, Yale 1986, p.596   2. Henri de Campion, Memoires, Truttel & Wurtz 1807 p.145   3.  Ibid, p.145   4.  NRNN   5. Ibid, p.146

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486  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648   6.  Stephane Thion, de Rohan a Turenne website, Henri Campion memoirs   7. Erik Geijer, History of the Swedes   8. William P. Guthrie, Last Battles of the Thirty Years War, p.190   9.  Ibid, p.190   10. Prof Thomas Barker, Army Aristocracy and Monarchy, East European monographs 1992, Piccolomini   11. Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain, John Hopkins 1992, p.113  12. Ibid  13. Ibid, p.208  14. R .A. Stradling, The Armada of Flanders: Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568–1668, Cambridge 2004, p.102  15. Ibid, p.102  16. Peter Padfield, Maritme Supremacy, John Murray,1999, p.61   17. Carla Rahn Phillips, op. cit. p.19  18.  Ibid  19. James Bender, Dutch warships in the Age of Sail, 1600–1714, Pen and Sword  20. R .A. Stradling, The Armada of Flanders: Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568–1668, Cambridge 2004, p.65   21. Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain, John Hopkins 1992, p.118  22. Ibid,  23. J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716, Arnold 1963, p.335  24. James Bender, Dutch Warships in the Age of Sail, 1600–1714, Pen and Sword   25. Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain, John Hopkins 1992, p.217   26. Jayne E.E. Boys, London news press in the Thirty Years War, Boydell 2011, p.249   27. Jayne E.E. Boys, London news press in the Thirty Years War, Boydell 2011, p.249   28. Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain, John Hopkins 1992, p.218  29. J.P. Cooper, Cambridge Modern History, The Decline of Spain and The Thirty Years War 1609–1648, p.97  30. R .A.Stradling, The Armadas of Flanders, Cambridge 2002, Aviso de la Haya p.100  31.  Ibid, p.100  32. J.H Elliott, Olivares, Hopton to Cottingham 1639, Yale 1986, p.552   33. von der Drecken l.e.III, History of the Swedes, Eric Gustav Geijer, p.184  34. David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, Cambridge 2001, p.204 and p.210   35. Carl J. Burckhardt, Richelieu and his Age Vol III, Allen and Unwin 1971, p.332  36. David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, Cambridge 2001, p.463   37.  Comte de Bussy-Rabutin, Memoires, mercure de France, p.73–74   38. Jean Marie Moriceau, La Memoire des Croquants 1453–1652, Marcheret p.133–40, Tallandier 2018   39. Olaf Van Nimegen, Dutch Armies and military revolutions 1588–1688, Boydell 2010  40. Ibid, p.264  41. Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, documents, Halleck 2009, p.206  42. Fant, Hadlinger, History of the 13 Swedes, Eric Gustav Geijer iv, p.94   43. Charles Wrangel to his father September 1641, History of the Swedes, Eric Gustav Geijer   44. Sir James Turner, Memoires, Nabu public domains reprints, p.12   45. Cardinal de Retz, Memoires  46.  Ibid  47.  Ibid

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Notes 487  48.  Ibid  49.  Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare, Routledge 1953, p.131  50. Olaf Van Nimegen, Dutch Armies and military revolutions 1588–1688, Boydell 2010, Alexander van der Capellen, p.259 Chapter XVII: Iberian Revootuion and the fall of Olivares   1. J. H. Elliott, The Revolt of the Catalans, Cambridge 1963, Christofol Despuig 1550, p.13   2. Ibid, p. 360–1   3.  Ibid   4.  Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis, Yale 2013, Kindle loc 1908    5. J.H Elliott, op. cit. p.394–5    6. Lord Acton, ed A.W Ward, Martin Hume, Cambridge Modern History IV, 1906, Chapter XXII, p.647   7. J.H Elliott, Olivarez, Yale 1986, p.611   8. Ibid, p. 585   9.  Geoffrey Parker, Europe’s Crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.193  10. J.H. Elliott, Olivarez, Yale 1986, p.600  11.  Ibid, p.584  12. Frederic Mauro, Portugal, o Brasil e o Atlantico 1570–1670 vol II Historia de Portugal, Estampa 1997, p.228  13. Ibid, p.199  14. Ibid, p.117–126  15. J.H. Elliott, Olivares, Yale 1986, p.597  16.  Sermam que fez o R. P. Bertolameu Guerreiro da Companhia de Jesus nas exequias do anno que se fizerão ao serenissimo, Principe D. Theodosio segundo Duque de Bragança em Villaviçosa na Igreja dos religiosos de S. Paulo primeiro hermitão onde o dito senhor está depositado em 29 de novembro de 1630. Lisbon: Mathias Rodrigues, 1632.   17. Antonio Borges Coelho, Inquisicao de Evora 1533–1668, Caminho 3rd ed 2018  18.  J.H. Elliott, Olivares, Yale 1986, p.605  19. Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.196  20. J.H. Elliott, Olivares, Yale 1986, p.611  21. Henry Karmen, Spain in Crisis 1469–1714, Longman 2005, p.219 Chapter XVIII: Origins of Peace   1.  A.J. Coates, The Ethics of War, Manchester 2001, p.43   2. Derek Croxton, Westphalia, the Last Christian Peace, Palgrave 2013, p.   3. Ibid, p.115   4.  Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.206    5. Derek Croxton, op. cit. p.154   6. Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001,   7. Von Clausewitz, On War, 1982 p.402   8. Michael Roberts, Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697, Svenska riksddets protokoll Viii, 329, Arnold 1968, p.154   9. Erik Geijer, History of the Swedes, 1872 Torstensson letter to Salvius  10. Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.198

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488  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648   11. Derek Croxton, op. cit. p.76   12. NRNN  13. Tryntje Helffferich, The Thirty Years War 1618–48, documents, Halleck 2009, p.213 Chapter XIX: Enter Torstensson and Mazarin, Italy and Habsburg exhaustion   1.  Paul Guth, Mazarin, Flammarion 1999, p.92   2. Geoffrey Treasure, Mazarin, a crisis of Absolutism in France Routledge 2009   3. Paul Guth, Mazarin, Flammarion 1979, p.95   4. Ibid, p.89   5. Geoffrey Treasure, Mazarin, a crisis of Absolutism in France, Routledge 2009, p.43   6. p.43   7. Tony Osborne, Dynasty and Diplomacy at the Court of Savoy, Cambridge 2007, p. 24    8. David Parrott, p. 20–65   9. Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early modern Europe, Susquehanna Univ Press 1999, p.77   10. Christina had also given birth to a daughter in 1629 but Savoyard laws did not allow her to be heir to the throne.  11. Tony Osborne, Dynasty and Diplomacy at the Court of Savoy, Cambridge 2007, p.263  12. Ibid, p.249  13. Carl Burkhardt, Richelieu and his Age vol III, Allen and Unwin 1970, p.318  14. Thomas Longueville and Francis Lloyd, Turenne, military memoirs of Marshal Turenne, Kessinger 2010, p.27  15.  Ibid, p.30  16. Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare: the Fortress in Early Modern Europe, Routledge 1997, p.125   17. Henri de Campion, Memoires, Truttel & Wurtz 1807, p.181–4  18.  Ibid, p.185  19. David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, Cambridge 2006, p.140  20.  Carl Burkhardt, Richelieu and his Age vol III, Allen and Unwin 1970, p.433   21. Mme de Montpensier, Memoires, Internet archive section 69  22.  A nthony Levi, Cardinal Richelieu, Constable and Robinson 2001, p.245   23. Carl Burkhardt, op. cit. p.437  24. Michel Pernod, la Fronde 1648–53, Editions Fallois 1994, p.22  25. Goeffrey Treasure, Mazarin, a crisis of Absolutism in France, Taylor Francis 2009, p.54   26. d’Alfred de Vigny, Cinq Mars, folio classique 1980, 1st published 1827 notes p.507  27.  Ibid, p.496  28. Ibid, p.504   29. Retz, Abbé de, Cardinal, Memoires  30. Pierre Chevalier, Louis XIII, Fayard 1979, p.409   31. Burkhardt, op. cit. p.458  32. Augustin Cabanes, L’Histoire de France, Edition Opportun April–May 2013, p.69  33. Paul Guth, Mazarin, Flammarion 1999, p.292   34. Retz, Abbé de, Cardinal, Memoires  35. de Rochefoucauld, Memoires

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Notes 489  36. Jean-Marie, Constans, C’etait la Fronde, Flammarion 2016  37. De Rochefoucauld, Memoires, p.37  38. Simon Bertiere, Condé, Editions de Fallois 2011, p. 436  39. Geoffrey Treasure, Mazarin, a crisis of Absolutism in France, Taylor Francis 2009, p.61  40.  Michel Pernod, la Fronde 1648–53, Editions Fallois 1994, p.15  41. Ibid, p.18   42. Mme de Motville, Memoires  43. Michel Pernod, la Fronde 1648–53, Editions Fallois 1994, p.22  44. NRNN  45. Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early modern Europe, Susquehanna Univ Press 1999, Nani, p.29  46.  Paul Sonnino, Mazarin’s Quest and the Coming of the Fronde, Harvard 2008, p.33  47. Noel Williams, A Fair conspirator, Marie de Rohan duchesse de Chevreuse, Kessinger 2008, Gazette of Renaudot, p.173,   48. ed Janos Szarbo and Zsolt Schafer Soldiers from the age of Gabor Bethlen, Mare Temporis Tortenelmi Hagyomanyokert Alapitvany, p.50   49. Retz, abbe de, Memoires, Flammarion, p.293  50.  Paul Guth, Mazarin, Flammarion 1999, p. 293   51. Noel Williams, op. cit. p.168  52. Ibid, p.168  53. Francois Hildesheimer, La Double Mort de Roi Louis XIII, Flammarion 2011, p.279   54. Mme de Motville, Memoires  55. Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early modern Europe, Susquehanna Univ Press 1999, p.79   56. Rochefoucauld, comte de, Memoires, chapt II  57.  Ibid  58. Ibid  59. Ibid   60. Noel Williams, op. cit. p.233,  61. Ibid, p.223,   62. Ibid, Mme de Motville Memoires, p. 236   63. Mme de Motville Memoires  64. Ibid, p.95   65. Noel Williams, op. cit. Servien-French diplomat at Westphalia, p.243   66. Retz, Abbé de, Cardinal, Memoires  67. Paul Sonnino, Mazarin’s Quest and the Coming of the Fronde, Harvard 2008, p.35  68.  Tryntjie Helfferich, The Iron Princess, Harvard 2013, chapter 9 loc 3534  69.  Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early modern Europe, Susquehanna Univ Press 1999, p.61  70. Herve Drevillon, les roi absolu 1629–1715, Belin 2010, p.143  71.  Stephane Thion, Rocroi, Histoire and Collections, 2013, p.16  72.  Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War, Maquis de La Moussaye, LRT edition 2008, p.143   73. Stephane Thion, op. cit. Baron de Sirot, lieutenant general, Condé’s army, LRT edition 2008, p.140  74. Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, Blackwell 2001, p.192

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490  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648  75. C.V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years Wars, NYRB classics 2005, p. 454   76. Stephane Thion, op. cit. Baron de Sirot, lieutenant general, Condé’s army, LRT edition 2008, p.142   77. William P. Guthrie, Later Battles of the Thirty Years War, Greenwood 1970, p.177.   78. Stephane Thion, op. cit. Maquis de Moussaye, LRT edition 2008, p.145   79. Stephane Thion, op. cit. Baron de Sirot, lieutenant general, Condé’s army, LRT edition 2008, p.142   80. Stephane Thion, op. cit. Maquis de Moussaye LRT edition 2008, p.146   81. Stephen Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years War, 2014, p.154  82. William P.Guthrie, Last Battles of the Thirty Years War, Greenwood 1970, p.178   83. Stephane Thion, op. cit. Maquis de Moussaye, LRT edition 2008, p. 146   84. Ibid, p. 146   85. Jean Marie Moriceaux, La Memoire des Croquant, Tallandier 2018, p.501  86.  Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis 1598–1648, Blackwell 1990, p.192   87. C.V. Wedgewood, op. cit. NYRB classics 2005, p.458   88. Stephen Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years War, 2014, p.154  89. Laurence Spring, The Bavarian army during the thirty years war 1618-1648, Helio, 2017  90.  John Watts de Peyster, Life of Leonard Torstensson, 1st published 1855, Rarebooksclub 2012  91. Ibid   92. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.628   93. William P. Guthrie, Later Battles of the Thirty Years War, Greenwood Press 2001, p.108  94. C.V. Wedgewood, The Thirty Years War, NYRB 2005, p.448   95. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, Sources, Palgrave 2010, p.254, Friedriche Flade   96. Ibid, p.254, Friedriche Flade   97. Ibid, p.254, Friedriche Flade   98. Stephen Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, op. cit. p.153   99. John Watts de Peyster, Life of Leonard Torstensson, Wrangel, 1st published 1855, Rarebooksclub 2012, p.44 100. Ibid Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, John Christian Ludwig, 1723, Leipzig, 101.  corpus iuris militaris, 2 vols, Allen Lane 2009, p.234–7 102. Ibid, p.236/237 Chapter XX: Torstensson’s War: the invasion of Denmark   1.  Michael Roberts, Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697, State papers, Arnold 1968, p.157   2. Jorg-Peter Findeisen, Axel Oxenstierna, Katz 2007   3. Ibid, p. 391    4. Michael Roberts, op. cit. p.156   5. Ibid, p.157   6. William Guthrie, Later Battles of the Thirty Years War, Praeger 2003, p.125   7. John Watts de Peyster, The Life of Leonard Torstensson, 1st published 1855, Rarebooksclub 2012, p.84

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Notes 491   8. Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War documents, Halleck 2009, 25th January 1644, Halleck 2009, Von Krosigk to Mazarin, p.221   9.  NRNN   10. Prof Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War, documents, Palgrave 2010, p.294   11. The Spanish Cardinal Infante and the future Ferdinand III had only been in nominal command at Nordlingen.  12. NRNN  13. Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism 15th to 18th century, The Wheels of Commerce, Univ of California, 1992   14. TMAO 1, p,234.  15. Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, documents, Halleck 2009, p.227  16.  Derek Croxton, Westphalia, The Last Christian Peace, Palgrave 2013, p.92  17.  John Watts de Peyster, Life of Leonard Torstensson, 1st published 1855, Rarebooksclub 2012, p.93, Skanduinaska Handlingar part V, p.191  18. Ibid   19. Paul Douglas Lockhart, Christian IV, Denmark in the Thirty Years War: Christian IV, Susquehanna Press 1995, p.209  20. Guthrie, Later battles of the Thirty Years War, Praeger 2003, p. 127   21. Paul Douglas Lockhart, Christian IV, Denmark in the Thirty Years War: Christian IV, Susquehanna Press 1995, p.210  22. Puffendorf   23. Paul Douglas Lockhart, Christian IV, Denmark in the Thirty Years War: Christian IV, Susquehanna Press 1995, p.207  24. Ibid, p.207–8  25. Paul Lewis, Queen of Caprice, Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1962, Christina memoires, p.23  26. Ibid, p.29  27. Michael Roberts, Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697, State Papers, Arnold 1968, p.17  28. Paul Lewis, Queen of Caprice, Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1962, p.31   29. Ibid, Christina memoires, p.32  30.  Georgina Masson, Queen Christina, Secker and Warburg 1968, Christina memoires, p.58   31. Paul Lewis, op. cit. p.37  32.  Ibid, p.38  33. Veronica Buckley, Christina, Queen of Sweden, Harper 2005, Chapter: Warring and Peace, Kindle loc 1594   34. Georgina Masson, op. cit. p.75 Chapter XXI: war and Peace: Mazarin and France ascendant    1. Thomas Longeuville and Francis Lloyd 1907, Turenne, Kessinger 2007, Madame to Motteville p.36   2. Ibid, p.24   3. Madamoiselle de Montpensier, Memoires, internet archive section 73 chapter IL   4.  Rochefoucauld, comte de, Memoires Chapter II   5.  de Motville Memoires   6. De Bussy-Rabutin, comte, Memoires, Mercure de France 2010, p.111   7.  Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War, LRT edition 2008, Manuscript MS933 at Chantilly, p.163

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492  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648   8. Simone Bertiere, Condé-le hero fourvoye, Edition Fallois 2007, p. 150   9. Ibid, p.112   10. De Bussy-Rabutin, comte, Memoires, Mercure de France 2010, p.117  11. Derek Croxton, The Last Christian Peace, Palgrave 2013, p.95  12. Jakob Grimmelshausen, The Singular life of a headless hopalong, 1670, Wayne State 1981, p.72  13. Stephane Thion, French Armies in the Thirty Years War, LRT edition 2008,  14. Ibid, p.99  15.  Ibid, p.153  16. Ibid, Marquis de la Moussaye Memoires, p.148  17.  Ibid  18.  Ibid   19. Jakob Grimmelshausen, op. cit. p.72   20. Stephane Thion, op. cit. p.153  21.  Ibid  22. Ibid, p.150  23. Ibid, p.112   24. Longeuville and Lloyd 1907, Turenne. Eye witness Marquis de Moussaye, LRT edition 2008, p.73   25. Stephane Thion, op. cit.  26. Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis, Yale 2013, The Placenta of the crisis Part I, A third of the world has died, Killing Fields, Kindle loc 2773   27. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p. 682   28. Stephane Thion, op. cit. p.150  29. Ibid, de Gramont, p.154  30. Ibid, p.154   31. Jean Berenger, Fayard 1987, p.205  32. A. Klaus, Maximilian, Styria Pustet 1990, p. 267  33. Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe, Cardinal Mazarin and the Westphalian Congress, Susquehanna 1999, p.64  34. Ibid, p.128   35. Ibid, Mercy, p.130  36. Derek Croxton, Westphalia, The Last Christian Peace, Palgrave 2013, p.177   37. Olaf van Nimwegen, Dutch Armies and Military Revolutions, Boydell 2010, p.272  38.  John Watts de Peyster, Life of Leonard Torstensson, 1st published 1855, Rarebooksclub 2012   39. Ibid, Torstensson writing to the Rad  40.  Count Orlata, The life of Lennart Torstenson, 1855   41. Erik Geijer, Torstensson battle report 27 March, History of the Swedes,   42. John Watts de Peyster, op cit.  43. Ibid, p.146   44. William P. Guthrie, The Later Thirty Years War, Greenwood 2003, p.137  45. Ibid, p.138   46. Erik Geijer, op. cit.   47. John Watts de Peyster, op. cit. p.147  48.  Major-General J.B.A. Bailey [Royal Artillery], Field artillery and Firepower chapter II, 2004, p.9   49. John Watts de Peyster, op. cit. p.142

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Notes 493  50. Official letter from Prague after the battle, History of the Swedes, Geijer W.P. Guthrie, Greenwood 2003, p.141   51. Prof Peter Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, Allen Lane 2009, p.695   52. The castle where Richard the Lionheart, king of England, was made prisoner and the place where supposedly his favourite minstrel Blondel had discovered the whereabouts of his master by playing his lute outside one of the towers. After his release he made his way back to England.   53. Derek Croxton, op. cit. p.267  54.  Jean Berenger, Turenne, Fayard 1987, p.214  55.  Stephane Thion, French Armies of the Thirty Years War, Ramsay, Contemporary History of the Count of Turenne, LRT edition 2008, p.107   56. Thomas Longeuville and Francis Lloyd 1907, Turenne, Kessinger 2007, p.81  57.  Ibid, p.84   58. Derek Croxton, op. cit. p.186  59. Jean Berenger, Turenne, Fayard 1987, p.214  60. Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe, Cardinal Mazarin and the Westphalian Congress, Susquehanna 1999, p.159   61. Count Barbarino during Bocskai uprising 1605, p.22  62. Derek Croxton, Westphalia, The Last Christian Peace, Palgrave 2013, p.207  63.  Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe, Cardinal Mazarin and the Westphalian Congress, Susquehanna 1999, Brienne, p.189  64.  Derek Croxton, Westphalia, The Last Christian Peace, Palgrave 2013, p.176  65. Ibid, p.177   66. Prof Peter Wilson, op. cit. p.701  67.  Stephane Thion, de Gramont Memoires, LRT edition 2008, p.158  68. Ibid, Turenne Memoirs, 8, p.155   69. Thomas Longeuville and Francis, Lloyd, op. cit. p.94   70. Stephane Thion, op. cit. p.156  71.  Ibid  72.  Ibid, p.158  73. Ibid, p.156  74.  Ibid, Count de Gramont, Memoires, p.159  75. Guthrie, Later Battles of the Thirty Years War, Preager 2001, p.221  76.  Thomas Longeuville and Francis Lloyd 1907, Turenne, Napoleon, Kessinger 2007, p.94  77.  Stephane Thion, Gramont, Memoires, LRT edition 2008, p.159  78.  Ibid, p.159  79.  Ibid, Turenne Memoires, p.157  80. Ibid, p.157  81. Ibid, p.157  82. Ibid, p.157  83. Jean Berenger, Turenne, Fayard 1987, p.219   84. Stephane Thion, op. cit. p. 157   85. Thomas Longeuville and Francis Lloydop, op. cit. p.98   86. Stephane Thion, op. cit. p.157   87. Mme de Motville, Memoires   88.  Comte de Bussy-Rabutin, mercure de France 2010, p.94   89. Mme de Motville memoires/Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe, Susquehanna 1999 p.180

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494  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648   90. Stephane Thion, op. cit. p.97; Duffy, Siege Warfare, Routledge 1996, p.129  91. Olaf van Nimegen, Dutch Armies and Military Revolutions 1588–1688, Boydell 2010, p.279  92.  Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe, Cardinal Mazarin and the Westphalian Congress, Susquehanna 1999, p.169 Chapter XXII: The conference at Westphalia   1.  Michael Roberts, Oxenstirna in Germany 1633–36, Scandia 2008, p105 .RRP, VIII. 333. and 571–3.   2. Tryntje Hlfferich, The Thirty Years War, a documentary history, Hackett 2009, p. 239 point 9 doc 33   3.  Derek Croxton and Anuschka Tischer, The Peace of Westphalia, a historical dictionary, Greenwood 2003, p.233   4.  Derek Croxton, Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe, Cardinal Mazarin and the Westphalian Congress, Susquehanna 1999   5. Tryntje Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, a Documentary History, Hackett, 2009. p.239 doc 33   6. Tryntje Hlfferich, The Iron Princess, Amalia Elisabeth and The Thirty Years War, Harvard 2013   7. Jean Berenger, Turenne, Fayard 1987, p.230–23 Chapter XXIII: Peace and the end of Habsburg Supremacy in Europe   1.  R .A. Stradling, The Armada of Flanders, Spanish Maritime Strategy, Estanbanillo 1639, Cambridge 2004, p.222   2. Mme de Motville, Memoires   3. Koenigsberger, Early modern Europe, Longman 1999, p.219   4.  Istran Imreh, History of Early modern Transylvania, Agrarian Bylaws, Atlantic Research 2011   5. Jan Komensky, [Comenius], To our oppressors, Cauly 1995, p.262   6. Colin Woodard. The War Over Plunder: Who Owns Art Stolen in War? History.net   7. Veronica Buckley, Christina, Queen of Sweden, Harper 2005, Kindle Lock 1640, ‘And send it on here’, Cavalli-Bjorkman, La collection de la Reine Christine a Stockholm1999   8. David Maland, Europe in the Seventeenth Century, St Martins press 1969, p.16, Norman Davis, Europe, 1997, p.568 Chapter XXIV: Postcript, the Struggle for the mastery European and European identity   1. Brendan Simms, Europe, The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453–to the Present, Nial Ferguson, C, Competition Chapter 1, p.19–49 Competition Chapter 1, p.19–49, Allen Lane 2013   2. Ibid   3. Ibid    4. Sir Richard Evans, Review of Prof Simm’s, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, The Guardian 23 May 2013   5. A.J.P. Taylor, The struggle for Mastery in Europe, OUP 1954, Intoduction b2    6. Treaty of Rome 1957, Preamble followed by Article 2. Strongly reinforced by the Lisbon and Maastricht Treaties and other joint declarations.

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Notes 495   7.  Nial Ferguson, Civilisation, Penguin 2012, Competition Chapter 1, p.19–49   8. Wolfgang Munchau, Grim Lessons of the Thirty Years War, Financial Times 28 December 2011   9. Rene Pfister, Der Speigel, 19 May 2019  10.  Yanis Varoufakis, The Adults in the Room, Random House 2017  11.  NRNN  12. Henry Kissinger, Diplomat, Simon and Schuster 1994   13. Jean Claude Junker, 30 May 2016, unguarded comments to presss  14. William Shakespeare, King Henry IV Part I, 1597

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Index Acapulco, 51, 259, 261, 265, 282 Aceh, 253, 262, 266, 268 Africa, 8–10, 20, 61–2, 250, 252, 254, 257–8, 260, 263, 273, 286, 288, 291, 449, 451 Albuquerque, Alfonso de, 262, 354, 355 Aldringen, Johann, general, 125, 145, 150, 154, 162, 165, 169 Allerheim, 205, 396, 426, 430–4, 436, 438, 439, 442 Alsace, 4–6, 8, 10, 14, 33, 35, 69, 106, 147, 152–3, 166–7, 169, 175, 182, 217, 229, 239, 242, 245–7, 324, 326, 340, 349, 395, 401, 438, 443, 448 Alte Veste, battle, 147, 156–7, 359–60, 432 Amboyna/Ambon, 253, 257, 266, 277 Amelia, Landgravine of Hesse, 297, 306, 309, 325, 381, 394, 439, 443 America, 10–11, 15, 17, 23, 31, 47, 50–1, 159, 191, 252–5, 273, 281, 286, 289, 293, 319, 452, 461 Amiens, 202, 204, 215, 310–11 Amsterdam, 32, 46, 59, 61–4, Angola, 260, 237, 312 Anhalt, 47, 67–8 Anne of Austria, 51, 110, 116, 121, 127, 214, 324, 339, 341, 342 (p.342 typo grammar) Antwerp, 19, 46, 59, 71, 134, 138, 229, 234, 236, 298, 308, 409 Arminian, 220, 237, 312 Arnim, Hans George von, general, 84, 95, 146–7, 157, 162 Arras, 106, 120, 213, 306–308, 339–40, 352, 409 Augsburg, 12, 22, 28–30, 40–1, 112–13, 124, 153–4, 169, 243, 322, 326, 396, 451 Aulic Council, 13, 31, 39, 57

The Thirty Years War.indd 496

Austria, 13, 31–2, 34–5, 45, 51, 53, 55, 58, 67, 73, 75, 82, 91, 107–113, 116, 121, 123, 125, 127, 139, 147, 150, 155, 165, 176–7, 192, 201, 214, 230, 233, 320, 322–4, 329, 341–2, 366–7, 369, 410, 412, 422, 429, 438, 442, 448, 451–2, 457 Bahia, 51, 283, 286, 289–90 Baltic, 3, 15, 32–4, 36, 44, 56, 60–2, 70, 83–7, 89–90, 92, 95, 97–9, 101, 103, 114, 125, 136–7, 139, 142, 148, 180, 184, 194, 196, 227, 251, 281, 285, 299, 301, 365–8, 377–8, 381–6, 388–90, 402, 448, 450–1 Bamberg, 153, 171, 243, 396 Bandas, 250, 253, 256–7, 254, 259, 261, 266, 271–4 Baner, Johan, general, 146, 153, 163, 175, 181, 195–7, 217, 220–5, 227–8, 297–8, 232, 306, 309–10, 322, 361, 370, 412 Barcelona, 313–15, 330 Batavia, 263–4, 268–9, 272, 274 Baudissin, colonel, 196, 198 Bavaria, 5, 30–4, 36–7, 39, 42, 44–5, 57, 66–8, 70–1, 80, 86, 99–100, 103, 109, 111, 124–5, 140–1, 145–54, 156–8, 164, 166, 168–70, 174–6, 182, 195, 198, 200–201, 217, 238, 242–3, 247, 293–4, 297–8, 309, 324–5, 350, 357–9, 379, 381, 395–7, 401–402, 404, 424–7, 430–6, 438, 444, 448, 451–2, 457, 466–7 Bay of Bengal, 11, 251, 253, 257, 262–3, 324 Beaufort, duc de, soldier, courtier, 337, 343–4, 346–9, Benfeld, 147, 153, 169–70, 182, 245, 395–6

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Index 497 Benguela, 286, 288 Berlin, 175, 196, 221, 254, 365, 367, 458, 464 Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania see Gabor Black Forest, 166, 235, 240–1, 243, 298, 357, 395–6, 446 Braganza, Duke, 43, 277, 317 Brasil, 47, 51–2, 59, 61, 255, 260, 273, 280–1, 284–6, 289–91, 299–300, 302, 305, 449 Breda, 133, 238, 394 Breisach, 6, 14, 147, 166, 178, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 242–8, 297–8, 300, 340, 349–50, 357, 359, 384, 395, 398, 401, 403, 406, 443 Breisgau, 235, 240–3, 407, 443 Breitenfeld, battle of, 75, 81, 145–7, 150, 152, 165, 176, 182, 238, 360, 371–4, 378 Bremen, 365, 367, 383, 389–90, 442, 448 Brno, 18, 82, 365–7, 425, 427–9 Brunswick, 17, 39, 195, 211, 232, 297, 306, 309–10 Buckingham, 1st Duke, George Villiers, 49, 72, 109, 122, 127, 332, 338 Bucquoy, count, General, 53, 68–9 Burgundy, 1, 8, 32, 167, 204, 228, 244–5, 308 Burma, 61, 251, 258–9, 262–4 Bussy-Rabutin, Roger, Comte de, 42, 51, 117, 122, 178, 185–6, 189, 210, 228, 279, 301, 308, 312, 345, 348, 357, 399–400, 437, 446, 462 Brussels, 42, 51, 122, 178, 185–6, 189, 279, 301, 312, 345, 348, 357, 462 Calvin/Calvinism/Calvinist, 2, 22–4, 27–30, 32, 35–6, 41–2, 45, 58, 63, 65, 67, 69, 78, 104, 109, 111, 124, 127, 139–40, 183–4, 198–200, 220, 230–1, 239, 276, 297, 309, 311, 325, 335, 394, 439, 442–3, 451, 460 camphor, 259, 271, 276, 280, 384, Campion, Henri, soldier and conspirator, 188, 208, 216–18, 228, 245, 295–6, 336–7, 347, 446 Cardinal Infante, 166, 169–70, 173, 178, 185–6, 189–90, 286, 301, 342, 370

The Thirty Years War.indd 497

Caribbean, 10, 15, 17, 46, 52, 62, 250, 252, 255, 273, 281, 283–4, 295 Caron, Francois, VOC agent in Japan, 261, 279–80 Carpathians, 18–19, 69, 81–2, 280 Cartegena, 284–6 Casale (Monferrato), 125–6, 128, 216, 286, 330, 332, 335, 349 Castile/Castilian, 13, 252, 267, 286, 289, 313–15, 319 Catalan (s), 289, 313–14, 317, 319, 330, 444, 461–2, 487 Cerro Rico, 8, 11, 46, 281, 286, 291 Ceylon, 9, 11, 250, 256, 260, 264–5, 269, 275, 277, 390 Chalais, comte de, courtier, 110–11, 120, 122, 214, 265, 310 Channel, the English, 134, 166, 170, 220, 247–8, 281, 292, 299–301, 304, 368, 392, 409, 445 Charlemagne, 9–10, 26, 33, 40, 454, 465 Charles I, King of England, 41, 72, 85, 149, 220, 227, 248, 297 Charles V, emperor, 8, 10–13, 20, 22–4, 30, 113, 132, 409, 466 Charles, Duke of Lorraine, 71, 132, 169, 173, 176, 182, 185, 191, 199, 234, 244–6, 248, 279, 298, 312, 316, 358, 395, 433, 441 Châteauneuf, Marquiss de, de L’Aubspine, diplomat and state official, 153, 337, 345, 348 Chavigny, Leon Bouthillier, de, diplomat, 213, 344 Chemnitz, Bogislav von, soldier, political scientist, polemiscist, 158–60, 306, 361, 375, 382–3, 386, 388–9, 412 Chevreuse, duchesse, Marie de Rohan, political cabalist and intriguer, 43, 107, 110–11, 116, 119, 121–2, 127, 214, 248, 310, 337, 341–9, 352 Christian IV of Denmark, 33, 36, 72, 77, 80, 83, 85–6, 88, 90, 99, 107, 109, 376–7, 379–80, 384–9 Christina, of Savoy, regent following death of Emmanuel, sister of Louis XIII, 102, 219, 223, 334–5 Christina, Vasa, Queen of Sweden, 163, 368, 390–3, 429, 450

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498  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Cinnamon, 250, 260, 265, 269, 275, 354 Coen, Jan, Pieterszoon, VOC Governor general, 261–3, 271–4, 27–7, 299 Collaltro, comte de, Ramboldo XIII, venetian defector to the Emperor, 125–6 Cologne, 9, 35, 112, 114, 230, 306, 320, 340, 359, 396 Condé, Louis de Bourbon, duc d’Enghien, Grand Condé, 330, 341, 343–4, 346, 349–57, 395–6, 398–408, 420, 430–4, 436, 441, 444–6, 449 Copper, 34, 52, 61–2, 141–3, 259–60, 263, 269, 277, 292, 378 Coromondel, 269 Counter-Reformation, 1, 8, 24, 27, 29–33, 35–6, 41, 44–5, 56, 68–70, 74–5, 89–91, 93, 104, 108, 111–14, 129, 178, 183, 198, 384, 451–3, 456–7, 462, 466 Coutres de, Jacques, merchant adventurer, writer, adviser on Asia, 52, 265–6 Croats, 156, 158–60, 166, 170, 172, 175–6, 209, 216, 227, 245, 308, 325, 371–2, 413, 456 Croquant, 286, 292, 289 Cuba, 284, 299 Czech, 21, 24, 54, 69, 71, 73, 77, 164–5, 449–50 Dampierre*, Heinrich von, Imperial general, 53 Danube, 3, 18, 82, 147, 150, 154, 155, 171, 309, 358, 365, 367, 421–3, 430 Danzig, 61, 92, 96–8, 101, 360, 365–7 Day of the Dupes, 128, 131–2, 348 de Geer, Jakob, Swedish industrialist of Dutch origin, 62, 142, 378, 382, 386, 389 de Sa, Brasilian soldier and magnate, 285, 289, 292 Defenestration of Prague, 7, 44, 46, 54, 66, 74, 250, 465 Denmark, Danish, 33–4, 39, 43–4, 56, 72, 86–7, 93, 96–8, 109, 143, 194, 294, 359, 379, 367, 376–84, 386–8, 390–2, 401, 427, 448

The Thirty Years War.indd 498

Dessau, 79–80, 238, 365, 367 Diet of Regensburg, 58, 123, 155, 320, 362 Directorate (Bohemia), 8, 44, 55, 66–7 Dole, 215, 228, 244, Donauwörth, 31, 37, 147, 436 Downs, battle, 134, 251, 290, 293, 301–303, 305, 357 Drake, Sir Francis naval commander, 15, 250–2 Ducal Prussia, 61, 91, 99, 390, Dunkirk, 15, 50, 52, 70, 136, 137, 183, 220, 234, 281, 285, 304–305, 317, 348, 409–10, 437, 441, 444–5 Dunkirkers, Privateers based in Dunkirk in Spanish Flanders, 136, 229, 303, 305 East Frisia, 200, 297 East India Company/EIC, 16, 59, 252–3, 258, 260, 273 Edict of Restitution, 75, 105–106, 111–13, 123–4, 140, 183, 322, 457, 466 Eggenburg, Prince Johann Ulrich, Imperial counsellor, 57, 75 El Mina, 283, 290–1 Elbe, river, 2–3, 14, 60, 78–81, 96, 140–1, 147, 158, 195–6, 221, 358, 363–4, 366–7, 379, 448, 50 Elizabeth I, 15, 120, 252, 254 Elizabeth of Palatine and Bohemia, Elizabeth Stuart, James I daughter, 35, 56, 68, 83, 144 Emmanuel, of Savoy, ruler, 53 Erfurt, 147, 150, 161, 238, 318, 365–7, 386, 389 Erlach, Johann Ludwig von, SaxeWeimar’s senior officer, Swiss, 296–7, 403 Estado da India, 25, 255, 257, 260–1, 264, 266, 268, 272, 279–81, 293, 316 Estates General (Dutch Republic’s estates), 16–17, 19, 22, 31, 120, 190, 200, 277, 291, 309, 312, 321, 323, 350, 386, 410 Fadrique de Toldeo, Marquess de Valdueza, admiral, 285, 289–90

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Index 499 Father Joseph, 51, 120, 193, 247, 333 Ferdinand II, 29, 30, 32–3, 35, 41–2, 44–5, 53, 55–9, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69–70, 74, 85, 113, 123, 125, 139–40, 155, 165, 168, 181, 185, 197–8, 200, 464 Ferdinand III, 173, 199, 226–7, 230–3, 257, 297, 306, 324–5, 382, 413, 422–3, 429–30, 458, 464–8 Feria, duke of, 71, 166–7, 239, 285 Finland, 87, 90, 97, 139, 142 Fishing, 59, 63, 70, 136 Flanders, 142, 165–6, 170, 178, 188, 194, 202, 211, 215, 217, 219, 226, 229, 234, 237, 247, 274, 281, 285, 290, 295–6, 298–9, 301–305, 307, 316, 319, 323–4, 338, 350, 362, 409–10, 437–8, 441, 443–4 Flores island, 11, 257, 271, 276 Formosa, 10, 265, 271 Franche-Comté 1–2, 4–6, 10, 14, 33, 106–107, 188, 194, 200, 215, 228–9, 234, 308, 328–9, 441, 443, 448 Frankfort-an-Oder, 3, 139, 328, 360 Frankfurt, 150–1, 163, 169, 175, 181, 191, 217, 243, 362, 363, 395, 440 Frederick Henry, of Orange, stadtholder, 133, 135, 178, 189–90, 229, 237, 298, 308–309, 348, 357, 394, 400, 437 Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and King of Bohemia, ‘winter King’, 34, 36, 41–42, 44–5, 55, 66–7, 69, 71–2, 133, 135, 144, 152, 178, 184, 189–90, 231, 253, 324 Freiburg, 166, 205, 243, 359, 395, 362, 395, 401, 403–404, 406–408, 433–4 Frisches Haff* not Freisiches Haff, 94, 96–100 Fronde, French civil war, 209, 400, 413, 446, 451 Gabelle, 207 Gabor, Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania, 18, 27, 32, 36, 67–9, 81–2, 363, 384, 412, 429 Gallas, Count von Campo, Imperial general, Trento-Italy, 158, 162, 166, 168–9, 172–3, 191, 207, 215–17, 229, 367, 374–5, 382, 384–8, 412–13, 425

The Thirty Years War.indd 499

Galleons, 234, 253, 255, 266–7, 272, 284–5, 300–301, 303–304, 317 Gassion de, 120, 209, 351–2, 355, 437 Gaston d’Orlean, Monsieur, 110, 114–15, 122, 128, 130–2, 182, 188, 211, 213–14, 228, 310, 337, 339–41, 344, 398–9 Geer, de, 62, 142, 378, 382, 386, 389, Genoa, 4, 6, 8, 13, 42, 52, 55, 109, 328, 330, 333 George William, Elector of Brandenburg, 28, 176, 183, 362 Glogau, 5, 364, 366, 368, 370, 380, 382 Goa, 257, 260, 263–9, 272, 275–6, 280, 292 Goding, battle of, 18, 81–2, 362 Golden Bull, 39, 457 Gollersdorf Agreement, 83, 155, 164 Gotz, 198–9, 229, 239, 242–5, 258, 246, 367, 382, 384, 411–13, 416–17, 419–21, 427 Gradisca, 18, 74, 82, 164, 330 Gramont, count de, 216, 312, 402–403, 406–407, 431–4 Grey leagues, 2, 6, 191, 218 Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob, soldier, novelist-raconteur, 64, 401, 405 Grisons, 107, 109, 123, 191, 218–19, 326 Guébriant, comte Jean Baptist de* Guelphs, 183, 226–7, 232, 297, 306, 310, 324 Gustavus Adolphus, 25, 34, 36, 51, 85– 95, 98–101, 103, 125–6, 132, 139–69, 175, 179, 194–5, 197, 199, 244, 285, 328, 359–61, 363, 370, 373–4, 377, 391, 393, 416, 420, 429 Hagendorff, 27, 110, 153, 174–5, 215–17, 241 Halberstadt, 71, 200, 383, 386, 389 Halland, 389–90 Hamburg, 197, 320–1, 342, 362–3, 363, 387, 389 Harcourt, comte de, 211, 330, 333, 335, 363 Haro, count, 47, 319 Hatzfeldt, 158, 221, 225, 249, 365–6, 381, 411–21

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500  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Havana, 15, 281–2, 284–6, 302 Heidelberg, 42, 72, 147, 217, 243, 152 Heilbronn, and League of, 77, 175–6, 180–4, 197, 426 Henri IV, 30 Hereditary lands, 4, 10, 12, 57–8, 78, 162, 226, 322, 363, 367–8, 374, 397, 420, 442, 448, 452, 466 Hesse, 5, 28, 36, 39, 139, 142, 147, 150, 168–9, 176, 181, 183–4, 198, –200, 220–1, 227, 230–3, 242, 297, 306, 309, 320–1, 325, 350, 358, 381, 389, 394–7, 408, 422, 424, 426, 439, 442, 448, 451, 453 Hesse-Darmstadt, 36, 169, 181, 230–1, 242, 325, 381, 426 Hohenlohe, extensive Swabian aristocratic family, famous for fickle loyalties in the war, 66, 68, 176, 184, 227 Honnecourt, battle of, 2, 134 Hooghly, 237 Hormuz, 257, 263, 277, 279 Horn, von Björneborg Gustav, Finnish general, 146––8, 153, 163, 167, 169–71, 173, 175, 238, 310, 377, 380 Hradany Palace*, 7, 76, 450 Huguenot, 26, 30, 39, 41, 43, 51, 103–11, 117, 119, 123, 131, 248–9, 428 Iberian, 177, 251–2, 290, 293, 313, 315, 317, 319 Imperial War Council, 125, 382 Indian Ocean, 10, 15, 250, 257, 259, 268–9 Ingolstadt, 112, 153, 154, 309, 436 Ingria, 87–9, 98 Inn, river, 6, 13, 55, 158, 166, 192 Inquisition, 50, 52, 58–9, 317 Intendants, 120–1, 177, 197, 205–206, 208, 210 Iron, 61, 141–3, 256, 301 Isolani, count Johann von Croat, cavalry commander, 146, 158–9, 176 Italy, 1, 6, 10, 20, 25–6, 28, 32, 37, 42–3, 53–6, 70, 107, 115, 127–8, 131, 139, 165–6, 168, 170, 175, 185–6, 192, 195, 202, 204–205, 209, 218–19, 273, 314, 317, 321, 325, 327, 329, 331, 333–5,

The Thirty Years War.indd 500

339–41, 343–5, 347, 349, 353, 355, 357, 359, 361, 363, 365, 367, 373, 441, 456, 463, Itamarca, Brasil, 287, 305 James I, and VI of Scotland, Stuart son of Mary Queen of Scots, 35, 44, 45, 72, 144, 258, 442 Jamtland, 86, 385, 389, 402 Japan, 9, 11, 143, 148, 251, 256, 259, 261–3, 265, 271, 276, 279, 293 Java, 11, 253, 258–9, 262–3, 265–6, 273–4, 277 Jenatsch, Jörg, Swiss pastor, soldier and political leader, 191, 218, 219 Jesuit, 2, 7, 28, 30–3, 41, 48, 53, 56–7, 74, 85, 90, 111–12, 114, 155, 181, 219, 266, 270–1, 289, 327, Jews, 34, 50, 52, 61 John George, Elector of Saxony, 30, 35–6, 58, 66, 140–1, 145, 147, 150, 157–8, 163, 176, 183–4, 196, 198, 219, 231, 237, 382, 385–6 Johor, Malay sultanate, 251, 253, 256, 265–7, 269 Jutland, 83, 96, 98, 367, 378–80, 382, 385–6 Kallo, nr Antwerp, 236, 237 Kempten, 169 Knyphausen, Dodo von, Field Marsh Swedish army, 160–1, 163, 168, 198 Koblenz, 408, 153, 169, 182 Kongo 251, 288–9, 291–2 Koniecpolski, Stanislaw, nobleman, Hetman-soldier Königsmarck, count, Hans Christoff von, General and cavalry commander, 99, 366–7, 370, 382, 386, 388, 396, 426, 429–30, 444 Konstanz, 13, 165–6, 169, 359 Krosigk, Adolph von, Hessian official and diplomat, 81 La Rochelle, 127, 428 Lamormaini, Wilhelm, Jesuit confessor to Ferdinand II, 169, 200, 230–1, 297, 306, 426, 443

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Index 501 Landgravine, 169, 200, 230–1, 297, 306, 426, 443 Languedoc, 206, 208, 229, 294–5, 319, 331, 409 Larantuka, Flores Island, 271, 276, 280 Leipzig, 140–1, 145–6, 157, 159–63, 366, 370, 374–5, 382, 386, 389, 430, 436, 443 Lens, 312, 400 Leopold, Archduke, of son of Ferdinand II and Austria, young brother of Ferdinand III, 364, 366, 370–1, 374, 397, 413, 423, 430, 436, 443 Lerida, (lleda), 319, 444 Leslie, Scottish general, 193, 221–25, Lisbon, 52, 266–8, 272, 274, 283, 289–90, 293, 300, 316–17 Livonia (Latvia), 86–7, 90, 93, 98, 142–3, 195, 377, 359–60, 390 Lorraine, 2, 4–6, 33, 44, 106–107, 111, 117, 121, 127, 134, 151, 153, 169, 172, 176, 182, 188, 191, 216–17, 307, 312, 324, 326, 340, 349, 394, 441 Louis XIII, 33, 41, 48, 51, 72, 104–110, 114–18, 120–2, 127–32, 142, 152, 163, 167, 176–7, 182–3, 186, 205, 211, 213, 219, 299, 306–307, 315, 330, 332, 337–8, 340–2, 344, 349, 352–3, 362, 399–400 Luanda, 257, 286, 288, 291–2 Lusatia, 5, 10, 66, 139, 183, 364–6 Luther/an, 22–5, 27, 35 Lutheranism, 2, 12, 22, 29–30, 33, 35–6, 58, 66, 69–70, 89–91, 140, 169, 176, 181, 183–4, 199, 230, 233, 259, 359, 364 Lutter, 33, 80, 238 Lützen*, 238, 360, 374, 403 Luxembourg, 6, 8, 10, 45, 55, 66, 106, 130, 134, 147, 152, 182, 298–9, 306, 312, 339, 352, 356, 441 Luynes, duc de, soldier, courtier to Louis XIII, 104–105, 115, 121 Macau, 257, 259–60, 265, 268, 270-1, 277, 280 Mace, 257, 259–60, 277 Machiavelli, Niccolo, political scientists, 23, 27, 49, 117, 352, 337, 466

The Thirty Years War.indd 501

Madrid, 52, 72, 125, 167, 177, 267, 289, 305, 310, 313 Magdeburg, 36, 141, 175, 183, 189, 195–6, 216, 220, 227, 241, 315, 364–7, 369, 383, 387–8, 458, Mainz, 35, 147, 151–2, 359, 395, 408 Makassar, Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, 252, 257–8, 262, 266, 277, 280, 390 Malacca, 252, 257, 26o–1, 264–9, 271, 276, 280 Malay (archipelago) Mansfeld, count, Ernst, infamous mercenary, 18, 42, 66, 69–73, 79–82, 368–9 Mantua, 2, 3, 6, 104, 123–9, 131, 139–40, 145, 226, 330–3, 335, 448, Mantua/Mantuan war, 2–3, 6, 104, 123–8, 131, 139–40, 145, 226, 321, 330–3, 335, Marburg, 36, 232, 325, 397, 439, 442 Mardyk, 304, 399, 437, 445 Marie de Medici, 30, 104–105, 114–16, 118–19, 132, 214, 340, 343 Marillac, Royal Council, superindendant de finance, devot faction and his half brother Louis de Marillac, Marshal, 120, 129–32 Matanzas, 52, 284–5, 299 Matelieff, de Jong, Cornelius, admiral, 256, 261–2, 266, 268 Mauritz/Maurice of Nassau-Siegen, Governor of Brasil, 289, 394 Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, 10, 36, 41–2, 44, 57, 66–7, 69–70, 73, 78, 80, 112, 124–5, 147, 150–1, 153–5, 201, 234, 397, 401, 407, 415, 423, 430, 436, 457 Mecklenburg, 73, 96, 155, 183–4, 197, 226, 322, 365, 386 Mekong, 277–8, 290 Melander, 230, 306, 444 Melo, Francisco de, gov general of Spanish Flanders, and general. Portuguese nobleman, 294, 312, 316, 351–7 Mercy, Franz von, Bavarian general, 340, 357–9, 373, 387, 395–6, 401–405, 408, 423–6, 430, 431–2, 434, 436, 438, 446

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502  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Messaye, Marquess, senior officer, 95, 98, 101 Mewe, battle of, nr Danzig, 95, 98, 101 Mexico, 10, 254, 259, 282, 285 Milan, 4, 6, 8, 13, 53, 55, 82, 110, 125–6, 187, 192 Military frontier, with Ottoman Empire, 18, 83 Ming, dynasty in China, 76, 260, 266 Mitzlav, colonel, Danish commander, 81, 83 Moluccas, 252–4, 257–8, 263, 266–6 Munro, Robert, Scottish mercenary, 78, 85, 144–5, 148–9, 157, 160, 174, 360 Montecuccoli, Raimondo, Duke of Melfi, Italian commander, 370 Montpensier, Mme de, courtier and daughter of Gaston d’Orleans, duchess, anne louise de bourbon, diarist, 115, 338, 391, 398, 446 Monzon, treaty, 110, 319, 327 Moravia, 10, 18, 20, 66, 69, 74, 82, 139, 150, 294, 363–4, 366–7, 368–9, 376, 382, 389, 412, 422, 428, 430, 464 Morga, de Antonio, lawyer, official in the Philippines, 52 Motville de, Francoise, secretary to Anne of Austria, memoires, 116, 121, 211, 345–6, 348, 399, 437, 446 Mozambique, 260, 268–9 Mrauk-U, capital the old kingdom of Arakan, Burma, Rakhine province, 251, 257, 263–4, 269 Mughal, Empire northern Italy, 263–4 Munich, 112, 147, 153, 396–7, 422, 436, 455 Munster, 321, 325, 422, 438, 440, 442, 444, 446 Nagumbo, 265, 275 New Christians, 50, 52, 59, 64 Nickolsburg, 38 Nordlingen, 421, 426, 432, 436 Norway, 377, 457–8 nu pieds, ‘barefeet’ ie peasants, 209, 325 Nuremburg, 73, 147, 156–7, 396 Nutmeg, 250, 257, 259–61, 277

The Thirty Years War.indd 502

Oder, river, 3, 5, 60, 139, 150, 195, 221, 323, 358, 360, 362–8, 370, 412 Oldenbarnavelt, Johan, Grand pensionary of Holland, Dutch political leader for over 30 years, 16, 252, 256, 280, 294 Olivares, Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel, 1st Duke of Sanlúcar, 3rd Count of Olivares, known as the Count-Duke of Olivares, ruled Spain for 20 years, 1, 31, 41–55, 70, 72, 83, 107, 110, 114, 125, 127, 136–7, 150, 153, 165, 167, 169–70, 178, 185, 187, 190–1, 248, 289, 293–6, 301, 305, 311, 313–17, 319, 335, 339 Olomouc, 18, 82 Onate, 1, 8, 13, 42, 70, 113 Orange, Dutch ruling house, 16, 22, 133, 135, 149, 277, 281, 294, 312, 317, 348, 394 Osnabruck, 182, 221, 321, 376, 393, 422, 438–40, 442, 446 Ottoman (s), 4, 12, 18–20, 27, 32, 34, 34, 36, 53, 67, 82, 93, 99, 299, 383, 428, 438, 442 Oxenstierna, 92–93, 99, 102, 119, 124, 142–3, 152, 163, 168, 171, 175–6, 179– 81, 184, 193, 195–7, 220–1, 228, 238–9, 297, 310, 317, 320, 322, 323, 375–6, 378, 383–5, 391–3, 429, 440, 449 Paladin, 40, 70–1, 139, 237–8, 461 Papacy, 9–10, 24, 40, 91, 114, 129, 177, 250, 252, 320, 443 Pappenheim, Count zu, Gottfried Heinrich Imperialist general, 110, 135, 145, –9, 153, 158–60 Parma, Italy, 4, 25, 187–8, 219, 331 Paullette, 207 Pauw, Adriaen Pensionary of Holland and ambassador to France, 312, 321, 178–9, 190 Peace of Augsburg, 12, 22, 28–30, 112, 124, 326, 451, 460 Peace of Cherasco, 126 Peace of Prague, 183–7, 189, 191, 193, 195–8, 221, 230, –3, 242, 248, 309, 332

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Index 503 Pepper, 250, 257–9, 262–3, 265–6, 269, 277 Pernambuco, 51, 287, 290, 300 Perpignan, 236, 315, 319, 330, 338, 340, 398, 441 Persia, 9, 11, 20, 143, 257, 263, 269, 279, 293 Philip III, 1, 2, 5, 255, 257, 266–7, 342 Philip IV, 1, 25, 255, 257, 266–7, 342 Philippines, 8, 10, 252, 259, 280, 282, 458 Philippsburg, 169, 176, 426 Phnom Penh, 258, 262, 277–8 Piccolomini, Octavio, 1st Duke of Amalfi, Imperial general, related to a pope, 126, 154, 160, 165, 168, 172, 185, 189, 215–16, 298, 357, 363 Piet Hein, Dutch admiral, 52, 282, 284 Pilsen, 67, 189, 366–7, 413–14 Pinerolo, fortress, 127, 195, 330, 340, 349 Po, 2, 18, 82, 125–6 Poland, 63, 66–7, 89–91, 94, 96–7, 100–103, 114, 125, 179–80, 195, 220, 305, 359, 361, 364–7, 384, 390, 448, 453, 463, 468 Poligny, 324 Pomerania, 96, 139, 181, 183, 196, 199, 221, 322–3, 365, 367, 375–6, 379, 441–3 Pope, 9, 11–12, 20, 22, 24, 28, 30, 32–3, 56, 57, 91, 110, 112, 126, 331, 446, 453 Porte, 19–20, 428–9 Potosi, 8, 11, 46, 260, 273, 281, 283, 286–7, 289 Prague, 363–4, 412–14, 421, 438, 446, 449–50, 452 Protestant Union, 34–6, 42, 44, 55–6, 66, 460 Pskov, 87–9, 98 Pulicat, 263–5, 280 Pyrenees/Pyrenean, 107, 123, 236, 294, 338 Queen Nzinga of the Ndongo and Matamba, 288, 292, 251 Questenburg, Count von, Johan, 57, 150 Quiroga de San Antonio, 257

The Thirty Years War.indd 503

Rad, 323, 359, 375, 379, 392–3, 410, 412, 429 Rákóczi Georgi, 27, 383–4, 422, 427–9 Reform Church, 28, 127, 226, 326, 451 Regensburg, 58, 123, 125–6, 153, 155, 161, 166, 168–71, 226, 238, 309, 320, 362 Reichskammergericht, 13, 31, 183 Reichsofrat, 39, 183 Rembrandt, 62–3, 65 Retz, abbe/cardinal, 311, 340, 342, 346, 349, 446 Rheinfelden, 166, 195, 235, 239–43, 247, 330, 358, 408, 421 Riga, 34, 61, 86, 87, 93, 98–99, 359, 360 Rochefoucauld, Francois de la, Prince of Marcillac, courtier, soldier, memoires, 116–17, 122, 127, 189, 294, 214–15, 343, 345–6, 349, 351–3, 356, 400 Rocroi, 205, 209, 346, 349, 351–2, 356, 400 Rocroi, battle of, 205, 209, 346, 349, 351–3, 365, 400 Rohan, duc de, Protestant leader, soldier, military theorist, 127–8, 187, 191–2, 209, 218–19, 239, 241–2, 330 Romanov, Russian ruling house, 88–9, 103 Rosen, Reinhold von, Cavalry commander with Saxe-Weimar and Turenne, 245, 296, 395, 424–5, Rousillon, 4, 8, 10, 107, 123, 236, 245, 294–6, 315–16, 319, 334, 338, 340, 349, 409, 441 Rubens, Peter, Paul, artist and diplomat, 13, 54 Ruggen Island, 197 Rumania, 18, 82, 462 Russia, 50, 61, 86–9, 97–9, 144, 179, 180, 210, 390, 455, 458, 461, 463–4, 449, 461–2, 468 Safavid, Persian ruling house, 20, 279 Sagan, 73, 364 Salces, fotress on the Spanish French border, 294–6, 314, 330 Saltpetre, gun powder ingredient, 61, 210, 263–4, 269

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504  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 salva guardia, safe pass, protect guarantee payment Salvador, Brasil, 265, 287–90, 292 Salvius, Johan, 148, 362–3, 392, 438, 442 Sandalwood, 259, 271, 276, 280 Sandwip Island, 264, 258, 269 Sao Tome, 283, 290, 294, 317, 326, 328–31, 333–5, 341, 448, 463 Savoy, 6, 22, 42–4, 53, 56, 107, 109, 117, 126–7, 132, 195, 218–19, 294, 317, 326, 328–31, 333–5, 341, 448, 463 Saxe-Weimar, Bernhard von, Thuringian aristocracy, 36, 71, 139, 150, 152, 158, 160–1, 163, 167–72, 174–5, 177, 179, 181, 183–5, 191, 193, 216–17, 229, 234–5, 237–49, 296, 330, 358, 398, 403, 408 Schall, Adam, Jesuit and gunnery expert, 76, 271 Scheldt, river, 19, 46, 54, 71, 133, 298, 308 Scots/Scottish, 71–2, 84–5, 96, 98, 135, 137–8, 144–5, 152, 182, 193, 199, 221–2, 225–6, 297, 361 Servien, 322, 327, 350, 426, 429–30, 441 Shenkenshans, fortresss, 133, 185, 190, 220, 300 Shipbuilding, 20, 60, 143, 202, 204, 253, 262, 302 Shogun, 279, 300 Siam, 6, 258–9, 262, 264 Sicily, 4, 8, 10, 20, 294, 316, 318, 329 Sigismund, Vasa, King of Poland, deposed king of Sweden, 30, 36, 45, 83, 90–1, 114, 143, 359 Silesia, 150, 157–8, 162, 164, 227, 229, 316, 328, 363–6, 368–70, 379, 382–3, 386, 388–9, 410, 412, 429, 464 Silver, 11, 142–3, 259, 261–2, 264, 273, 281–2, 284, 286, 289, 291, 300–301, 358, 443, 450, 452 Sirot, baron de, soldier, memoires, 351, 353–4, 403, 405 Skane, 377, 380, 385 Slaves, 61, 81, 178, 254, 269, 271, 273–4, 280, 283, 286–7, 291–2 Soissons, comte de, Louis de Bourbon, soldier, rebel, 228, 245, 248, 310–12, 337, 340

The Thirty Years War.indd 504

Solor, fortress trading station, eastern end of Flores archipeligo, 271, 276 Sound, The, 36, 90, 96, 135, 137, 230, 335, 354, 362, 376–7, 379–82, 385–6, 389–90 Spanish Road, 6, 8, 13, 18, 31, 42, 55, 82, 109, 110, 125, 165, 166–9, 176, 187, 192, 219, 234, 237, 239, 241–3, 245–7, 249, 299–300, 324, 328, 333, 356, 408 Spice islands, 11, 15, 43, 252, 255, 257, 273 Spinoza, philosopher and lens grinder, 59, 61, 63–4 Stålhandske, Torsten, Finnish aristocrat, cavalry commander, 160, 222–4 Stelvio Pass, 6, 55, 166, 192, 397 Stettin, 139, 197, 227, 323, 363, 365, 367–8 Stralsund, 37, 84–5, 98, 103, 139, 195, 197, 409 Strumsdorf, truce of, 19, 180, 196 Sugar, 254, 259–60, 269, 281, 283, 286–7, 289–91, 300 Suhl, arms production centre, 2–3, 176 Sweidnitz, 364, 366, 368, 386 Switzerland, Swiss, 1, 5–6, 10, 43, 107, 123, 128, 147, 187, 209, 218–19, 235, 240, 294, 328, 448, 457, 458 Sydenham Poyntz, English mercenary, Reigate, 81, 145, 151, 173 Tailles, 108, 123, 129 Tartar, 20, 99, 384 Thionville, siege of, 134, 298, 352, 356, 357, 400, 441 Thurn, count, 7–8, 66, 68, 74, 101, 164, 449 Tilly, Johann Tserclaes, compt de, 68, 70–3, 80, 83, 85, 127, 139–41, 145–51, 153–4, 184, 189, 201, 206, 212, 370, 372 Timor, 268, 271, 280 Tirano, 110, 191–2 Tordesillas, Treaty, 11, 252, 256, 293, 452 Torstensson, Lennart, general, 143, 146–8, 151, 154, 157, 180, 196,

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Index 505 222, 224, 327, 329, 359–63, 365–75, 377–80, 382, 384–8, 410–17, 419–21, 423, 427–30, 449 Transylvania, 4, 18, 20, 27, 32, 36, 39, 42–5, 115–18, 120–2, 127–32, 142, 144, 152, 163, 167, 176–7, 182–3, 186, 205, 211, 213, 219, 352–3, 362, 399–400 Trauttmansdorff von und zu, Reichgraf, Imperial councillor, 14, 57, 164, 226, 232, 430, 441, 443 Treaty of Zaragoza, 11, 252 Trier, 35, 182, 186, 422 Trip, 62 Turenne, Vicomte de, Marshal, 133, 205, 209, 211, 216, 238, 246, 335, 338, 341, 352, 357, 394–404, 406–408, 423–6, 430–7, 439, 441, 444 Turin, 334–6 Turner, Sir James, mercenary soldier, 199, 225, 233, 310, 479 Tuttlingen, battle of, 341, 356–9, 403, 425 Tyrol, 6, 8, 18, 82, 192, 397 Ulm, 66, 147, 158, 171, 397 Urban VIII, 91, 112, 321, 333 Uskock, 74 Utraquist, 21, 69, 74 Utrecht, 135, 205, 276, 309 Valtelline Valtellina, 13, 55, 109–110, 128, 150, 166, 169–70, 191–2, 218–19, 242, 321, 327, 333, 343 Van Diemen, 258, 261, 272, 274, 276–7 Van Dort, 289 Vasa, flagship sinking, 143 Vendomes. 337, 341 Venice, 4, 6, 18, 27–8, 42–3, 56, 74, 82, 110, 125, 214, 320–1, 329–31, 339, 428, 438, 448, 464 Verden, 365, 367, 388–9 Vienna, 1, 6, 12–13, 18–19, 29, 31, 34–6, 39, 51, 53–4, 57–8, 66–7, 72, 79, 82–3, 112, 125, 141, 149–50, 152, 161–2, 165, 167, 181, 194–5, 199, 200, 294, 297, 306, 315–16, 320, 358, 363–5, 368–9, 374–6, 378

The Thirty Years War.indd 505

Vistula, river, 3, 60, 98, 99, 101, 364, 378, 448 VOC, 16–17, 19, 60, 62–3, 137, 253, 256, 261–3, 265, 267–8, 270–4, 276, 279–80, 283, 302, 312, 323, 378, 386 Wallenstein, Albrecht von, 18–19, 33, 39, 57–8, 67, 73–85, 91, 95, 98, 104–105, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123– 5, 127, 129, 131, 147, 150, 155–61, 163–6, 168, 183, 194, 200–201, 241, 322, 357 Wedgewood C.V, historian, 57, 356 Wedgewood, CV, renowned historian, 57, 356 Werth, Johann von, cavalry commander, 173, 176, 188, 215, 217, 229, 235, 240–2, 397, 406, 411, 425–6, 431, 434–6 Wesel, 135, 200, 397 Weser, river, 2, 60, 80, 96, 169, 193, 195, 197, 221, 223, 359, 388–9 Westphalia, 2, 5, 38, 42, 147, 149–50, 152–3, 199–200, 221, 232, 239, 243, 251, 286, 306, 320, 325–6, 339, 342, 346, 350, 359, 381, 386, 388, 395, 391, 397, 409, 412, 346, 350, 359, 381, 388, 395–7, 409, 412, 414, 422–3, 427, 429–30, 459, 463, 466 White Mountain, battle of, 18, 33, 44, 66–70, 82, 148 WIC, 17, 19, 44, 63, 277, 284, 297, 289, 291–3, 299–300, 302 William V of Hesse, 36, 153, 184, 200, 221, 227 Witte, de, 76–8, 124, 155 Witte, Hans de, financier, 76–8, 124, 155 Wittstock, 217, 221–2, 224–6, 229, 231, 261, 297, 322, 361–2, 388, 412–13 Wrangel Herman, General-battle of Gorzno, 99, 102 Wrangel Hermann, 95, 99–100, 102, Wrangel, Karl Gustav, Count, General, Admiral, 221, 310, 369, 375, 380, 385–6, 397, 429, 444 Wrangel, Carl Gustav von, admiral and general, 221, 310, 369, 373, 380, 385–6, 397, 429, 444

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506  The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648 Württemburg, 39, 71, 113, 153, 176, 184, 227, 407 Wurzburg, 147, 150–1, 171, 176, 423

Zittau, 18, 82, 366, 370, 389 Zlin, 18, 82, 389 Zuniga, 1, 42, 47–9, 53–4, 70

Zeurotin, 74 Zieurotin, Lord, Moravian magnate, and political leader, 74

The Thirty Years War.indd 506

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The Thirty Years War.indd 507

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The Thirty Years War.indd 508

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