sulting or persecuting their modes of worship, and the CHAP. XIX. smouldering hate of half a century was kindled by the troubles of Bohemia into the Thirty Years' War.

Years' War,

1618-1648.

II, A.D.

1619-1637.

The imperial sceptre held for thirty-six years by the in- Thirty dolent and vacillating Rudolf II (1576–1612), the corrupt and reckless policy of whose ministers had done much to exasperate the already suspicious minds of the Protestants, had now passed, after the short reign of his brother Matthias, into the firmer grasp of Ferdinand the Second.' Ferdinand Jealous, bigoted, implacable, skilful in forming and concealing his plans, resolute to obstinacy in carrying them out in action, the house of Hapsburg could have had no abler and no more unpopular leader in their second attempt to turn the Germanic Empire into an Austrian military monarchy. They seemed for a time as near to the accomplishment of the project as Charles the Fifth had been. Leagued with Spain, backed by the Catholics Plans of of Germany, served by the genius of Wallenstein, Fer- Ferdinand dinand proposed nothing less than the extension of the Empire to its old limits, and the recovery of his crown's full prerogative over all its vassals. Denmark and Holland were to be attacked by sea and land: Italy to be reconquered with the help of Spain: Maximilian of Bavaria and Wallenstein to be rewarded with principalities in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. The latter general was all but master of Northern Germany when the successful resistance of Stralsund turned the wavering balance of the war. Soon after (A.D. 1630), Gustavus Adolphus Gustavus crossed the Baltic, and saved Europe from an impend- Adolphus. ing reign of the Jesuits. Ferdinand's high-handed proceedings had already alarmed even the Catholic princes. Of his own authority he had put the Elector Palatine and other magnates to the ban of the Empire: he had

i Matthias, brother of Rudolf II, reigned from 1612 till 1619.

II.

CHAP. XIX. transferred an electoral vote to Bavaria; had treated the districts overrun by his generals as spoil of war, to be portioned out at his pleasure; had unsettled all possession by requiring the restitution of church property occupied since A.D. 1555. The Protestants were helpless; the Catholics, though they complained of the flagrant illegality of such conduct, did not dare to oppose it; the rescue of Germany was the work of the Swedish king. In four campaigns he destroyed the armies and the prestige of the Emperor; devastated his lands, emptied his treasury, and left him at last so enfeebled that no subsequent successes could make him again formidable. Such, nevertheless, was the selfishness and apathy of the Protestant princes, divided by the mutual jealousy of the Lutheran and the Calvinist party-some, like the Saxon Elector, inglorious descendant of the famous Maurice, bribed by the crafty Austrian; others afraid to stir lest a reverse should expose them unprotected to his vengeance that but for the interference of France the issue of the long-protracted contest would have gone against them, although Wallenstein had now fallen by the hand of assassins suborned by Ferdinand II. It was the leading principle of Richelieu's policy to depress the house of Hapsburg and keep Germany disunited: hence he encouraged Protestantism abroad while trampling it down at home. Like Cavour two centuries later, he did not live to see the triumph his skill had won. That triumph was sealed in A.D. 1648, on the utter exhaustion of all the combatants, and the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück were thenceforward the basis of the Germanic constitution.

Ferdinand

1637-1658.

A.D. 1634.

The Peace of
Westphalia.

CHAPTER XX

THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA: LAST STAGE IN THE DECLINE

OF THE EMPIRE

THE Peace of Westphalia is the first, and, with the CHAP. XX. possible exception of the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, the most important of those attempts to reconstruct by diplomacy the European states-system which have played so large a part in modern history. It is important, however, less as marking the introduction of new principles, than as winding up the struggle which had convulsed Germany since the revolt of Luther, sealing its results, and closing definitely the period of the Reformation. Although the causes of disunion which the religious movement called into being had now been at work for more than a hundred years, their effects were not fully seen till it became necessary to establish a system which should. represent the altered relations to one another of the German states. It may thus be said of this famous peace, as of the other so-called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a condition of things already in existence, but which by being legalized acquired new importance. To all parties. alike the result of the Thirty Years' War was thoroughly unsatisfactory to the Protestants, who had lost Bohemia, and were still obliged to hold an inferior place in the electoral college and in the Diet: to the Catholics, who were forced to permit the exercise of heretical worship, and leave the church lands in the grasp of sacrilegious

CHAP. XX. spoilers to the princes, who could not throw off the burden of imperial supremacy: to the Emperor, who could turn that supremacy to no practical account. No other conclusion was possible to a contest in which every one had been vanquished and no one victorious; which had ceased because while the reasons for war continued the means of war had failed. Nevertheless, the substantial advantage remained with the German princes, for they gained the formal recognition of that territorial independence whose origin may be placed as far back as the days of Frederick the Second, and the maturity of which had been hastened by the events of the last preceding century. It was, indeed, not only recognized but justified as rightful and necessary. For while the political situation, to use a current phrase, had changed within the last two hundred years, the eyes with which men regarded it had changed still more. Never by their fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by Popes or Lombard republics in the heat of their strife with the Franconian and Swabian Caesars, had the Emperors been reproached as mere German kings, or their claim to be the lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant jurists of the seventeenth century were the first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the world, and declare their Empire to be nothing more than a German monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious reverence need prevent its subjects from making the best terms they could for themselves, and controlling a sovereign whose religious predilections bound him to their ecclesiastical enemies.

The treatise

It is instructive to turn suddenly from Dante or Peter of Hippolytus de Andlau to a book published shortly before A.D. 1648, a Lapide. under the name of Hippolytus a Lapide, and notice the matter-of-fact way, and bitterly contemptuous spirit, in

a

De Ratione Status in Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico.

which, disregarding the traditional glories of the Empire, CHAP. XX. he comments on its actual condition and prospects. Hippolytus, the pseudonym which the jurist Chemnitz assumed, urges with violence almost superfluous that the Germanic constitution must be treated entirely as a native growth: that the so-called 'lex regia' and the whole system of Justinianean absolutism which the Emperors had used so dexterously, were in their applications to Germany not merely incongruous but positively absurd. With eminent learning, Chemnitz examines the early history of the Empire, draws from the unceasing contests of the monarch with the nobility the unexpected moral that the power of the former has been always dangerous, and is now more dangerous than ever, and then launches out into a long invective against the policy of the Hapsburgs, an invective which the ambition and harshness of the late Emperor (Ferdinand II) made only too plausible. The one real remedy for the evils that menace Germany he states concisely-domus Austriacae extirpatio': but, failing this, he would have the Emperor's prerogative restricted in every way, and provide means for resisting or dethroning him. It was by these views, which seem to have made a profound impression in Germany, that the states, or rather France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the negotiations of Osnabrück and Münster. By extorting a full recognition of the sovereignty of all the princes, Catholics and Protestants alike, in their respective territories, they bound the Emperor from any direct interference with the administration, either in particular districts or throughout the Empire. All affairs of public Rights of the importance, including the rights of making war or peace, the Diet, as Emperor and of levying contributions, raising troops, building fortresses, settled in passing or interpreting laws, were henceforth to be left A.D. 1648. entirely in the hands of the Diet. The Aulic Council,