The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648

Section I. —Political Institutions of Germany

§ 1. Want of national institutions in Germany.

It was the misfortune of Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that, with most of the conditions requisite for the formation of national unity, she had no really national institutions. There was an emperor, who looked something like an English king, and a Diet, or General Assembly, which looked something like an English Parliament, but the resemblance was far greater in appearance than in reality.

§ 2. The Emperor.

The Emperor was chosen by three ecclesiastical electors, the Archbishops of Mentz, Treves and Cologne, and four lay electors, the Elector Palatine, the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and the King of Bohemia. In theory he was the successor of the Roman Emperors Julius and Constantine, the ruler of the world, or of so much of it at least as he could bring under his sway. More particularly, he was the successor of Charles the Great and Otto the Great, the lay head of Western Christendom. The Emperor Sigismund, on his death-bed, had directed that his body should lie in state for some days, that men might see 'that the lord of all the world was dead.' 'We have chosen your grace,' said the electors to Frederick III., 'as head, protector, and governor of all Christendom.' Yet it would be hard to find a single fragment of reality corresponding to the magnificence of the claim.

§ 3. The German kingship.

As far, however, as the period now under review is concerned, though the name of Emperor was retained, it is unnecessary to trouble ourselves with the rights, real or imaginary, connected with the imperial dignity. Charles the Great, before the imperial crown was conferred on him, ruled as king, by national assent or by conquest, over a great part of Western Europe. When his dominions were divided amongst his successors, the rule of those successors in Germany or elsewhere had no necessary connexion with the imperial crown. Henry the Fowler, one of the greatest of the Kings of the Germans, was never an emperor at all, and though, after the reign of his son Otto the Great, the German kings claimed from the Pope the imperial crown as their right, they never failed also to receive a special German crown at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) or at Frankfort as the symbol of their headship over German lands and German men.

§ 4. Its connexion with the Empire.

When, therefore, the writers of the 16th or 17th centuries speak of the rights of the Emperor in Germany, they really mean to speak of the rights of the Emperor in his capacity of German king, just as, when they speak of the Empire, they mean what we call Germany, together with certain surrounding districts, such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Lorraine, and Eastern Burgundy or Franche Comté, which are not now, if Alsace and the newly-conquered part of Lorraine be excepted, included under that name. In the same way the mere fragments of feudal supremacy, and the payment of feudal dues which the emperors claimed in Italy, belonged to them, not as emperors, but simply as Italian kings, and as wearers of the iron crown of Lombardy, which, as the legends told, was formed of nails taken from the Saviour's cross.

§ 5. Some confusion unavoidable.

Not that it would be wise, even if it were possible, to do otherwise than to follow the practice of contemporaries. The strange form, Emperor of Germany, by which, at a later period, men unfamiliar with Germany history strove to reconcile the old claims with something like the actual fact, had not been yet invented. And, after all, the confusions of history, the use of words and titles when their meaning is changed, are so many tokens to remind us of the unity of successive generations, and of the impossibility of any one of them building anew without regarding the foundations of their fathers. All that is needed is to remember that the emperor of later times is a personage whose rights and functions can be profitably compared with those of Henry VIII. of England or Lewis XIV. of France, not with Julius or Constantine whose successor he professed himself to be.

§ 6. The great vassals.

'Take away the rights of the Emperor,' said a law book of the fifteenth century, in language which would have startled an old Roman legislator, 'and who can say, "This house is mine, this village belongs to me?"' But the princes and bishops, the counts and cities, who were glad enough to plead on their own behalf that their lands were held directly from the head of the Empire, took care to allow him scarcely any real authority. This kingly dignity which passed under the name of the Empire was indeed very weak. It had never outgrown the needs of the Middle Ages, and was still essentially a feudal kingship. From circumstances which it would take too much space to notice here, it had failed in placing itself at the head of a national organization, and in becoming the guardian of the rights of the tillers of the soil and the burghers of the towns, who found no place in the ranks of the feudal chivalry.

§ 7. Their independence.

The immediate vassals of the Empire, in fact, were almost independent sovereigns, like the Dukes of Normandy in the France of the tenth century, or the Dukes of Burgundy in the France of the fifteenth century. They quarrelled and made war with one another like the Kings of England and France. Their own vassals, their own peasants, their own towns could only reach the Emperor through them, if anybody thought it worth while to reach him at all.

§ 8. Prospect of order.

The prospect of reviving the German kingship which was veiled under the august title of Emperor seemed far distant at the beginning of the fifteenth century. But whilst the Empire, in its old sense, with its claims to universal dominion, was a dream, this German kingship needed but wisdom in the occupant of the throne to seize the national feeling, which was certain sooner or later to call out for a national ruler, in order to clothe itself in all the authority which was needed for the maintenance of the unity and the safety of the German people. That, when the time came, the man to grasp the opportunity was not there, was the chief amongst the causes of that unhappy tragedy of disunion which culminated in the Thirty Years' War.

§ 9. Attempts to introduce order.

In the middle of the fifteenth century an effort was made to introduce a system of regular assemblies, under the name of a Diet, in order to stem the tide of anarchy. But it never entered into the mind of the wisest statesman living to summon any general representation of the people. In the old feudal assemblies no one had taken part who was not an immediate vassal of the Empire, and the Diet professed to be only a more regular organization of the old feudal assemblies.

§ 10. The Diet, or general assemblies of the Empire.

From the Diet, therefore, all subjects of the territorial princes were rigorously excluded. Whatever their wishes or opinions might be, they had neither part nor lot in the counsels of the nation. There was nothing in the Diet answering to those representatives of English counties, men not great enough to assume the state of independent princes, nor small enough to be content simply to register without question the decrees of those in authority who with us did more than any other class to cement town and country, king and people together. Nor did even the less powerful of the immediate vassals take part in the meetings. Like the lesser barons of the early Plantagenet reigns, they slipped out of a position to which they seemed to have a right by the fact that they held their few square miles of land as directly from the Emperor as the Dukes of Bavaria or the Electors of Saxony held the goodly principalities over which they ruled.

§ 11. The princes care little for the Diet.

Such a body was more like a congress of the representatives of European sovereigns than an English Parliament. Each member came in his own right. He might or might not speak the sentiments of his subjects, and, even if he did, he naturally preferred deciding pretty much as he pleased at home to allowing the question to be debated by an assembly of his equals. An Elector of Saxony, a Landgrave of Hesse, or an Archduke of Austria knew that taxes were levied, armies trained, temporal and spiritual wants provided for at his own court at Dresden, at Cassel, or at Vienna, and he had no wish that it should be otherwise. Nor was it easy, even when a prince had made himself so obnoxious as to call down upon himself the condemnation of his fellows, to subject him to punishment. He might, indeed, be put to the ban of the Empire, a kind of secular excommunication. But if he were powerful himself, and had powerful friends, it might be difficult to put it in execution. It would be necessary to levy war against him, and that war might not be successful.

§ 12. Some sort of order established.

Still, at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries some progress was made. An Imperial Court (Reichskammergericht) came into existence, mainly nominated by the princes of the Empire, and authorized to pronounce judgment upon cases arising between the rulers of the various territories. In order to secure the better execution of the sentences of this court, Germany was divided into circles, in each of which the princes and cities who were entitled to a voice in the Diet of the Empire were authorized to meet together and to levy troops for the maintenance of order.

§ 13. The three Houses of the Diet.

These princes, lay and ecclesiastical, together with the cities holding immediately from the Empire, were called the Estates of the Empire. When they met in the general Diet they voted in three houses. The first house was composed of the seven Electors, though it was only at an Imperial election that the number was complete. At all ordinary meetings for legislation, or for the dispatch of business, the king of Bohemia was excluded, and six Electors only appeared. The next house was the House of Princes, comprising all those persons, lay or ecclesiastical, who had the right of sitting in the Diet. Lastly, came the Free Imperial Cities, the only popular element in the Diet. But they were treated as decidedly inferior to the other two houses. When the Electors and the Princes had agreed upon a proposition, then and not till then it was submitted to the House of Cities.

§ 14. The cities too weak.

The special risk attending such a constitution was that it provided almost exclusively for the wants of the princes and electors. In the Diet, in the circles, and in the Imperial Court, the princes and electors exercised a preponderating, if not quite an exclusive influence. In ordinary times there might be no danger. But if extraordinary times arose, if any great movement swept over the surface of the nation, it might very well be that the nation would be on one side and the princes and the electors on the other. And if this were the case there would be great difficulty in bringing the nation into harmony with its institutions. In England the sovereign could alter a hostile majority in the House of Lords by a fresh creation of peers, and the constituencies could alter a hostile majority of the House of Commons by a fresh election. In Germany there was no House of Commons, and an emperor who should try to create fresh princes out of the immediate vassals who were too weak to be summoned to the Diet would only render himself ridiculous by an attempt to place in check the real possessors of power by the help of those who had the mere appearance of it.

Section II. —Protestantism in Germany

§ 1. The German people in favor of Protestantism; the Diet opposed to it.

When, in the sixteenth century, Protestantism suddenly raised its head, the institutions of the Empire were tried to the uttermost. For the mass of the nation declared itself in favour of change, and the Diet was so composed as to be hostile to change, as soon as it appeared that it was likely to take the direction of Lutheranism. In the Electoral House, indeed, the votes of the three ecclesiastical electors were met by the votes of the three lay electors. But in the House of Princes there were thirty-eight ecclesiastical dignitaries and but eighteen laymen. It was a body, in short, like the English House of Lords before the Reformation, and there was no Henry VIII. to bring it into harmony with the direction which lay society was taking, by some act equivalent to the dissolution of the monasteries, and the consequent exclusion of the mitred abbots from their seats in Parliament. To pass measures favourable to Protestantism through such a house was simply impossible. Yet it can hardly be doubted that a really national Parliament would have adopted Lutheranism, more or less modified, as the religion of the nation. Before Protestantism was fifty years old, in spite of all difficulties, ninety per cent. of the population of Germany were Protestant.

§ 2. Most of the lay princes adopt it.

In default of national action in favor of Protestantism, it was adopted and supported by most of the lay princes and electors. A new principle of disintegration was thus introduced into Germany, as these princes were forced to act in opposition to the views adopted by the Diet.

§ 3. The Emperor Charles V.

If the Diet was unlikely to play the part of an English Parliament, neither was the Emperor likely to play the part of Henry VIII. For the interests of Germany, Charles V., who had been elected in 1519, was weak where he ought to have been strong, and strong where he ought to have been weak. As Emperor, he was nothing. As feudal sovereign and national ruler, he was very little. But he was also a prince of the Empire, and as such he ruled over the Austrian duchies and Tyrol. Further than this, he was one of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe. He was king of Spain, and of the Indies with all their mines. In Italy, he disposed of Naples and the Milanese. Sicily and Sardinia were his, and, under various titles, he ruled over the fragments of the old Burgundian inheritance, Franche Comté, and the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. Such a man would influence the progress of affairs in Germany with a weight out of all proportion to his position in the German constitution. And unhappily, with the power of a foreign sovereign, he brought the mind of a foreigner. His mother's Spanish blood beat in his veins, and he had the instinctive aversion of a Spaniard to anything which savoured of opposition to the doctrines of the Church. 'That man,' he said, when he caught sight of Luther for the first time, 'shall never make me a heretic.'

1552.

§ 4. The Convention of Passau.

Of this antagonism between the minority of the princes backed by the majority of the nation, and the majority of the princes backed by an Emperor who was also a foreign sovereign, civil war was the natural result. In the end, the triumph of the Protestants was so far secured that they forced their opponents in 1552 to yield to the Convention of Passau, by which it was arranged that a Diet should be held as soon as possible for a general pacification.

1555

§ 5. The peace of Augsburg.

That Diet, which was assembled at Augsburg in 1555, met under remarkably favourable circumstances. Charles V., baffled and disappointed, had retired from the scene, and had left behind him, as his representative, his more conciliatory brother Ferdinand, who was already King of Hungary and Bohemia, and was his destined successor in the German possessions of the House of Austria. Both he and the leading men on either side were anxious for peace, and were jealous of the influence which Philip, the son of Charles V., and his successor in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, might gain from a continuance of the war.

§ 6. Its terms.

There was little difficulty in arranging that the Protestant princes, who, before the date of the Convention of Passau, had seized ecclesiastical property within their own territories, either for their own purposes or for the support of Protestant worship, should no longer be subject to the law or authority of the Catholic clergy. The real difficulty arose in providing for the future. With Protestantism as a growing religion, the princes might be inclined to proceed further with the secularizing of the Church property still left untouched within their own territories; and besides this, it was possible that even bishops or abbots themselves, being princes of the Empire, might be inclined to abandon their religion, and to adopt Protestantism.

§ 7. Might the princes seize more lands?

The first of these difficulties was left by the treaty in some obscurity; but, from the stress laid on the abandonment by the Catholics of the lands secularized before the Convention of Passau, it would seem that they might fairly urge that they had never abandoned their claims to lands which at that date had not been secularized.

§ 8. Might the ecclesiastics turn Protestants?

The second difficulty led to long discussions. The Protestants wished that any bishop or abbot who pleased might be allowed to turn Protestant, and might then establish Protestantism as the religion of his subjects. The Catholics insisted that any bishop or abbot who changed his religion should be compelled to vacate his post, and this view of the case prevailed, under the name of the Ecclesiastical Reservation. It was further agreed that the peace should apply to the Lutheran Church alone, no other confession having been as yet adopted by any of the princes.

§ 9. Dangers of the future.

Such a peace, acceptable as it was at the time, was pregnant with future evil. Owing its origin to a Diet in which everything was arranged by the princes and electors, it settled all questions as if nobody but princes and electors had any interest in the matter. And, besides this, there was a most unstatesmanlike want of provision for future change. The year 1552 was to give the line by which the religious institutions of Germany were to be measured for all time. There was nothing elastic about such legislation. It did not, on the one hand, adopt the religion of the vast majority as the established religion of the Empire. It did not, on the other hand, adopt the principle of religious liberty. In thinking of themselves and their rights, the princes had forgotten the German people.

§ 10. Fresh encroachments upon Church lands.

The barriers set up against Protestantism were so plainly artificial that they soon gave way. The princes claimed the right of continuing to secularize Church lands within their territories as inseparable from their general right of providing for the religion of their subjects. At all events they had might on their side. About a hundred monasteries are said to have fallen victims in the Palatinate alone, and an almost equal number, the gleanings of a richer harvest which had been reaped before the Convention of Passau, were taken possession of in Northern Germany.

§ 11. The Ecclesiastical Reservation.

The Ecclesiastical Reservation applied to a different class of property, namely, to the bishoprics and abbeys held immediately of the Empire. Here, too, the Protestants found an excuse for evading the Treaty of Augsburg. The object of the reservation, they argued, was not to keep the bishoprics in Catholic hands, but to prevent quarrels arising between the bishops and their chapters. If, therefore, a bishop elected as a Catholic chose to turn Protestant, he must resign his see in order to avoid giving offence to the Catholic chapter. But where a chapter, itself already Protestant, elected a Protestant bishop, he might take the see without hesitation, and hold it as long as he lived.