WAS BREDA TO BE RELIEVED ? 133 vacancies with new levies to taking reasonable care of CHAP. the old ones.1 What possible use could be made of this ill-starred force? The way to the Palatinate was barred against them by Imperialist armies hurried up to oppose them, and James persisted in his refusal to allow of their employment at Breda. If they were able to march up the Rhine, the diversion might be useful to the Dutch. But James had no money to send. He argued that the French, who had caused all the mischief, ought to supply the deficiency. If this could not be done, the States might perhaps advance the 20,000l. a month which he had bound himself to pay to Mansfeld.2 IV. 1625. March 4. James still employ the Breda. refuses to men at lend The Dutch were not quite inexorable. They The Dutch allowed their credit to be used to raise a loan of money. 20,000l. They perhaps hoped that James would get over the difficulty by accepting a proposal which had been made for placing Mansfeld under Frederick's orders, who would not be bound by the King of England's engagement. "His Majesty," they were told, March 21. "cannot yet be moved to think it fit to break it by equivocations, or by changing of forms and names."4 ones. part in James's last words in this matter-for they were James's his last were entirely in consonance with his earlier Mansfeld's The Palatinate, and the Palatinate alone, was the expedition. object at which he aimed. War with Spain was to be avoided as long as possible. Impartial posterity will perhaps be inclined to think that he was wise in looking to the recovery of the Palatinate, rather than to vengeance upon Spain, as the true object of the war. But his mind, indolent in itself, and becoming more in 1 Carleton to Conway, Feb. 14, 18, March 1; S. P. Holland. 2 Conway to Carleton, March 4; ibid. › Memorial of Money raised for Mansfeld, Aug.? Ibid. Rusdorf, Mem., i. 498-510. Conway to Carleton, March 21; S. P. Holland. СПАР. IV. 1625. March. wastes away. dolent as years rolled by, shrank from the fatigue of planning a large scheme of foreign policy as a whole, and he did not see that the enmity of Spain was the inevitable result of any serious attempt to recover the Palatinate. And even if he had been right in thinking it possible to interfere in Germany without provoking Spain, it would have been a grave mistake to pursue this object in so close connection with France and Holland. For the first interest of France and Holland was to diminish the power of Spain, and not to recover the Palatinate. Whilst the Governments were disputing, the solThe army diers were dying. In little more than a week after James's last refusal was given, out of a force of 12,000 men, barely 3,000 were capable of carrying arms. The French cavalry was equally thinned by sickness and desertion. When at last Christian of Brunswick brought his troops from Calais only a few hundreds out of the two thousand men originally under his orders were disembarked on the Dutch coast.1 Negotiations in Whilst Mansfeld's prospects of finding his way into Germany were becoming more hopeless every day, Germany. where were those allies upon whom James ought to have been able to reckon before he allowed a single Englishman to take part in an enterprise for the recovery of the Palatinate? What had been done to engage the assistance of the North German States, or with the Kings of Denmark and Sweden? Anstru ther's mission, When Anstruther unfolded his master's plans in 1624. Aug. August to Christian IV. of Denmark, the King answered that he was quite ready to take arms, but that he must first be assured of the support of England and of the Protestant States of North Germany. It was therefore arranged that Anstruther should visit 1 Villermont, E. de Mansfeldt, ii. 285. NORTH GERMANY. the Princes who had most to fear from the progress of the Imperialists, and that Christian would give him a final answer on his return.1 135 CHAP. IV. 1624. Aug. IV. and the tories. The position of the King of Denmark was a typical one. Like the other Princes of North Germany he had looked with disfavour upon Frederick's Bohemian enterprise. But he looked with equal disfavour upon Christian the establishment of a strong Imperial authority, and ecclesiastihis zeal for Protestantism was quickened by the know- oriledge that whether the secularised ecclesiastical possessions held by his house in Germany were held legally or not, no doubt existed in the Emperor's mind that they were still rightfully the property of the Church. His personal interest in the great question of the ecclesiastical lands was by no means slight. His younger son Frederick had the dioceses of Bremen, Verden, and Halberstadt either in possession or reversion. German As usual, personal and political objects were closely intertwined with objects which were neither personal nor political. These North German Sees were occupied The North by Protestants, who though they called themselves bishoprics. Bishops, or sometimes more modestly Administrators, were simply lay Princes, like the Dukes and Counts around them, the only difference being that, instead of holding their rank by hereditary right, they were elected for life by the Chapters of the dioceses, the Chapters themselves often consisting, at least in part, of aristocratic sinecurists like themselves. It was quite 1 Anstruther, in his account of his negotiations, March? 1625, S. P. Denmark, says 'that the King did ingenuously advise me, and did not forbear to second me by invitation of the Electors of Saxe and Brandenburg and others, by his own particular letters by me sent, and since again by letters of the King of Great Britain.' Droysen (Gustaf Adolf, i. 207-224), not being aware of this evidence, fancied that Christian assented to take part in the war at a later period through jealousy of Gustavus. CHAP. 1624. Danger to North natural that Catholics should regard such an arrangement as wholly indefensible, and, if no more had been at stake than the loss by the neighbouring Princes of so rich a provision for their younger sons, the sooner a change came the better for Germany. The results of the forcible dispossession of the Protestant Administrators would, however, have been far more widely felt. Their lands were inhabited by a Germany. Protestant population which would at once have been doomed to compulsory reconversion. Their fortresses would have been occupied by troops hostile to the order of things established in the neighbouring territories, and their revenues would have served as a bait held out to those Protestants who were anxious to make provision for their families, and who might perhaps not be slow to learn that Canonries and Bishoprics would fall into the lap of any ardent convert to the doctrines of the Emperor and the Pope. at stake. Were the North German Princes so very steadfast that they could be trusted to withstand the temptation? What was It is hardly too much to say that the fate of German Protestantism was at stake. And with the fortunes of German Protestantism would come at last to be involved the fortunes of German nationality. The intellectual giants who since the days of Lessing and Göthe have overshadowed Europe, have all sprung up on Protestant soil; and men of the generation which has only just passed away could tell of the peaceful conquest over the ignorance of Catholic Germany which was achieved at the beginning of this century by the men of the Protestant North, and which paved the way for that political unity which is at last healing the wounds inflicted in the great war of the 17th century. 1 See especially the life of Friederich Thiersch, by his son, Dr. H. Thiersch, THE EMPEROR AND THE ADMINISTRATORS. 137 IV. 1624. Aug. Emperor reclaim the The Emperor had accepted the agreement made at CHAP. Mühlhausen in 1620, by which the Protestant Administrators were declared safe from attack as long as they remained obedient subjects. But doubts were freely Was the expressed whether he would keep, in the days of his likely to prosperity, the promise which he had made in the hour bishoprics. of adversity. And even if scant justice were probably done to Ferdinand in this surmise, he might fairly be expected to urge that the diocese of Halberstadt was no longer under the protection of the agreement of Mühlhausen. Its Administrator, Christian of Brunswick, had certainly not been an obedient subject to the Emperor. He had now abdicated in the hope that the Chapter would choose a Protestant successor. But in the eyes of the Emperor such an election would have no legal basis. Christian's treason, he would argue, had replaced the See in the position in which it was before the agreement of Mühlhausen, and the Chapter was therefore bound to elect a real Catholic Bishop, instead of a cavalry officer who called himself a Bishop in order that he might enjoy the revenues of the See. And there were other ways, besides that of force, by which Protestantism could be undermined in the Bishoprics. If a majority of a Chapter could be gained over, a Catholic Bishop would be chosen at the next election. Many of the Canons were Catholics still, and, with the help of an armed force, it was easy to find legal grounds for turning the minority into a majority. In this way Osnabrück had lately been won from Protestantism, and other Sees might be expected, unless something were done, to follow soon.1 ther's At such a time Anstruther had not much difficulty Anstruin gaining the ear of most of the Princes to whom he successful 1 On the position of these Bishoprics, and of Halberstadt especially, see Dr. Opel's Niedersachsische Dänische Krieg. negotia tion. |