CAMEO XXV. Aberdeen the Covenant. 1639. All strangers were welcomed at Aberdeen with a banquet of wine called the "cup of bon accord," but the visitors refused to drink with them till the Covenant should be signed, an insult never offered to the folk of Aberdeen in the memory of man! They gave out that forced into they should preach in the city pulpits, but the proper owners of these occupied them themselves. However, the three ministers preached in the open air on galleries in front of Earl Marischal's house, and were listened to with curiosity rather than conviction. A war of pamphlets then began, but little was done to bring over the city or university, and it began to be felt that the dispute must lead to bloodshed. САМЕО German Captains. MOST of the dramatic interest of the Thirty Years War passed with Gustavus and Wallenstein, but its weary course was not yet run, Bernhard of Saxe Weimar and the Swedish generals, Horn and Banier, were the chief commanders on the Protestant side, and on the Catholic, Ferdinand, King of Hungary, the heir of the Emperor, together with Piccolomini, and the other generals who had served under Wallenstein. Holland and the Netherlands also took their share in the war, the land forces of the Dutch being under Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, with whom young Rupert of the Rhine made his first campaign, the fleet under Admiral Heine. The Governor of the Netherlands was Fernando, brother to the King of Spain, Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo, and commonly known as the Cardinal Infant. He was an able man, and had collected an army in the Milanese territory, with which he marched northwards, when Wallenstein was no longer protesting against his entrance through the Tyrol towards Bavaria. On the other side there was disunion. The Elector John George of Saxony hoped to get the league he had made with Wallenstein confirmed by the Emperor, the Elector of Brandenburg was affronted because the Swedes would not promise him their little Queen Christina for his eldest son, and Horn and Bernhard were not of the same mind, while both were angry with Oxenstjerna for not supplying them with money enough. The King of Hungary profited by these dissensions. He mustered his forces at Prague, retook Ratisbon, and in it Count Thurn, the originator of the whole war, captured Donauwerth, and invested Nordlingen, where he was joined by the Cardinal Infant and the army from Italy. They assaulted the city, but in vain, and the The battle of Nordlingen was fought on the 6th of September, 1634. It was one of the worst defeats the Protestants had suffered. The Duke of Lorraine took the standard of Weimar with his own hand. The King and Cardinal both showed much courage, in a fight that lasted eight hours. They only lost 2,000 men, while 8,000 Swedes were killed, 4,000 made prisoners, among them Horn himself, with several wounds. He was generously treated, the Card nal Infant giving up his quarters to him and retiring into a hovel. Nordlingen surrendered the next day, and Bernhard was in full retreat. There might have been peace if it had not been for Richelieu, but he could not endure that the House of Austria should triumph without France having gained something. His mind, like that of all French statesmen, was set upon the frontier of the Rhine, and though he would not proclaim war between France and the Empire, he permitted 6,000 Frenchmen to join the standard of Duke Bernhard, and promised more, giving large subsidies to him and Oxenstjerna, on condition that Elsass should be given up to France. This interference of France was very sore to the German princes, and John George of Saxony made his peace with the Emperor at Prague, on the understanding that the Edict of Restitution was not to be enforced, and Lutheranism was to be tolerated. The Archduke Leopold resigned his claims to all his nominal dioceses. Magdeburg, Bremen and Strasburg, and only retained Halberstadt. The States and cities that chose to accept the treaty might be included, but not the Calvinist Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, nor the young Elector Palatine. Franconia was offered to Bernhard if he would become a Roman Catholic, but he refused, and the inheritance of Pomerania on the death of the old Duke was promised to the Elector of Brandenburg, thus further alienating Sweden. King Charles I. sent Lord Arundel to endeavour, in this pacification, to secure something for the unfortunate Elector Palatine, but in vain. The Emperor was polite, but Maximilian of Bavaria declared that what the sword had taken, the sword would keep. The war was thus continuing, and was more horrible than ever with the exhaustion of the country, and the increasing brutality of the soldiery, many of whom had been bred up in camps, and knew nothing better, regarding farmers, peasants and burghers simply as beings to be tortured to make them produce money or food, or if they had none, for wanton sport. There is a frightful picture of the country, drawn by a gentleman belonging to the English embassy, of the scenes they encountered on the banks of the Rhine. At Bacharach, the poor people were found dead with grass in their mouths; and all along the river were plundered villages, blackened walls, desolation. If a little relief were given, the wretched people fought for it, so that they fell САМЕО XXVI. The Battle of Nordlingen. 1634. CAMEO XXVI. into the Rhine and were sometimes drowned. At Neustadt there were starving children sitting at the doors, and one poor little village had Intervention been plundered twenty-eight times in two years, and twice in one day. of France. 1636. Germany was a wreck, but she was not allowed to be at peace, for France was resolved to make her distress a means of aggrandisement, and of pursuing the old policy of humbling the house of Austria. The real war was between France and Spain, the Swedes and Protestant Germans being the tools of the first, the Imperialists that of the second. Oxenstjerna and Bernhard were together invited to France, where they were presented to Louis XIII. at Compiègne, and the Cardinal and Chancellor conferred together in Latin, having no other common language, while the gallant Duke Bernhard, with his handsome, sunburnt face and long fair hair, was treated as a hero by the ladies. Queen Anne begged him always to spare women for her sake. Poor man, he would have been glad enough to do so, if he could have held in the ferocious savages who called him their commander. The cities which the Swedes had taken near the French frontiers were made over to their ally, Bernhard received a considerable subsidy, and undertook to carry on the war as near France as possible. War was proclaimed at Brussels between France and Spain, and Richelieu sent four armies into the field, two to the south, where there was a continual struggle on the Savoyard and Italian border, one to Elsass, one to the Low Countries, where it was to fight in union with the Dutch and the Prince of Orange. It took Tirlemont and made such a horrible sack of the city as warned the rest of the Netherlanders to resist to the utmost, and Piccolomini, bringing up the Imperial troops, prevented any further progress. Richelieu had placed in command of the French troops in Germany Marshal de la Force, and also the third son of the Duke d'Epernon, Cardinal de la Valette, for he preferred employing ecclesiastics in military commands. In La Force's division was a young man who was soon to make himself a great name, a younger son of the Duke of Bouillon, Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Viscount of Turenne, a youth of so much fire that at thirteen he had challenged a gentleman who questioned the veracity of the earlier books of Livy. He was a Huguenot. Richelieu was freely employing those of la religion, as it was termed, and the Duke of Rohan was in command in Savoy. La Valette defeated the Duke of Lorraine, and joined Bernhard, who was opposing Gallas and the imperial force in Elsass, but they met with no success, the army melted away under sickness, and in the following year, 1637, the Cardinal Infant led a Spanish army across the borders of France, and rapidly took several places, crossed the Somme, at Cerisy and took Corbie. These fortresses ¦ were in a ruinous state, with great gaps in the walls, their fosses choked up, and their cannon lying on the ground unmounted, so that defence was impossible, but their commandants were sentenced for the surrender. Nothing was defensible beyond the Oise, and Johann de Werth, the general of the Catholic League, with his German cavalry, was making forays that terrified the whole Isle of France, and gave the French a taste of the horrors they were prolonging in Germany. Paris was in a state of extreme alarm, l'Année de Corbie was long a proverb there, and a great number of families fled to Orleans; whilst the mob gathered round the Hôtel de Richelieu, shouting out imprecations on the Cardinal for having begun this war without providing for the defence of the kingdom. For a moment Richelieu's courage failed, and he was about to shut himself up, guarded by a triple line of musqueteers, when Père Joseph, and Giulio Mazzarini, the Pope's nuncio, persuaded him that he was lost if he did not rise to the occasion. He ordered his carriage, and drove to the Hôtel de Ville, with only a few mounted grooms following him, and on his appearance the shouts of execration were silenced, and became prayers for his success. The Duke of Lorraine had marched into Burgundy, Gallas and the King of Hungary were both marching as if to fall on Paris. Richelieu called on the Parliament of Paris, and all the financial departments, for aid in money. It was readily given, large sums were voted, accompanied with the declaration that the Parliament intended to watch that the money was well employed. Louis XIII. was very angry, he sent for the presidents of the various chambers, and said, "Meddle with your own affairs; I can govern my kingdom for myself." The King was personally brave, he would not leave his capital, and 60,000 men were hastily raised, who probably would not have been very effective if the threatened advance on Paris had been made, but the Cardinal Infant and Johann von Werth could not maintain their position till their allies came up, for their cavalry was melting away. Each soldier who had gained some plunder proceeded to desert and go home to secure it. The regular armies of France were returning, and the marauders retreated, while the King of France himself advanced to retake Corbie. Meantime the Elector of Saxony, now on the Imperial side, tried to drive back the Swedes beyond the Baltic, but he was beaten by General Banier at Wittstock, and the horrible and unspeakable misery from which Gustavus had once delivered Saxony, set in again, for the Swedes were utterly demoralised, and regarded the Saxons as traitors to their cause. That same Autumn a Diet met at Ratisbon, which elected the King of Hungary King of the Romans. Charles I. attempted to obtain restitution for his nephew the Elector Palatine, but England had ceased to be respected, and he was disregarded. The election was made only just in time, for the Emperor, Ferdinand II., died in his fifty-ninth year in the ensuing February, 1637. He had been the chief cause of this, the most horrible and desolating war that probably ever raged for so long a period, and all from his conscientiousness. To extirpate heresy and restore the Church was, he held, his bounden duty at all costs; but all the time he was a beneficent and fatherly sovereign to the Catholics, an excellent and tender father and husband, and a kind CAMEO XXVI. L'Année de 1637. |