DOCUMENTATION | Exhibitions: 1648 - War and Peace in Europe | |
| Essay Volumes > Tome I: Politics, Religion, Law and Society |
| JOHANNES ARNDT The Emperor and the Reich (1600-1648) |
I. Introduction
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Habsburg emperors played what Volker Press has called a "triple role" in the triangle of forces represented by the three interests of dynasty, emperorship, and patrimonial lands. [1] The dynastic situation, i.e. the political infighting among the male rulers of the House of Habsburg, had become more complicated in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries as a result of inheritances in Burgundy, Spain, Bohemia, and Hungary. In the Age of the Reformation, family conflicts hampered Karl (Charles) V in the way he exercised power, and the clashes between the sons of Emperor Maximilian II at the beginning of the seventeenth century were partly responsible for the powerful estates movements in the lands of the Austrian line of the dynasty. The office of emperor with its tradition and opportunities but also its obligations assured the House of Habsburg of predominant status in Europe and political control over the central part of the Continent. The hierarchical system of the Reich enabled the emperors to exercise a constitutionally limited rule and to recruit suitable figures for the top political jobs in their own administrations. Lastly, the Habsburg patrimonial lands were the Reich districts in Austria and scattered possessions in southern Germany, where the emperor was simultaneously head of the empire and territorial ruler. Here he sought to enhance the role of the state quite as much as the great princes of the Reich had been doing in their lands since the High Middle Ages. Following his acquisition of a number of new territories in the Netherlands, Emperor Karl V sought to organise the seventeen provinces of that country after the pattern of the Austrian patrimonial lands. To that end he concluded the "Burgundian Treaty" with the imperial estates in 1548, not without encountering a certain amount of resistance in the process. [2]
There is also a fourth dimension, namely the denominational or confessional one. The duties of the holder of the imperial office included acting as protector of the Roman Church. That duty of protection was not only directed against the external enemies of Christendom (in the Middle Ages, against heathens such as Lombards, Hungarians, Vikings, or Saracens, more recently against the Turks); it also applied to dealings with domestic enemies, i.e. heretics and schismatics. [3] Consequently, in the legal system of the Holy Roman Empire it was customary for papal excommunication to be followed by an imperial ban. What follows is an attempt to look more closely at these four different fields of interest as well as at the links between them, which constantly forced Emperors Ferdinand II and Ferdinand III into intricate processes of decision-making.
II. Emperor and Reich in the confessional age
Since the Reformation, the majority of principalities and imperial cities had become Protestant. The free bishoprics, on the other hand, had overwhelmingly remained loyal to Rome. In the early sixteenth century they offered determined prince-bishops an excellent basis for renewing and tightening up state and church along the counter-reformatory lines laid down by the Council of Trent, thereby cutting the ground from under further Protestant endeavours. The Catholic estates were always in the majority on the imperial Council of Princes; moreover, four of the seven electors were loyal to the Catholic faith.
Part of what the imperial estates expected of every emperor was that he should abstain from any precipitate taking of sides in order to be able to exercise his role as arbiter. This called for shrewd administration of a kind that placed the emphasis on law and practical political negotiation. Since only a powerful territorial ruler could become emperor, some conflict between the interests of his patrimonial territory and those of the imperial office was inevitable, and where such conflict arose the holder of that office needed to exhibit a sure eye and great sensitivity. The more obviously the emperor promoted the interests of his dynasty or his patrimonial lands, the less acceptable the estates found him as intermediary.
Emperor Ferdinand I and Emperor Maximilian II managed, in their role as arbiter, to win the trust of most of the princes. Not so Emperor Rudolf II, who on the one hand provided increasingly weak leadership and on the other showed ever clearer signs of pursuing a counter-reformatory policy. The prolonged and bitter Bruderstreit between the emperor and one of his brothers, Archduke Matthias, further weakened the authority of the imperial office and led to a loss of Habsburg influence over confessional conflict within the Reich. In 1608 the Protestants organised themselves in the "Union", while a year later the Catholic estates, led by Bavaria, responded by founding the "League"; in neither case was the emperor able to influence the outcome. At the same time Rudolf's influence over the imperial Church diminished as a number of ecclesiastical princes plumped for closer co-operation with Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. [4] This non-presence of the emperor was also evident during the early stages of the Jülich Succession. When Duke Johann Wilhelm died in March 1609, a swift regulation of the succession in favour of the Catholic parties was thwarted. [5]
From 1612 Emperor Matthias, guided by his confidant, Cardinal Melchior Klesl, pursued a policy of verbal pacification of the Protestants. This scarcely concealed a series of practical measures to push forward Catholic confessionalisation. [6] In the light of the continuing weakness of the emperor, Archduke Ferdinand of Inner Austria contrived his own succession to that office. Unlike Rudolf and Matthias, he possessed the will and the ability to perform his ruling functions decisively and at the same time restore the rights of the Church in full. He had been able to demonstrate as much in Inner Austria for two decades prior to his mounting the imperial throne. [7] So he was already sure of the enthusiastic approval of the Catholic imperial estates as well as that of the Roman Curia.
However, it took several more family agreements in the House of Habsburg before Ferdinand was able put himself forward as a candidate. Through the good offices of the Spanish envoy, Oñate, in 1617 he concluded a treaty with King Philip III of Spain that, while it gave the Spaniards Alsace, was meant in return to secure Spanish support for the archduke's election as emperor. [8] And in 1619 the last living son of Maximilian II, Archduke Albert, renounced his right of succession in Ferdinand's favour. [9]
III. The Bohemian Revolt and the expansion of imperial power
The starting-point for the Thirty Years" War lay in the possessions of the Bohemian crown. It was here that the challenge to Habsburg occupancy of the imperial throne emerged at precisely the time when Emperor Matthias saw the end of his reign approaching and Archduke Ferdinand of Inner Austria was making preparations to take over supreme office in the Reich. [10 Immediately after the agreement with Spain, Ferdinand set about procuring his elevation to the Bohemian throne, and on 5 June 1617 he received the approval of the estates. In the process, he avoided anything that might suggest any recognition of a suffrage on their part.
When the coronation celebrations were over, following 19 June 1617, many representatives of the Bohemian estates had come to understand that, with the Archduke of Inner Austria, they had recognised as king not only a champion of the Counter Reformation but also an enemy of government by the estates. A small group of fierce opponents of Habsburg rule used a series of increasingly radical campaigns to force the moderate majority to quit the imperial camp. The Defenestration of Prague was planned with the object of making that defection irreversible in the hope that, following a victorious struggle, a new Bohemian state might emerge in which the estates had the upper hand. [11]
This exacerbation of the Bohemian Revolt put Ferdinand under pressure in two ways. Not only had a section of his territory taken itself out of his control; the probable choice of the next Elector Palatine gave that section two electorships and the Protestants in the Reich four, which constituted a majority in the electoral college. In the circumstances, Archduke Ferdinand must expect not to be elected emperor. Since Emperor Matthias was already ill, it looked as if there was going to be a change at the head of the Reich in the foreseeable future. So great was the threat that he was persuaded to ask King Philip III for military assistance as early as June 1618.
The death of Matthias in March 1619 did indeed leave the highest office in the Reich vacant. In the months that followed, Ferdinand's efforts to get himself elected emperor were parallelled by the preparations of the estates to elect a king in Bohemia. At the end of August 1619, Ferdinand was elected emperor in Frankfurt, and almost simultaneously the Bohemians chose Friedrich V of the Palatinate as their new king. Ferdinand immediately utilised the political capital of his new office to make concessions to his negotiating partners in Munich and Dresden: in October 1619, he secured the armed assistance of Bavaria by promising to transfer the Palatine electorship to Duke Maximilian; and in April 1620, Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony also promised the emperor his support, in return for which he was to obtain the Lusatias in lien. [12] This policy not only prevented the Bohemian Revolt from spreading to neighbouring areas of the Reich; it also meant that, above and beyond confessional frontiers, the most powerful princes in the Reich were on the emperor's side.
These optimal diplomatic preparations were followed by a successful military campaign fought by League and Spanish troops and within a few weeks by total imperial control over Bohemia. The lands of the crown of Wenceslas became Habsburg once more, the Palatine electorship, made available by Friedrich's ban, could be transferred to the Duke of Bavaria, and the Emperor ceded the Lusatias by treaty to Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony. If mortgaging Bohemian lands was in fact among the prerogatives of a territorial ruler, banning an elector together with his descendants and transferring his electorship without the consent of the imperial estates far exceeded the powers of the emperorship. [13]
In Bohemia, twenty-one key figures in the Revolt were summarily executed. Opponents of the House of Habsburg throughout Europe saw their worst fears confirmed in that a return to the "Spanish servitude" or universal thraldom to Europe's most powerful dynasty seemed imminent. Ferdinand took advantage of the exile of large numbers of hostile nobles to confiscate their property and distribute it among his political supporters, many of whom came from the Reich or from the Austrian patrimonial lands. A substantial shift of wealth took place, strengthening the German at the expense of the Czech element within the Bohemian estates.
In addition to the families of the emperor's supporters, another group dominant in the councils of the estates was made up of bishops restored to their possessions. They had not enjoyed so strong a position since the outbreak of the Hussite revolution two centuries earlier. The remaining Bohemian estates were deprived of most of their former rights by the absolutist constitution, the Verneuerte Landesordnung, enacted in 1627. [14] Bohemia turned into a Habsburg hereditary monarchy, and Ferdinand II moved the Bohemian chancellery to Vienna, where he could exercise better control over it.
Following his astonishingly complete victory, achieved with only modest resources, the emperor believed that, with God's help, further political successes were possible. Where the prevailing political morality would have deemed a settlement with the defeated enemy in the spirit of temperantia to be called for, the emperor determined to go on fighting. Refusing to restore the Elector Palatine to his hereditary possessions, despite pressure from Spain and Saxony, he instead bestowed the Palatine electorship on Maximilian of Bavaria at the Regensburg Council of Princes in 1623. [15]
After inflicting a number of defeats on Bohemia's remaining Protestant troops and their commanders, the armies of Tilly and subsequently also of Wallenstein established themselves over much of the Reich. Not even the Danish king, Christian IV, who as colonel of the Lower Saxony circle felt called upon to defend Protestantism and North Germany, was a match for the Catholic armies. Following a series of defeats, he was obliged to sign the Peace of Lübeck in 1629 and withdraw from all areas of the Reich south of Holstein. [16]
While the fighting against Christian IV of Denmark proceeded successfully on land, the efforts of both Habsburg lines to join forces with the Hanseatic cities to develop fleets in the North Sea and the Baltic and open up a maritime front against Sweden and the United Netherlands were unsuccessful. [17] After the Hanseatic cities had put up delaying resistance and all attempts to treat with Denmark and Poland had met with failure, Wallenstein's unsuccessful siege of Stralsund in 1628 finally ended Habsburg dreams of becoming a sea power in the north. [18]
Despite his lack of success at sea, even before the Peace of Lübeck Emperor Ferdinand II had begun to implement his policy as champion of the Counter Reformation in the Reich. It accorded with his view of himself as defender of the Church to give official recognition to the Catholic interpretation of the (religious) Peace of Augsburg. What the orthodox side had failed to get incorporated in the 1555 treaty, despite having asked for it many times, was now elevated to the status of law " without the emperor respecting the necessary formalities of imperial law. Neither the electors nor the imperial estates as a whole were consulted; the will of the emperor was simply promulgated in the form of an edict. The principal object being to recover all ecclesiastical institutions together with their privileges and property, the legal document was called the "Edict of Restitution". [19]
It remains unproven whether, as the Protestant camp suspected, the emperor really did intend to eradicate Protestantism completely from the Reich. On all the evidence of the sort of policy he had displayed hitherto, the most likely assumption is that he intended to proceed gradually, relying on the wooing as well as the thrusting power of the counter-reformatory orders to re-establish the Roman faith throughout the Reich, particularly in the Protestant areas, over the course of a generation. That did not of course happen.
IV. The turning-point of the war (1630) and the decline of imperial power
As early as 1628 war had broken out in Italy between France and Spain over the succession to the Duchy of Mantua, absorbing the Spanish forces intended for the war in the Reich. France imposed its candidate, Duke Charles of Nevers, and sealed its victory in 1631 with the Peace of Cherasco. [20] Even if the outcome of the war did lead to closer co-operation between the emperor and Spain over Italian policy, it should be stressed that that co-operation resulted from a joint weakness vis-à-vis the French advance and remained so characterised during the following centuries.
At the same time, the electors gathered in Regensburg forced Wallenstein's dismissal and the reduction of his vast army, while the emperor failed to obtain the crown of Rome for his eldest son, the future Emperor Ferdinand III. Ferdinand II was obliged to acknowledge that his Catholic supporters, who up until 1629 had welcomed and supported his progress towards the Edict of Restitution, were certainly not prepared to allow a change in the balance of forces between emperor and electors. [21]
There followed the brief triumph of the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, which actually hit the Catholic imperial estates harder than it did the patrimonial lands of the emperor. Within his sphere of power, the king made constitutional changes by turning ecclesiastical territories into spoils for his own backers. So brief was his rule that it is not clear what his aims were in terms of policy regarding the Reich. The three main military protagonists in the Thirty Years" War, namely Gustavus Adolphus, Tilly, and Wallenstein, all died within a few months of one another between 1632 and 1634. As a result, the political aspect regained some of its earlier importance, a development that was in the emperor's interests. After their defeat at Nördlingen, it was possible temporarily to push the Swedish troops back to the North German coastal strip.
In a changed political situation, Emperor Ferdinand II decided first to make peace with the imperial estates in order subsequently to drive the foreign powers from imperial soil. The emperor's chief negotiating partner in Prague in early 1635 was the Electorate of Saxony. On the confessional question, Ferdinand II drew back from his extensive counter-reformatory plans by suspending the Edict of Restitution for forty years. Instead he sought to strengthen his position in the Reich, intending that an imperial army under his leadership should secure peace, a project that had foundered hitherto on the mistrust of the estates as regarded placing large numbers of troops under the control of the head of the Reich. Since the Peace of Prague took account neither of the outlawed imperial princes nor of the foreign powers, its terms proved unrealisable. [22]
The year 1637 brought a change of ruler as Ferdinand II was succeeded by Ferdinand III. The latter found himself confronted by a growing French military presence in South Germany, while a number of imperial campaigns ended in disaster. [23] There was a noticeable yearning for peace throughout the Reich as, given the growing importance of France and the manifestations of exhaustion evident on the part of all the other powers, the perception took hold that a major peace must be concluded, embracing all those involved in the war, and that the only possible basis for such a peace was the current distribution of power, however widely that might diverge from the interests, objectives, and aspirations of the various parties.
V. Imperial policy in the run-up to the Peace, 1641-1648
The Congress that led to the Peace of Westphalia was one of the longest continuous negotiations of its type in the early modern period. After Pope Urban VIII had offered to mediate between the Catholic war parties as early as 1636, in 1641 the emperor, Sweden, and France agreed on the cities of Münster and Osnabrück as negotiating venues. From the standpoint of the emperor, a victorious outcome of this war was no longer on the cards; it was a question of salvaging what could still be salvaged. [24]
The emperor's strategy of first making peace with Sweden and France in order then to be in a position to settle matters in the Reich was thwarted by the foreign powers, who invited all the imperial estates to the negotiating table. The Congress thus formally included within itself a full Imperial Diet. Sweden and France demanded compensation (they called it "satisfaction") for their war-related expenses.
This put Emperor Ferdinand III on the defensive from the outset, and because he had rejected an armistice during the talks he was obliged at the same time to suffer further military defeats. In March 1645 the Swedes beat an imperial army near the Bohemian town of Jankau, which gave them control over large parts of Bohemia. Ferdinand was forced to admit to himself and to Philip IV that he possessed neither money, nor troops, nor qualified military leaders. [25] He decided to send his top diplomat, Count Maximilian von Trauttmansdorff, to Westphalia with extensive delegated powers to procure peace even at the cost of substantial sacrifices. [26]
Trauttmansdorff's agenda, together with further discussions in the Privy Council and other imperial advisory bodies, indicates a hierarchy of imperial priorities, which may be summarised as follows: