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his fatal and terrible reign rests not so much upon himself,
personally, as upon the Jesuits who educated him. He appears to
have sincerely believed that it was better to reign over a desert than
a Protestant people. As a man he was courageous, patient, simple in
his tastes, and without personal vices. But all the weaknesses and
crimes of his worst predecessors, added together, were scarcely a
greater curse to the German people than his devotion to what he
considered the true faith. His son, Ferdinand III., was immediately
elected to succeed him. The Protestants considered him less subject
to the Jesuits and more kindly disposed towards themselves, but
they were mistaken: he adopted all the measures of his father, and
carried on the war with equal zeal and cruelty.

1638. More than one army was sent to the relief of

Breisach, but Duke Bernard defeated them all,
and in December, 1638, the strong fortress surrendered to him. His
compact with France stipulated that he should possess the greater
part of Alsatia as his own independent principality, after conquering
it, relinquishing to France the northern portion, bordering on
Lorraine. But now Louis XIII. demanded Breisach, making its
surrender to him the condition of further assistance. Bernard
refused, gave up the French subsidy, and determined to carry on the
war alone. His popularity was so great that his chance of success
seemed good: he was a brave, devout and noble-minded man,
whose strong personal ambition was always controlled by his
conscience. The people had entire faith in him, and showed him the
same reverence which they had manifested towards Gustavus
Adolphus; yet their hope, as before, only preceded their loss. In the
midst of his preparations Duke Bernard died suddenly, on the 18th of
July, 1639, only thirty-six years old. It was generally believed that he
had been poisoned by a secret agent of France, but there is no
evidence that this was the case, except that a French army instantly
marched into Alsatia and held the country.

Duke Bernard's successes, nevertheless, had drawn a part of the

Imperialists from Northern Germany, and in 1638 Banner, having
recruited his army, marched through Brandenburg and Saxony into
the heart of Bohemia, burning and plundering as he went, with no
less barbarity than Tilly or Wallenstein. Although repulsed in 1639,
near Prague, by the Archduke Leopold (Ferdinand III.'s brother), he
only retired as far as Thuringia, where he was again strengthened by
Hessian and French troops. In this condition of affairs, Ferdinand III.
called a Diet, which met at Ratisbon in the autumn of 1640. A
majority of the Protestant members united with the Catholics in their
enmity to Sweden and France, but they seemed incapable of taking
any measures to put an end to the dreadful war: month after month
went by and nothing was done.

Then Banner conceived the bold design of capturing the Emperor

and the Diet. He made a winter march, with such skill and swiftness,
that he appeared before the walls of Ratisbon at the same moment
with the first news of his movement. Nothing but a sudden thaw,
and the breaking up of the ice in the Danube, prevented him from
being successful. In May, 1641, he died, his army broke up, and the
Emperor began to recover some of the lost ground. Several of the
Protestant princes showed signs of submission, and ambassadors
from Austria, France and Sweden met at Hamburg to decide where
and how a Peace Congress might be held.

1642. VICTORIES OF In 1642 the Swedish army was reorganized under

TORSTENSON. the command of Torstenson, one of the greatest
of the many distinguished generals of the time.
Although he was a constant sufferer from gout and had to be carried
in a litter, he was no less rapid than daring and successful in all his
military operations. His first campaign was through Silesia and
Bohemia, almost to the gates of Vienna; then, returning through
Saxony, towards the close of the year, he almost annihilated the
army of Piccolomini before the walls of Leipzig. The Elector John
George, fighting on the Catholic side, was forced to take refuge in
Bohemia.
Denmark having declared war against Sweden, Torstenson made a
campaign in Holstein and Jutland in 1643, in conjunction with a
Swedish fleet on the coast, and soon brought Denmark to terms.
The Imperialist general, Gallas, followed him, but was easily
defeated, and then Torstenson, in turn, followed him back through
Bohemia into Austria. In March, 1645, the Swedish army won such a
splendid victory near Tabor, that Ferdinand III. had scarcely any
troops left to oppose their march. Again Torstenson appeared before
Vienna, and was about commencing the siege of the city, when a
pestilence broke out among his troops and compelled him to retire,
as before, through Saxony. Worn out with the fatigues of his
marches, he died before the end of the year, and the command was
given to General Wrangel.

During this time the French, under the famous Marshals, Turenne
and Condé, had not only maintained themselves in Alsatia, but had
crossed the Rhine and ravaged Baden, the Palatinate, Würtemberg
and part of Franconia. Although badly defeated by the Bavarians in
the early part of 1645, they were reinforced by the Swedes and
Hessians, and, before the close of the year, won such a victory over
the united Imperialist forces, not far from Donauwörth, that all
Bavaria lay open to them. The effect of these French successes, and
of those of the Swedes under Torstenson, was to deprive Ferdinand
III. of nearly his whole military strength. John George of Saxony
concluded a separate armistice with the Swedes, thus violating the
treaty of Prague, which had cost his people ten years of blood. He
was followed by Frederick William, the young Elector of
Brandenburg; and then Maximilian of Bavaria, in March, 1647, also
negotiated a separate armistice with France and Sweden. Ferdinand
III. was thus left with a force of only 12,000 men, the command of
which, as he had no Catholic generals left, was given to a renegade
Calvinist named Melander von Holzapfel.

1645. The chief obstacle to peace—the power of the

Hapsburgs—now seemed to be broken down. The
wanton and tremendous effort made to crush out Protestantism in
Germany, although helped by the selfishness, the cowardice or the
miserable jealousy of so many Protestant princes, had signally failed,
owing to the intervention of three foreign powers, one of which was
Catholic. Yet the Peace Congress, which had been agreed upon in
1643, had accomplished nothing. It was divided into two bodies: the
ambassadors of the Emperor were to negotiate at Osnabrück with
Sweden, as the representative of the Protestant powers, and at
Münster with France, as the representative of the Catholic powers
which desired peace. Two more years elapsed before all the
ambassadors came together, and then a great deal of time was
spent in arranging questions of rank, title and ceremony, which seem
to have been considered much more important than the weal or woe
of a whole people. Spain, Holland, Venice, Poland and Denmark also
sent representatives, and about the end of 1645 the Congress was
sufficiently organized to commence its labors. But, as the war was
still being waged with as much fury as ever, one side waited and
then the other for the result of battles and campaigns; and so two
more years were squandered.

After the armistice with Maximilian of Bavaria, the Swedish general,

Wrangel, marched into Bohemia, where he gained so many
advantages that Maximilian finally took sides again with the Emperor
and drove the Swedes into Northern Germany. Then, early in 1648,
Wrangel effected a junction with Marshal Turenne, and the combined
Swedish and French armies overran all Bavaria, defeated the
Imperialists in a bloody battle, and stood ready to invade Austria. At
the same time Königsmark, with another Swedish army, entered
Bohemia, stormed and took half the city of Prague, and only waited
the approach of Wrangel and Turenne to join them in a combined
movement upon Vienna. But before this movement could be
executed, Ferdinand III. had decided to yield. His ambassadors at
Osnabrück and Münster had received instructions, and lost no time
in acting upon them: the proclamation of peace, after such heartless
delays, came suddenly and put an end to thirty years of war.
 The Peace of Westphalia, as it is called, was
1648. THE PEACE OF concluded on the 24th of October, 1648.
WESTPHALIA. Inasmuch as its provisions extended not to
Germany alone, but fixed the political relations of Europe for a
period of nearly a hundred and fifty years, they must be briefly
stated. France and Sweden, as the military powers which were
victorious in the end, sought to draw the greatest advantages from
the necessities of Germany, but France opposed any settlement of
the religious questions (in order to keep a chance open for future
interference), and Sweden demanded an immediate and final
settlement, which was agreed to. France received Lorraine, with the
cities of Metz, Toul and Verdun, which she had held nearly a hundred
years, all Southern Alsatia with the fortress of Breisach, the right of
appointing the governors of ten German cities, and other rights
which practically placed nearly the whole of Alsatia in her power.
Sweden received the northern half of Pomerania, with the cities of
Wismar and Stettin, and the coast between Bremen and Hamburg,
together with an indemnity of 5,000,000 thalers. Electoral Saxony
received Lusatia and part of the territory of Magdeburg.
Brandenburg received the other half of Pomerania, the archbishopric
of Magdeburg, the bishoprics of Minden and Halberstadt, and other
territory which had belonged to the Roman Church. Additions were
made to the domains of Mecklenburg, Brunswick, and Hesse-Cassel,
and the latter was also awarded an indemnity of 600,000 thalers.
Bavaria received the Upper Palatinate (north of the Danube), and
Baden, Würtemberg and Nassau were restored to their banished
rulers. Other petty States were confirmed in the position which they
had occupied before the war, and the independence of Switzerland
and Holland was acknowledged.

In regard to Religion, the results were much more important to the

world. Both Calvinists and Lutherans received entire freedom of
worship and equal civil rights with the Catholics. Ferdinand II.'s
"Edict of Restitution" was withdrawn, and the territories which had
been secularized up to the year 1624 were not given back to the
Church. Universal amnesty was decreed for everything which had
happened during the war, except for the Austrian Protestants, whose
possessions were not restored to them. The Emperor retained the
authority of deciding questions of war and peace, taxation, defences,
alliances, &c. with the concurrence of the Diet: he acknowledged the
absolute sovereignty of the several Princes in their own States, and
conceded to them the right of forming alliances among themselves
or with foreign powers! A special article of the treaty prohibited all
persons from writing, speaking or teaching anything contrary to its
provisions.

1648. The Pope (at that time Innocent X.) declared the
Treaty of Westphalia null and void, and issued a
bull against its observance. The parties to the treaty, however, did
not allow this bull to be published in Germany. The Catholics in all
parts of the country (except Austria, Styria and the Tyrol) had
suffered almost as severely as the Protestants, and would have
welcomed the return of peace upon any terms which simply left their
faith free.

Nothing shows so conclusively how wantonly and wickedly the Thirty

Years' War was undertaken than the fact that the Peace of 1648, in a
religious point of view, yielded even more to the Protestants than
the Religious Peace of Augsburg, granted by Charles V. in 1555. After
a hundred years, the Church of Rome, acting through its tools, the
Hapsburg Emperors, was forced to give up the contest: the sword of
slaughter was rusted to the hilt by the blood it had shed, and yet
religious freedom was saved to Germany. It was not zeal for the
spread of Christian truth which inspired this fearful Crusade against
twenty-five millions of Protestants, for the Catholics equally
acknowledged the authority of the Bible: it was the despotic
determination of the Roman Church to rule the minds and
consciences of all men, through its Pope and its priesthood.

Thirty years of war! The slaughters of Rome's worst Emperors, the

persecution of the Christians under Nero and Diocletian, the
invasions of the Huns and Magyars, the long struggle of the Guelphs
and Ghibellines, left no such desolation behind them. At the
beginning of the century, the population of the German Empire was
about thirty millions: when the Peace of Westphalia was declared, it
was scarcely more than twelve millions! Electoral Saxony, alone, lost
900,000 lives in two years. The population of Augsburg had
diminished from 80,000 to 18,000, and out of 500,000 inhabitants,
Würtemberg had but 48,000 left. The city of Berlin contained but
three hundred citizens, the whole of the Palatinate of the Rhine but
two hundred farmers. In Hesse-Cassel seventeen cities, forty-seven
castles and three hundred villages were entirely destroyed by fire:
thousands of villages, in all parts of the country, had but four or five
families left out of hundreds, and landed property sank to about
one-twentieth of its former value. Franconia was so depopulated that
an Assembly held in Nuremberg ordered the Catholic priests to
marry, and permitted all other men to have two wives. The horses,
cattle and sheep were exterminated in many districts, the supplies of
grain were at an end, even for sowing, and large cultivated tracts
had relapsed into a wilderness. Even the orchards and vineyards had
been wantonly destroyed wherever the armies had passed. So
terrible was the ravage that in a great many localities, the same
amount of population, cattle, acres of cultivated land and general
prosperity, was not restored until the year 1848, two centuries
afterwards!

1648. DESOLATION This statement of the losses of Germany, however,

OF GERMANY. was but a small part of the suffering endured.
Only two commanders, Gustavus Adolphus and
Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, preserved rigid discipline among their
troops, and prevented them from plundering the people. All others
allowed, or were powerless to prevent, the most savage outrages.
During the last ten or twelve years of the war both Protestants and
Catholics vied with each other in deeds of barbarity; the soldiers
were nothing but highway robbers, who maimed and tortured the
country people to make them give up their last remaining property,
and drove hundreds of thousands of them into the woods and
mountains to die miserably or live as half-savages. Multitudes of
others flocked to the cities for refuge, only to be visited by fire and
famine. In the year 1637, when Ferdinand II. died, the want was so
great that men devoured each other, and even hunted down human
beings like deer or hares, in order to feed upon them. Great
numbers committed suicide, to avoid a slow death by hunger: on the
island of Rügen many poor creatures were found dead, with their
mouths full of grass, and in some districts attempts were made to
knead earth into bread. Then followed a pestilence which carried off
a large proportion of the survivors. A writer of the time exclaims: "A
thousand times ten thousand souls, the spirits of innocent children
butchered in this unholy war, cry day and night unto God for
vengeance, and cease not: while those who have caused all these
miseries live in peace and freedom, and the shout of revelry and the
voice of music are heard in their dwellings!"

1648. In character, in intelligence and in morality, the

German people were set back two hundred years.
All branches of industry had declined, commerce had almost entirely
ceased, literature and the arts were suppressed, and except the
astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler there was no
contribution to human knowledge. Even the modern High-German
language, which Luther had made the classic tongue of the land,
seemed to be on the point of perishing. Spaniards and Italians on
the Catholic, Swedes and French on the Protestant side, flooded the
country with foreign words and expressions, the use of which soon
became an affectation with the nobility, who did their best to destroy
their native language. Wallenstein's letters to the Emperor were a
curious mixture of German, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin.

Politically, the change was no less disastrous. The ambition of the

house of Hapsburg, it is true, had brought its own punishment; the
imperial dignity was secured to it, but henceforth the head of the
"Holy Roman Empire" was not much more than a shadow. Each
petty State became, practically, an independent nation, with power
to establish its own foreign relations, make war and contract
alliances. Thus Germany, as a whole, lost her place among the
powers of Europe, and could not possibly regain it under such an
arrangement: the Emperor and the Princes, together, had skilfully
planned her decline and fall. The nobles who, in former centuries,
had maintained a certain amount of independence, were almost as
much demoralized as the people, and when every little prince began
to imitate Louis XIV. and set up his own Versailles, the nobles in his
territory became his courtiers and government officials. As for the
mass of the people, their spirit was broken: for a time they gave up
even the longing for rights which they had lost, and taught their
children abject obedience in order that they might simply live.

1648. THE GERMAN After the Thirty Years' War, Germany was
STATES. composed of nine Electorates, twenty-four
Religious Principalities (Catholic), nine princely
Abbots, ten princely Abbesses, twenty-four Princes with seat and
vote in the Diet, thirteen Princes without seat and vote, sixty-two
Counts of the Empire, fifty-one Cities of the Empire, and about one
thousand Knights of the Empire. These last, however, no longer
possessed any political power. But, without them, there were two
hundred and three more or less independent, jealous and conflicting
States, united by a bond which was more imaginary than real; and
this confused, unnatural state of things continued until Napoleon
came to put an end to it.
 CHAPTER XXX.

GERMANY, TO THE PEACE OF RYSWICK.

(1648—1697.)
Contemporary History. —Germany in the Seventeenth Century. —Influence of
Louis XIV. —Leopold I. of Austria. —Petty Despotisms. —The Great Elector. —
Invasions of Louis XIV. —The Elector Aids Holland. —War with France. —Battle of
Fehrbellin. —French Ravages in Baden. —The Peace of Nymwegen. —The
Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns. —Louis XIV. seizes Strasburg. —Vienna besieged
by the Turks. —Sobieski's Victory. —Events in Hungary. —Prince Eugene of
Savoy. —Victories over the Turks. —French Invasion of Germany. —French
Barbarity. —Death of the Great Elector. —The War with France. —Peace of
Ryswick. —Position of the German States. —The Diet. —The Imperial Court. —
State of Learning and Literature.

1648. The Peace of Westphalia coincides with the

beginning of great changes throughout Europe.
The leading position on the Continent, which Germany had
preserved from the treaty of Verdun until the accession of Charles V.
—nearly 700 years—was lost beyond recovery: it had passed into
the hands of France, where Louis XIV. was just commencing his long
and brilliant reign. Spain, after a hundred years of supremacy, was in
a rapid decline; the new Republic of Holland was mistress of the
seas, and Sweden was the great power of Northern Europe. In
England, Charles I. had lost his throne, and Cromwell was at work,
laying the foundation of a broader and firmer power than either the
Tudors or the Stuarts had ever built. Poland was still a large and
strong kingdom, and Russia was only beginning to attract the notice
of other nations. The Italian Republics had seen their best days:
even the power of Venice was slowly crumbling to pieces. The coast
of America, from Maine to Virginia, was dotted with little English,
Dutch and Swedish settlements, only a few of which had safely
passed through their first struggle for existence.

1657. ELECTION OF The history of Germany, during the remainder of

LEOPOLD I. the seventeenth century, furnishes few events
upon which the intelligent and patriotic German of
to-day can look back with any satisfaction. Austria was the principal
power, through her territory and population, as well as the Imperial
dignity, which was thenceforth accorded to her as a matter of habit.
The provision of religious liberty had not been extended to her
people, who were now forcibly made Catholic; the former legislative
assemblies, even the privileges of the nobles, had been suppressed,
and the rule of the Hapsburgs was as absolute a despotism as that
of Louis XIV. When Ferdinand III. died, in 1657, the "Great
Monarch," as the French call him, made an attempt to be elected his
successor: he purchased the votes of the Archbishops of Mayence,
Treves and Cologne, and might have carried the day but for the
determined resistance of the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony.
Even had he been successful, it is doubtful whether his influence
over the most of the German Princes would have been greater than
it was in reality.

Ferdinand's son, Leopold I., a stupid, weak-minded youth of

eighteen, was chosen Emperor in 1658. Like his ancestor, Frederick
III., whom he most resembled, his reign was as long as it was
useless. Until the year 1705 he was the imaginary ruler of an
imaginary Empire: Vienna was a faint reflection of Madrid, as every
other little capital was of Paris. The Hapsburgs and the Bourbons
being absolute, all the ruling princes, even the best of them,
introduced the same system into their territories, and the
participation of the other classes of the people in the government
ceased. The cities followed this example, and their Burgomasters
and Councillors became a sort of aristocracy, more or less arbitrary
in character. The condition of the people, therefore, depended
entirely on the princes, priests, or other officials who governed
them: one State or city might be orderly and prosperous, while
another was oppressed and checked in its growth. A few of the
rulers were wise and humane: Ernest the Pious of Gotha was a
father to his land, during his long reign; in Hesse, Brunswick and
Anhalt learning was encouraged, and Frederick William of
Brandenburg set his face against the corrupting influences of France.
These small States were exceptions, yet they kept alive what of
hope and strength and character was left to Germany, and were the
seeds of her regeneration in the present century.

1660. Throughout the greater part of the country the

people relapsed into ignorance and brutality, and
the higher classes assumed the stiff, formal, artificial manners which
nearly all Europe borrowed from the court of Louis XIV. Public
buildings, churches and schools were allowed to stand as ruins,
while the petty sovereign built his stately palace, laid out his park in
the style of Versailles, and held his splendid and ridiculous festivals.
Although Saxony had been impoverished and almost depopulated,
the Elector, John George II., squandered all the revenues of the land
on banquets, hunting-parties, fireworks and collections of curiosities,
until his treasury was hopelessly bankrupt. Another prince made his
Italian singing-master prime minister, and others again surrendered
their lives and the happiness of their people to influences which
were still more disastrous.

The one historical character among the German rulers of this time is
Frederick William of Brandenburg, who is generally called "The Great
Elector." In bravery, energy and administrative ability, he was the
first worthy successor of Frederick of Hohenzollern. No sooner had
peace been declared than he set to work to restore order to his
wasted and disturbed territory: he imitated Sweden in organizing a
standing army, small at first, but admirably disciplined; he introduced
a regular system of taxation, of police and of justice, and
encouraged trade and industry in all possible ways. In a few years a
war between Sweden and Poland gave him the opportunity of
interfering, in the hope of obtaining the remainder of Pomerania. He
first marched to Königsberg, the capital of the Duchy of Prussia,
which belonged to Brandenburg, but under the sovereignty of
Poland. Allying himself first with the Swedes, he participated in a
great victory at Warsaw in July, 1656, and then found it to his
advantage to go over to the side of John Casimir, king of Poland,
who offered him the independence of Prussia. This was his only gain
from the war; for, by the peace of 1660, he was forced to give up
Western Pomerania, which he had in the mean time conquered from
Sweden.

1667. WAR WITH Louis XIV. of France was by this time aware that
LOUIS XIV. his kingdom had nothing to fear from any of its
neighbors, and might easily be enlarged at their
expense. In 1667, he began his wars of conquest, by laying claim to
Brabant, and instantly sending Turenne and Condé over the frontier.
A number of fortresses, unprepared for resistance, fell into their
hands; but Holland, England and Sweden formed an alliance against
France, and the war terminated in 1668 by the peace of Aix-la-
Chapelle. Louis's next step was to ally himself with England and
Sweden against Holland, on the ground that a Republic, by
furnishing a place of refuge for political fugitives, was dangerous to
monarchies. In 1672 he entered Holland with an army of 118,000
men, took Geldern, Utrecht and other strongly-fortified places, and
would soon have made himself master of the country, if its
inhabitants had not shown themselves capable of the sublimest
courage and self-sacrifice. They were victorious over France and
England on the sea, and defended themselves stubbornly on the
land. Even the German Archbishop of Cologne and Bishop of
Münster furnished troops to Louis XIV. and the Emperor Leopold
promised to remain neutral. Then Frederick William of Brandenburg
allied himself with Holland, and so wrought upon the Emperor by
representing the danger to Germany from the success of France,
that the latter sent an army under General Montecuccoli to the
Rhine. But the Austrian troops remained inactive; Louis XIV.
purchased the support of the Archbishops of Mayence and Treves;
Westphalia was invaded by the French, and in 1673 Frederick
William was forced to sign a treaty of neutrality.
About this time Holland was strengthened by the alliance of Spain,
and the Emperor Leopold, alarmed at the continual invasions of
German territory on the Upper Rhine, ordered Montecuccoli to make
war in earnest. In 1674 the Diet formally declared war against
France, and Frederick William marched with 16,000 men to the
Palatinate, which Marshal Turenne had ravaged with fire and sword.
The French were driven back and even out of Alsatia for a time; but
they returned the following year, and were successful until the
month of July, when Turenne found his death on the soil which he
had turned into a desert. Before this happened, Frederick William
had been recalled in all haste to Brandenburg, where the Swedes,
instigated by France, were wasting the land with a barbarity equal to
Turenne's. His march was so swift that he found the enemy
scattered: dividing and driving them before him, on the 18th of
June, 1675, at Fehrbellin, with only 7,000 men, he attacked the main
Swedish army, numbering more than double that number. For three
hours the battle raged with the greatest fury; Frederick William
fought at the head of his troops, who more than once cut him out
from the ranks of the enemy, and the result was a splendid victory.
The fame of this achievement rang through all Europe, and
Brandenburg was thenceforth mentioned with the respect due to an
independent power.

1677. Frederick William continued the war for two years

longer, gradually acquiring possession of all
Swedish Pomerania, including Stettin and the other cities on the
coast. He even built a small fleet, and undertook to dispute the
supremacy of Sweden on the Baltic. During this time the war with
France was continued on the Upper Rhine, with varying fortunes.
Though repulsed and held in check after Turenne's death, the French
burned five cities and several hundred villages west of the Rhine,
and in 1677 captured Freiburg in Baden. But Louis XIV. began to be
tired of the war, especially as Holland proved to be unconquerable.
Negotiations for peace were commenced in 1678, and on the 5th of
February, 1679, the "Peace of Nymwegen" was concluded with
Holland, Spain and the German Empire—except Brandenburg!
Leopold I. openly declared that he did not mean to have a Vandal
kingdom in the North.

Frederick William at first determined to carry on the war alone, but

the French had already laid waste Westphalia, and in 1679 he was
forced to accept a peace which required that he should restore
nearly the whole of Western Pomerania to Sweden. Austria,
moreover, took possession of several small principalities in Silesia,
which had fallen to Brandenburg by inheritance. Thus the Hapsburgs
repaid the support which the Hohenzollerns had faithfully rendered
to them for four hundred years: thenceforth the two houses were
enemies, and they were soon to become irreconcilable rivals.
Leopold I. again betrayed Germany in the peace of Nymwegen, by
yielding the city and fortress of Freiburg to France.

1681. THE SEIZURE Louis XIV., nevertheless, was not content with this
OF STRASBURG. acquisition. He determined to possess the
remaining cities of Alsatia which belonged to
Germany. The Catholic Bishop of Strasburg was his secret agent, and
three of the magistrates of the city were bribed to assist. In the
autumn of 1681, when nearly all the merchants were absent,
attending the fair at Frankfort, a powerful French army, which had
been secretly collected in Lorraine, suddenly appeared before
Strasburg. Between force outside and treachery within the walls, the
city surrendered: on the 23d of October Louis XIV. made his
triumphant entry, and was hailed by the Bishop with the
blasphemous words: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in
peace, for his eyes have seen thy Saviour!" The great Cathedral,
which had long been in the possession of the Protestants, was given
up to this Bishop: all Protestant functionaries were deprived of their
offices, and the clergymen driven from the city. French names were
given to the streets, and the inhabitants were commanded, under
heavy penalties, to lay aside their German costume, and adopt the
fashions of France. No official claim or declaration of war preceded
this robbery; but the effect which it produced throughout Germany
was comparatively slight. The people had been long accustomed to
violence and outrage, and the despotic independence of each State
suppressed anything like a national sentiment.

Leopold I. called upon the Princes of the Empire to declare war

against France, but met with little support. Frederick William
positively refused, as he had been shamefully excepted from the
Peace of Nymwegen. He gave as a reason, however, the great
danger which menaced Germany from a new Turkish invasion, and
offered to send an army to the support of Austria. The Emperor,
equally stubborn and jealous, declined this offer, although his own
dominions were on the verge of ruin.

1683. The Turks had remained quiet during the whole of

the Thirty Years' War, when they might easily have
conquered Austria. In the early part of Leopold's reign they
recommenced their invasions, which were terminated, in 1664, by a
truce of twenty years. Before the period came to an end, the
Hungarians, driven to desperation by Leopold's misrule, especially
his persecution of the Protestants, rose in rebellion. The Turks came
to an understanding with them, and early in 1683, an army of more
than 200,000 men, commanded by the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha,
marched up the Danube, carrying everything before it, and
encamped around the walls of Vienna. There is good evidence that
the Sultan, Mohammed IV., was strongly encouraged by Louis XIV. to
make this movement. Leopold fled at the approach of the Turks,
leaving his capital to its fate. For two months Count Stahremberg,
with only 7,000 armed citizens and 6,000 mercenary soldiers under
his command, held the fortifications against the overwhelming force
of the enemy; then, when further resistance was becoming
hopeless, help suddenly appeared. An army commanded by Duke
Charles of Lorraine, another under the Elector of Saxony, and a
third, composed of 20,000 Poles, headed by their king, John
Sobieski, reached Vienna about the same time. The decisive battle
was fought on the 12th of September, 1683, and ended with the
total defeat of the Turks, who fled into Hungary, leaving their camp,
treasures and supplies to the value of 10,000,000 dollars in the
hands of the conquerors.

The deliverance of Vienna was due chiefly to John Sobieski, yet,

when Leopold I. returned to the city which he had deserted, he
treated the Polish king with coldness and haughtiness, never once
thanking him for his generous aid. The war was continued, in the
interest of Austria, by Charles of Lorraine and Max Emanuel of
Bavaria, until 1687, when a great victory at Mohacs in Hungary
forced the Turks to retreat beyond the Danube. Then Leopold I. took
brutal vengeance on the Hungarians, executing so many of their
nobles that the event is called "the Shambles of Eperies," from the
town where it occurred. The Jesuits were allowed to put down
Protestantism in their own way; the power and national pride of
Hungary were trampled under foot, and a Diet held at Presburg
declared that the crown of the country should thenceforth belong to
the house of Hapsburg. This episode of the history of the time, the
taking of Strasburg by Louis XIV., the treatment of Frederick William
of Brandenburg, and other contemporaneous events, must be borne
in mind, since they are connected with much that has taken place in
our own day.

In spite of the defeat of the Turks in 1687, they were encouraged by

France to continue the war. Max Emanuel took Belgrade in 1689, the
Margrave Ludwig of Baden won an important victory, and Prince
Eugene of Savoy (a grandnephew of Cardinal Mazarin, whom Louis
XIV. called, in derision, the "Little Abbé," and refused to give a
military command) especially distinguished himself as a soldier. After
ten years of varying fortune, the war was brought to an end by the
magnificent victory of Prince Eugene at Zenta, in 1697. It was
followed by the Treaty of Carlowitz, in 1699, in which Turkey gave up
Transylvania and the Slavonic provinces to Austria, Morea and
Dalmatia to Venice, and agreed to a truce of twenty-five years.

1686. RENEWED WAR While the best strength of Germany was engaged
WITH FRANCE. in this Turkish war, Louis XIV. was busy in carrying
out his plans of conquest. He claimed the Palatinate of the Rhine for
his brother, the Duke of Orleans, and also attempted to make one of
his agents Archbishop of Cologne. In 1686, an alliance was formed
between Leopold I., several of the German States, Holland, Spain
and Sweden, to defend themselves against the aggressions of
France, but nothing was accomplished by the negotiations which
followed. Finally, in 1688, two powerful French armies suddenly
appeared upon the Rhine: one took possession of the territory of
Treves and Cologne, the other marched through the Palatinate into
Franconia and Würtemberg. But the demands of Louis XIV. were not
acceded to; the preparation for war was so general on the part of
the allied countries that it was evident his conquests could not be
held; so he determined, at least, to ruin the territory before giving it
up.

No more wanton and barbarous deed was ever perpetrated. The

"Great Monarch," the model of elegance and refinement for all
Europe, was guilty of brutality beyond what is recorded of the most
savage chieftains. The vines were pulled up by the roots and
destroyed; the fruit-trees were cut down, the villages burned to the
ground, and 400,000 persons were made beggars, besides those
who were slain in cold blood. The castle of Heidelberg, one of the
most splendid monuments of the Middle Ages in all Europe, was
blown up with gunpowder; the people of Mannheim were compelled
to pull down their own fortifications, after which their city was
burned, Speyer, with its grand and venerable Cathedral, was razed to
the ground, and the bodies of the Emperors buried there were
exhumed and plundered. While this was going on, the German
Princes, with a few exceptions (the "Great Elector" being the
prominent one), were copying the fashions of the French Court, and
even trying to unlearn their native language!

1688. Frederick William of Brandenburg, however, was

spared the knowledge of the worst features of this
outrage. He died the same year, after a reign of forty-eight years, at
the age of sixty-eight. The latter years of his reign were devoted to
the internal development of his State. He united the Oder and Elbe
by a canal, built roads and bridges, encouraged agriculture and the
mechanic arts, and set a personal example of industry and
intelligence to his people while he governed them. His possessions
were divided and scattered, reaching from Königsberg to the Rhine,
but, taken collectively, they were larger than any other German State
at the time, except Austria. None of the smaller German rulers
before him took such a prominent part in the intercourse with
foreign nations. He was thoroughly German, in his jealousy of
foreign rule; but this did not prevent him from helping to confirm
Louis XIV. in his robbery of Strasburg, out of revenge for his own
treatment by Leopold I. When personal pride or personal interest
was concerned, the Hohenzollerns were hardly more patriotic than
the Hapsburgs.

The German Empire raised an army of about 60,000 men, to carry

on the war with France; but its best commanders, Max Emanuel and
Prince Eugene, were fighting the Turks, and the first campaigns were
not successful. The other allied powers, Holland, England and Spain,
were equally unfortunate, while France, compact and consolidated
under one despotic head, easily held out against them. In 1693,
finally, the Margrave Ludwig of Baden obtained some victories in
Southern Germany which forced the French to retreat beyond the
Rhine. The seat of war was then gradually transferred to Flanders,
and the task of conducting it fell upon the foreign allies. At the same
time there were battles in Spain and Savoy, and sea-fights in the
British Channel. Although the fortunes of Germany were influenced
by these events, they belong properly to the history of other
countries. Victory inclined sometimes to one side and sometimes to
the other; the military operations were so extensive that there could
be no single decisive battle.

All parties became more or less weary and exhausted, and the end
of it all was the Treaty of Ryswick, concluded on the 20th of
September, 1697. By its provisions France retained Strasburg and the
greater part of Alsatia, but gave up Freiburg and her other
conquests east of the Rhine, in Baden. Lorraine was restored to its
Duke, but on conditions which made it practically a French province.
The most shameful clause of the Treaty was one which ordered that
the districts which had been made Catholic by force during the
invasion were to remain so.

1697. DECLINE OF Nearly every important German State, at this

THE EMPIRE. time, had some connection or alliance which
subjected it to foreign influence. The Hapsburg
possessions in Belgium were more Spanish than German; Pomerania
and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden were under Sweden;
Austria and Hungary were united; Holstein was attached to
Denmark, and in 1697 Augustus the Strong of Saxony, after the
death of John Sobieski, purchased his election as king of Poland by
enormous bribes to the Polish nobles. Augustus the Strong, of whom
Carlyle says that "he lived in this world regardless of expense,"
outdid his predecessor, John George II., in his monstrous imitation of
French luxury. For a time he not only ruined but demoralized Saxony,
starving the people by his exactions, and living in a style which was
infamous as well as reckless.

The National German Diet, from this time on, was no longer
attended by the Emperor and ruling Princes, but only by their official
representatives. It was held, permanently, in Ratisbon, and its
members spent their time mostly in absurd quarrels about forms.
When any important question arose, messengers were sent to the
rulers to ask their advice, and so much time was always lost that the
Diet was practically useless. The Imperial Court, established by
Maximilian I., was now permanently located at Wetzlar, not far from
Frankfort, and had become as slow and superannuated as the Diet.
The Emperor, in fact, had so little concern with the rest of the
Empire, that his title was only honorary; the revenues it brought him
were about 13,000 florins annually. The only change which took
place in the political organization of Germany, was that in 1692
Ernest Augustus of Hannover (the father of George I. of England)