<325>Now that a separation had been effected between Frederick and Mansfeld, Weston saw a door of escape from his difficulties. Weston presses for a suspension in the Palatinate.He had lately asked in vain for a suspension of arms in the Palatinate alone, and had been told that, unless he could engage that the whole of the forces on his side would remain quiet, the Infanta was utterly without power to restrain the armies of the Emperor.[504] As soon, therefore, as the news reached him, he hurried to Spinola, July 12.and told him what had happened. To his surprise, Spinola did not seem to think the intelligence of any great importance. The army, he said, was less by one man only, the same commanders and the same enemy being still in the field. Most likely the whole affair was a trick. Against this insinuation Weston protested loudly. His master’s son-in-law, he said, was now ready to conform to anything. The King of England had no command over those who were not his subjects nor in his pay. If it was desired, he would join his arms with those of the Emperor against the perturbers of the public peace; but if a suspension of arms were not granted in the Palatinate without reference to Mansfeld, and if Heidelberg and the other towns were assaulted, his Majesty would take it as a declaration of war against himself. “The treaty,” Spinola replied, “were it not for the point of the auxiliaries, might be most easily and speedily <326>concluded; but if, while these men spoil our countries, we shall stand with our hands tied, all the world will deride us.”[505]
It was not only from the language addressed to his representative at Brussels that James learned that he would not be Projected assembly at Ratisbon.allowed to have everything his own way. He had already received a letter from the Emperor, announcing that he intended to hold at Ratisbon, on the 22nd of August, August 22.⁄September 1.an assembly composed of the five loyal Electors, together with three Protestant and three Catholic Princes, for the purpose of settling the conditions of a permanent peace; and this announcement was coupled with an invitation to send an English ambassador to take part in the negotiations.[506]
That James should have been startled by this letter was only natural. Of the eleven members of whom the assembly would be composed, the three ecclesiastical Electors, with the Duke of Bavaria, the Archbishop of Salzburg, and the Bishop of the two sees of Bamberg and Würzburg, were most unlikely to take a lenient view of Frederick’s proceedings. Nor were the names of the Protestant minority more reassuring. The Elector of Saxony, the Elector of Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the Dukes of Brunswick and Pomerania were all either hostile or indifferent to the fugitive Elector Palatine. An announcement such as that which now reached James ought surely to have driven him to reconsider his position. If it was true, as rumour said, that the first proposition submitted to the meeting would be one for the transference of the Electorate, it would be well for James to ask himself how it had become possible for Ferdinand to expect that his policy would find support in a body in which Protestant Germany was so largely represented. The answer was, in truth, not difficult to be found by anyone who knew how to look for it. That Mansfeld, and such as Mansfeld, should have the free range of the Empire, to burn and plunder where they would, was an intolerable evil. In the face of danger the nation was clinging to the Imperial organization as the only centre of unity which it possessed. No <327>foreign prince who tried to break up this unity, loose as it was, would have a chance of being heard, unless he could provide for the restoration of civil order. For the moment, the religious question was in abeyance. These, however, were not the thoughts with which James’s mind was occupied. In the Emperor’s letter he saw nothing more than a gross personal insult to himself. Ferdinand, he declared, had promised to treat with him on equal terms. What right then had he to make his decisions in any way dependent upon the wishes of the Princes of the Empire? It was derogatory to the honour of a King of England that his ambassador should be summoned to dance attendance upon an assembly so composed.[507]
It was not only on this point that James failed to comprehend the situation of affairs. It was impossible for any candid mind to Frederick’s cause hopeless.dissociate the proceedings of Frederick from the proceedings of Mansfeld. Spinola was no doubt in the wrong when he spoke of Frederick’s proclamation, by which his troops had been disbanded, as altogether illusory; but the question to be considered was not whether the exiled Prince meant what he said now, but whether he would say the same thing if he found himself restored to his ancient position. If the capture of an undefended town had led him to reject with scorn the suggestion made by the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, that he should submit to the Emperor, what was to be expected if he found himself once more in the possession of the Palatinate? How long would it be before he took some new offence at one or other of his neighbours. Then would be seen the consequences of Imperial lenity. Fresh hordes of brigands, unpaid and unprovided, would pour forth once more to seek their prey, and the whole work of repression would have to be done over again.
Such was the wide-spread feeling which at this conjuncture led Protestant and Catholic alike to give their support to Ferdinand. As far as Frederick was personally concerned, the argument was unanswerable. Every year his power for doing good had grown less and less. One by one, he had thrown away his chances. In 1619, by refusing the crown of Bohemia, he might <328>probably have secured the religious liberty of that country. At the close of 1620, by renouncing the throne which he had lost, he might have secured the religious liberty of Protestant Germany. In 1621, by cordially accepting Digby’s mediation, he might at least have obtained, under very stringent conditions, the restitution of his own states. And now even that hope was gone. From the moment of his attack upon Darmstadt he had nothing left but abdication.
As usual, in James’s unhappy reign, the true policy of England is to be found not in the manifestoes of its sovereign, or in January.Desire of Spain for peace.the despatches of its ministers, but in the memorials in which Spanish statesmen expressed their apprehensions. The Council of State at Madrid was still divided between its desire to further the interests of the Catholic Church in Germany and its dread of provoking a war with England. Of the necessity of peace for the best interests of the monarchy, none could be more clearly convinced than the ministers of Philip. “If we go on with the war in the Lower Palatinate,” the Infanta Isabella had written towards the close of the preceding year, “we shall have before us a struggle of the greatest difficulty. We shall be assailed by the whole force of the opposite party, and the burden will fall with all its weight upon Spain. It will hardly be possible to bring together sufficient forces to meet the enemy. It will, therefore, be better to agree to a suspension of arms for as long a time as possible, leaving each side in possession of the territory occupied by it, in the hope that time will show what is best to be done.”[508]
In the same spirit the Council of State utterly rejected a suggestion thrown out by one of the Emperor’s councillors at Vienna, Rejection of a proposed cession of the Lower Palatinate.to the effect that the brother of the King, the Infant Charles, might marry the eldest daughter of the Emperor, receiving a new kingdom, to be composed of Franche Comté, Alsace, and the Lower Palatinate.[509] Oñate was directed to inform Ferdinand that <329>Spain wished for no extension of its territory. It was by positive declarations that nothing of the kind was intended, that the King of England had been induced to refrain from taking part in the war, and the promise thus solemnly made must not be broken. Plan for the settlement of Germany.The Council then proceeded to adopt Zuñiga’s scheme in full. Let the Electorate and the two Palatinates be transferred from Frederick to his son. Let the boy be educated as a Catholic, either at Vienna or at Munich, and be married either to the daughter of the Emperor or to the niece of the Duke of Bavaria. The administration of the territories might be confided to Maximilian as long as the young prince was under age, in order that he might be able to pay himself for the expenses of the war. A pension might be assigned to Frederick for his support. His son would be a Catholic, and his states would soon be Catholic also.[510]
That such a proposal should ever have been made is only one more proof of the ignorance of the Spanish ministers of a world which was not their own. It must, however, be acknowledged that James at least had done his best to blind them to the difficulties of a scheme which would satisfy the dynastic interests of his family, but would sacrifice the religious independence of the inhabitants of the Palatinate. Yet even thus Zuñiga shrank from openly proposing the adoption of his plan. It would, he said, be accepted at once by James and his son-in-law, but they would add a stipulation that the boy should be educated at Dresden instead of at Vienna.
That the policy thus indicated was the only sensible policy for James to adopt there can be no reasonable doubt. It would leave the boundary between the two religions untouched, at the same time that it would afford the surest guarantee for the future peace of the Empire. Unfortunately, its very wisdom was enough to place it out of the question with James.
Whilst Spain and England were thus both employed in <330>offering impossible compromises, Ferdinand, without making up his mind upon Hyacintho at Madrid.the future disposition of Frederick’s territory, was doing his best to obtain the consent of the King of Spain to the transference of the Electorate; and it was not long before the friar Hyacintho arrived at Madrid, bearing with him the despatches of which the copies had been intercepted by Mansfeld. To all outward appearance, he failed in the object of his mission. Fresh despatches were sent to Oñate, directing him to support an arrangement which would confirm the son of Frederick in the Electorate. But he was March.privately assured by Zuñiga that the King had no special predilection for the proposal made in his name, and that if the Emperor could only manage to carry out his wishes without implicating Spain in the affair, he need fear no opposition at Madrid. All that was really wanted was that they should be able to make James believe that the thing had been done against the wish of the King of Spain. So secret was this declaration to be kept that not even the Council of State was acquainted with its purport.[511]
Such were the circumstances under which Digby set out from London to return to Spain.[512] The hopes which he had cherished Digby’s return to Spain.four short months before were gone for ever. The vision of an English army in the Palatinate well disciplined and well paid, strong enough to inspire respect, and unencumbered with the necessity of plundering in order to maintain itself in existence, had melted into air; but it was still possible, he thought, to secure the co-operation of Spain by a strong representation of the evils which would necessarily result from a renewal of the religious struggle of the past century, and by threats of the imminence of war if any support were given to the aggressive designs of the Emperor. Yet it is easy to perceive, from the tone of his despatches, that he felt that he had come as an ambassador and not as a statesman. In every line is to be traced the fearless <331>independence of a man who is capable of forming his own opinions; but he is no less careful to show that he comes to carry out a policy which has been shaped by others, and the success of which will mainly depend upon measures over which he has no control.
Not only was the mission on which Digby now started hopeless, but he altogether failed to penetrate the motives and intentions of the Spanish Government. It was not that he did not give himself extraordinary pains to discover the secret intrigues of the ministers. He found means of acquainting himself with the debates in the Council of State, and of getting a sight of the orders which issued from the Royal Cabinet.[513] Trickery and falsehood he was prepared to meet; but even his long residence at Madrid had not prepared him for the wild hallucinations by which the Spanish statesmen were actuated. It was possible, he thought, that Philip and Zuñiga might embrace the prospect of maintaining that peace of which the monarchy stood so much in need. It was also possible that they might be carried away by religious zeal to throw in their lot with the Emperor; but that they should fancy it possible to convert the Palatinate by force, and at the same time to remain on a friendly footing with a Protestant nation — that they should look forward with satisfaction to the frustration of the hopes of James by the interposition of the Pope’s veto upon the marriage treaty, without expecting to wound his susceptibilities, was so utterly ridiculous, that Digby could never bring himself to believe that the policy of a great nation could be moulded on so wild a fancy. Yet it was at nothing less than this that Zuñiga was aiming.
The truth was, that Spanish politicians were walking upon enchanted ground. Nothing seemed in their eyes to be what it really was. Policy of Zuñiga.The old illusion of Philip II., that Spain could beat down all opposition by force, had only been surrendered to make way for the still stranger illusion that Spain could gain her objects without using force at all. Yet the statesman who now directed the counsels of the <332>monarchy was incomparably superior to any minister who had been known in Spain for many years. With Lerma and Uzeda the first thought had been how to fill their own pockets. With Zuñiga the first thought was how to make his country prosperous at home and respected abroad. Vigorous attempts had been already made to effect at least some improvement in the shattered finances, and to encourage population and industry by every measure which the political knowledge of the day was able to suggest.[514] Such reforms, indeed, were not likely to go far as long as the social and intellectual habits of the people remained unchanged; but they were certain, as Zuñiga was well aware, to be entirely thrown away if Spain engaged in a fresh continental war.
To a certain extent, Zuñiga’s opinions were shared by the other members of the Council of State. Like him, they were anxious to maintain peace with England; like him, they thought that peace would not be broken even though Protestantism were stamped out in the Palatinate; but they refused to believe that it would not be broken if the dynastic interests of James were affected by the transference of the Electorate.[515]
In this difference of opinion between the Council and the chief minister the judgment of the King was of no weight whatever. Philip IV., Character of Philip IV.at this time a lad of seventeen, had no mind for anything but amusement. He was fond of bull-fights and hunting; he was no less fond of Court festivities and of dissipation of a more degrading kind; but he never could be induced to take a moment’s thought for serious business.[516] Whatever Zuñiga recommended he was ready to say or do. Further trouble than that he utterly refused to take.
Yet even with this advantage, Zuñiga did not venture openly <333>to oppose the decisions of the Council of State. Composed, as Zuñiga and the Council of State.this body was, of men of high birth, who had many of them taken a share in its deliberations for a long series of years, he seems to have doubted whether even Philip’s nonchalance would be proof against an open breach between himself and the Council. At all events, he preferred not to face the storm. The decisions of the Council were to be taken to the King to be converted into royal ordinances, or to be recommended to the Spanish ambassadors at foreign courts as the basis of their diplomacy, whilst he was all the while watching with satisfaction the current of events which would make the policy which he ostensibly adopted impossible, or was even intriguing to defeat the measures to which he had himself publicly assented.
Such was the strange chaos of wild hopes and incompatible designs across which Digby, strong only in his honesty of purpose and June.Digby asks for an assurance about the marriage treaty.his knowledge of the laws by which the conduct of ordinary men is guided, had come to lay a road firm enough for human beings to walk without danger of being engulfed in the depths beneath. Believing, as he did, that even Spaniards would hardly go on seriously with the marriage treaty unless they meant to give satisfaction to his master in Germany, he made it his first object to discover their intentions on this important point. It was not long, therefore, before he spoke plainly to Zuñiga on the subject. It was now, he said, two years since Lafuente had left England in order to make a demand for the dispensation at Rome. As nothing had as yet been done, he wished to know whether the Spanish Government would obtain a decision one way or another, in order that, if the difficulties proved insuperable, his master might bestow his son elsewhere.
Zuñiga, in truth, would have been glad enough if the cardinals could have been persuaded to continue the discussion of the marriage for twenty years instead of two; but he did not venture to say so, and after giving Digby every assurance of his personal good-will, asked him to repeat the question to the King himself.
<334>Philip accordingly, being well tutored, gave the most satisfactory of answers. The proposition, he said, was very grateful to him. Philip’s answer.He desired the match as much as his father had done, and there should be no want on his part in bringing it to a speedy conclusion. If it had not been begun by his father, he would himself have been the beginner of it. He only hoped that the King of England would be well satisfied with the expected decision of the Pope.[517]
Digby was, however, too well versed in the arts of courts to put his trust in words alone. The test which he selected of Philip’s sincerity Digby’s interview with the Infanta.was derived from his intimate knowledge of Spanish manners. In those Southern countries it was considered the height of impropriety to allow a lady to receive the addresses of a suitor before her parents or guardians had made up their minds to allow the marriage to take place. The ambassador, therefore, asked leave to visit the Infanta, and stated as his motive that he had a message to deliver from the Prince. His request was immediately granted, and he was allowed to assure the lady ‘that as there was not the thing in the world which’ the Prince ‘more desired than to see the treaty effected, so he hoped it was agreeable to her, and that she would aid in it.’ “I thank the Prince of England much for the honour which he does me,” replied the Infanta, and the interview was at an end.
Upon this visit Digby laid no little stress in his report of the sentiments of the court. Yet he was not altogether at his ease. He added a request for positive instructions to come away at once, the moment that he was able to discover the slightest inclination to delay the conclusion of the treaty. If, however, he could believe the assurances that were given him, there was no reason why the Infanta should not be in England in the spring.[518]
For the moment, however, the Spaniards had May.Gondomar’s recall.a valid excuse for delay. They could not treat about the marriage till a definite decision arrived from Rome; they <335>could not treat about the Palatinate till Gondomar, who had been recalled to Spain as the only man fit to cope with Digby, arrived at Madrid.[519]
Gondomar’s departure from London had been accompanied by a general shout of exultation from the English people. No more unpopular ambassador has ever left our shores. In addition to the evils which he undoubtedly caused, his memory was saddled with countless crimes of which he was no less undoubtedly innocent. Yet, after every deduction has been made, enough remains to justify the popular verdict. He had stood in the way of the national resolve; he had induced James, by alternately wheedling him and bullying him, to carry out the behests of the King of Spain. No other ambassador, before or since, succeeded so completely in making a tool of an English king. So thoroughly had he earned the hatred of the people amongst whom he had been living, that his successor, Don Carlos Coloma, was for the moment almost popular in England. An honest soldier who had served in many a hard fight under the flag of his country was, it was thought, not likely to be an adept in those arts of dissimulation which had served Gondomar so well.
Meanwhile the course of events was bringing small comfort to Digby. One courier after another brought bad news from Germany. First July.Digby urgent for a cessation of hostilities.it was the attack upon Darmstadt; then it was the dismissal of Mansfeld’s troops, and the isolation of Frederick; lastly, he heard of the threatened siege of Heidelberg. Yet he did not allow himself to be discouraged at the consequence of the neglect of his advice. “For my part,” he wrote on July 13, “I have been long of opinion, and so continue still, that this business will never be brought to any good conclusion but by the absolute authority of these two kings, who must agree of such conditions as they shall judge reasonable, and reciprocally oblige themselves to constrain both parties to condescend unto them; for all other particular treaties will still be overthrown <336>either by the inconstancy of the parties who will, from time to time, alter and change upon the advantage of accidents of war, or else be interrupted by continual jealousies and new provocations. This course I hope one day to see set on foot when once the business of the match is fully resolved and concluded; for I esteem that must be the basis and foundation upon which all the good correspondency and mutual exchange of good offices betwixt England and Spain must depend, and that once taking effect, I shall not much doubt of the other.”[520]
A few weeks later Digby was able to give a satisfactory report of his negotiation. Gondomar had arrived and had thrown August.Decision of the Council of State.his whole weight into the scale in his favour. The question of the Palatinate had been referred to the Council of State, and it had been decided, after a full discussion, that complete satisfaction should be given to the King of England.
No doubt Digby greatly over-estimated the value of this decision. He did not know what was the extraordinary arrangement Digby’s approval of the Assembly.supposed by the members of the Council to be likely to give satisfaction to James; still less did he know what was the wilder scheme which had approved itself to Zuñiga; but, in fact, it mattered very little whether the Spaniards were speaking truth or not. If James and Frederick could win the confidence of Protestant Germany, they might dictate their own terms to the Emperor; if not, they must take whatever the Courts of Vienna and Madrid would be pleased to give. With his master’s foolish objections to the assembly at Ratisbon, therefore, Digby had no sympathy whatever. “It is a weakness,” he wrote, “to think that this business can be ended without a Diet.” He felt truly that his part had been done. Sincerely or not, the Spanish Government had consented to take up Frederick’s cause; it was James’s business, not his, to make that cause palatable to the German nation.[521]
For all this, however, James had no eyes. That it was <337>necessary for him to take any trouble about the matter, beyond that of James throws all responsibility upon Spain.writing occasionally a scolding letter to his son-in-law, never entered into his mind. Just as he had dealt with Raleigh five years before he now proposed to deal with Philip. All responsibility for the restitution of the Electorate and the Palatinate was to be left to the King of Spain. If he succeeded, James would reap the benefit; if he failed, he would declare war upon him, just as he had punished Raleigh’s failure by sending him to the scaffold.
It was while he was in this temper that James received information from Weston of an important proposal which had been July 14.Proposed sequestration of the towns in the Palatinate.unofficially made to him at Brussels. Let Heidelberg, it was suggested, be neutralised, and assigned to Frederick as a residence, on condition of the surrender of Mannheim and Frankenthal to the Infanta, who would engage to restore them to the English garrisons whenever the peace negotiations were brought to a close one way or other. “If peace and restitution be concluded,” said Pecquius, in supporting the scheme, “yet however the Prince Palatine promise, and his Majesty oblige himself, it may be thought there shall be demanded some places of caution at least for a time; and, if it should come to that, I know not in whose hands they could more safely be deposited.”[522]
To the proposal thus made James refused to give even a moment’s consideration. It was contrary, he declared, to his honour, and it did not offer sufficient security for the future. No doubt this was true enough; but what better could he do? He had already protested against Ferdinand’s invitation to send an ambassador to Ratisbon as a breach of the Emperor’s engagement to enter into direct negotiations with himself.[523] If he would neither negotiate with the Emperor nor fight with him, there was nothing left but to throw himself unreservedly into the arms of the King of Spain, and to pick up the crumbs which fell from his table.
In one respect at least Weston was an excellent servant. The <338>absurdity of the position in which he was placed never dawned upon him for an instant. Weston continues his negotiation.He gravely continued to reiterate his master’s demands for a suspension of arms in the Palatinate alone, which would have left Mansfeld free to strike his blows elsewhere in whatever direction he pleased.
To such a demand the Infanta had no power to assent. Ferdinand had commissioned her to come to terms with Frederick, on the supposition that he was able to dispose of the forces which he had raised. The Emperor would never, as she knew full well, ratify any agreement which would leave the roving bands of Mansfeld free to wander at their pleasure in search of booty.
Nor was the danger by any means at an end since Mansfeld’s dismissal by his nominal master. While Weston was Mansfeld in Lorraine.wasting his breath at Brussels, that captain of brigands had been offering his services to the highest bidder. If his assurances were to be believed, he was equally ready to serve the Emperor, the Infanta, the King of France, or the Dutch Republic. But answers were slow in coming in, and Alsace, stripped as by a swarm of locusts, no longer sufficed to support his army. The Archduke Leopold, too, who commanded the Emperor’s forces in those parts, had received reinforcements from Tilly, and was ready to make head against him. Taking Christian of Brunswick with him, he hastily evacuated that Haguenau which he had hoped to make his own for ever, and flung himself suddenly upon Lorraine. Before crossing the frontier, however, he wrote to the Duke asking permission to pass through his territories on his way to France, in which country he hoped to find entertainment for his troops. It was impossible, however, he added, to keep his men to their duty unless they were fed, and he must therefore request that rations might be provided for twenty-five thousand men. His soldiers, he went on to say, received but little pay, and were accustomed to commit great excesses. For this reason it would be well if the inhabitants were ordered to carry off their property to the fortified towns, in which they would be able to defend it.[524]
<339>Mansfeld’s candid avowal was fully justified by the conduct of his men. As he passed the border they set fire to the town of Pfalzburg. Farther on, his march was lighted by the flames of thirty blazing villages. Famine and desolation marked his track. From Lorraine his soldiers spread over the bishoprics of Metz and Verdun; and even Sedan, the little nook of land where Frederick was cowering under his uncle’s protection, was not safe from their devastating tread. “We are here,” wrote the Duke of Bouillon, “in the midst of an army, without arms, without leaders, without discipline or fitness for war. Those who hold out their arms to these men, or attempt to ameliorate their condition, are treated worse than could be expected from the most exasperated enemy.”[525]
Ferdinand’s indignation, when he heard of this fresh aggression, was unbounded. Now, at least, he wrote on July 25 to the Infanta Isabella, Ferdinand’s indignation.there could no longer be any doubt that the enemy was only talking about a suspension of arms in order to gain time.[526] His own position was indeed a strong one. Frederick and Mansfeld had been doing his work only too surely. From every side despatches were pouring in, with acceptances of his invitation to the assembly at Ratisbon, which had been postponed till September 21.[527] August.His reply to James’s protest.At this moment James’s protest against the assembly reached him. He at once replied that he was not to blame. It was Frederick who had caused the failure of the negotiations at Brussels. The basis of those negotiations had been the promise of the deprived Elector to make due submission to the Emperor, and yet he had plainly told the Landgrave of Darmstadt that he had no intention of fulfilling his engagement. In the meantime the Empire had been exposed to spoil and pillage, and he had therefore summoned the princes to consult for its safety. To James’s request that he would order his troops to abstain from attacking the places in the Palatinate, he <340>returned an evasive answer, referring him to the negotiators at Brussels.[528]
In fact, Ferdinand had thoroughly made up his mind as to the course he would pursue. As soon as the assembly met, he would His intentions.announce the transference of the Electorate with every prospect of obtaining its assent. He would leave it to the Princes to decide how the territory was to be disposed of, and how the expenses of the war were to be paid. He knew that he would have more chance of gaining his object if the strong towns, which were garrisoned by the King of England’s troops, were in his hands before the Princes arrived at Ratisbon. On August 13, therefore, two days after he had answered James’s letter, he despatched a courier to Tilly, ordering him to proceed at once to the siege of Heidelberg.[529]
Whilst Ferdinand’s messenger was speeding across Germany, Weston was doing his best at Brussels to separate the cause of Frederick Weston’s proposition.from the cause of Mansfeld. On August 15, he presented to the Infanta’s commissioners a proposition for settling the points at issue. Let the towns in the Palatinate, he said in effect, be allowed to remain in the position in which they are, and the King of England will engage to make war upon Mansfeld and Christian, if they should be so ill-advised as to return to that part of Germany; and he will also promise that if, whenever the negotiations for peace are seriously taken in hand, those adventurers still refuse to submit to reasonable conditions, he will ‘declare himself their enemy and jointly employ his forces against them, as against the perturbers of the common repose of Christendom.’[530]
Such a proposal could hardly be seriously entertained by <341>the Infanta. The time had long passed since either Frederick’s engagements Mansfeld’s troops.to make peace, or James’s engagements to make war, had been regarded as having any practical bearing upon the course of events. Rightly or wrongly, every Catholic in Europe was fully persuaded that in Frederick’s hands the strong places garrisoned by Vere would be a basis of operations for Mansfeld and his marauders, and whatever might be the ulterior designs cherished at Brussels and Vienna, there was no hesitation in the resolution formed to hinder them from again taking root in the Palatinate. There was not the slightest reason to suppose that Mansfeld was likely to be less dangerous than he had been before. Even Weston acknowledged that it was certain that the adventurers had no intention of submitting to any terms whatever. They had begun, he said, by demanding unreasonable conditions. They had sent him no powers to treat, and for some time had not even troubled themselves to answer his letters.[531]
In fact, it was no longer possible for them to remain where they were. The Duke of Nevers, whilst pretending to negotiate with Mansfeld He attempts to join the Dutch.the terms upon which he was to enter the French service, had rapidly collected a force strong enough to bar the road into France. An attempt to make a dash for the Lower Rhine, made early in August by Christian, had failed, not so much from the resistance offered by the Spanish Governor of Luxemburg, as from the mutinous spirit of his own men.[532] Under these circumstances an offer which reached Mansfeld from the States-General was eagerly seized. Things had not been going well with the Republic since the re-opening of the war. In the winter Juliers had surrendered to the Spanish arms, and Spinola had now sat down before Bergen-op-Zoom, with every prospect of conducting the siege to a successful conclusion. In order to avert such a blow, the States offered to take Mansfeld into their service for three months.
Mansfeld leapt at the offer. Leading his men by a <342>circuitous route, he hoped to slip unperceived across the Spanish Netherlands, and August 19.Battle of Fleurus.to join the Prince of Orange at Breda; but on the evening of August 18 he found that his way was barred by Cordova, whose forces had been recalled in hot haste from the Palatinate. At daybreak on the following morning, he prepared for action; but scarcely was the word given when two of his regiments broke out into mutiny, shouting for money. Of the troops which remained faithful, many had sold their arms for bread, and many had thrown them down in sheer weariness. Yet, deficient as he was in those moral qualities without which no man can conduct a campaign to a successful issue, Mansfeld showed on this day that he was possessed in an eminent degree of that dogged courage and cool presence of mind which befit a leader of banditti. Riding up to the mutineers, he adjured them, if they would not fight, at least to keep together, so as to impose upon the enemy. Receiving a favourable reply, he placed them in a body amidst a crowd of camp-followers, so as to present the appearance of a formidable array. With the rest of his force he dashed at the Spaniards. Three times he was repulsed; but at last Christian, with that impetuous bravery which has blinded half the world to his want of all other virtues, drove the enemy’s cavalry before him in headlong rout. But in the midst of his charge, he received a wound in the arm, and his followers, when they saw him led away from the field, made their leader’s misfortune an excuse for refusing to take any further part in the battle. The Spanish army was saved from almost certain annihilation. Mansfeld was able to pursue his march, and to join the Dutch camp at Breda.[533]
The wound in Christian’s arm was unskilfully tended, and he was forced to submit to amputation. He ordered the trumpets to be sounded whilst the operation was being performed. Not long afterwards he replaced the lost member with a substitute skilfully constructed of cork and silver. “The arm which is left,” he boastfully declared, “shall give my enemies enough to do.”
<343>His companions in arms were not yet ready to take the field. The starving wretches needed to be re-armed and re-clothed Mansfeld at Breda.before they could be made available against Spinola. But the garrison of Bergen would be likely to fight the more manfully now that they knew that relief was at hand.
The change of Mansfeld’s quarters inspired Weston with renewed hopes. Now, at least, he urged, there should be no longer Weston again asks for a suspension of arms.any difficulty in granting the suspension of arms. Mansfeld and Christian had transferred their services to the Dutch, and would no longer stand in the way of an accommodation. The siege of Heidelberg, he had heard, was being actively carried on, and he therefore hoped that the Infanta would give orders for the suspension of hostilities. Yet, in spite of all that Weston could say, the Infanta knew that she had no power to agree to any cessation of hostilities in which Mansfeld and Christian were not included. It was notorious that the adventurers had only taken service with the States for three months, and no one at Brussels doubted that they would return to ravage Germany in the winter. Weston was, therefore, obliged to content himself for the present with hearing that fresh letters would be sent to Tilly and the Archduke Leopold; but he was plainly told that it was not likely that they would do any good.[534] Excepting in the garrisons on the left bank of the Rhine, there were no longer any Spanish troops in the Palatinate,[535] and there were therefore no forces in the army before Heidelberg under the immediate orders of the Infanta.
At last, on September 8, Weston received a formal reply to his proposition. He was told that nothing could be done unless he could September.The Infanta’s reply.obtain an assurance from Mansfeld and Christian that they would not again attack the princes of the Empire; and that it was expected that they would also engage to abstain from assailing the territories of Spain.
<344>“Likewise,” the Infanta proceeded, referring to the Flemish extraction of the adventurer, “seeing the same Mansfeld hath refused to accept the grace and pardon of his Majesty, whereby he might have turned to his royal service, and to his own natural obedience, and hath withal drawn from this city him whom he hath sent hither to treat on this his behalf;[536] seeing also how little he can hope for from the Hollanders, and how his pride will not let him remain in Holland, there being withal particular advertisements that his end and purpose is to trouble the affairs of Germany:—
“Lastly, seeing the Duke Christian will take the same course, as he hath also expressly declared; there is none that seeth not clearly the truth of that which hath been said, and that it is now more necessary than ever to provide for the general assurance.”
The Infanta ended by saying that, though she herself saw no way out of the difficulty, she would gladly listen to anything that Weston had to propose.[537]
To the question thus put, Weston had very little to reply, as he was perfectly aware that the adventurers really contemplated Mansfeld’s plans.a return to Germany as soon as their engagement with the Dutch was at an end. “I must tell you,” Mansfeld had written to him a fortnight before, “that you are labouring in vain. For you will never accomplish anything where you are. When those people get a thing between their teeth, they never let it go unless after the loss of a great battle. You ought, therefore, to advise his Majesty to recall you; for I see well enough that there is no remedy unless we begin the war in Germany afresh.”[538]
Weston was therefore obliged to content himself with reiterating his opinion, that Weston’s answer to the Infanta.Mansfeld had no longer any connection with Frederick, and with renewing his declaration that his master was ready to join the Emperor in opposing his designs. As for the demand that <345>Mansfeld should be prevented from attacking Spain under the orders of the Prince of Orange, he could only say that the King of England was quite ready to mediate a treaty between Philip and the Dutch.[539]
Baffled and discontented, Weston had for some time been earnestly pleading for his recall. His denunciations of the Infanta’s perfidy were His dissatisfaction.loud enough to please the stoutest Puritan in England. He had gone to Brussels under the impression that he had an easy task before him. He had shared with many of his countrymen the belief that Spain was everything and Germany was nothing; and he could not conceive it to be possible that the destinies of the Empire were determined at Vienna rather than at Madrid.
On the 15th, Weston had his last audience of the Infanta. He had orders, he said, to return home unless either the siege of Heidelberg were raised, Weston’s recall.or the suspension of arms granted. He was again made to understand that he was asking for that which it was no longer in her power to accord. The King of England, the Infanta said, ‘had deserved a crown of palm by his royal carriage;’ and she would never cease to do all that she could to give him satisfaction.[540]
The long negotiation was at last brought to an end. That the Infanta was earnestly desirous to conduct it to a better termination Weston’s recall.cannot be doubted for an instant. As late as August 27 she had written again, to press the Emperor to abandon his design of transferring the Electorate. James, however, had never been sufficiently alive to the absolute importance of guaranteeing the Empire against anarchy. His own inability to provide pay for his son-in-law’s army, Frederick’s rash words at Darmstadt, and the ravages of Mansfeld, had by this time thoroughly confirmed Ferdinand’s conviction that peace was only to be obtained by the establishment of the absolute supremacy of his own party in the Empire. To this conviction James had nothing to <346>oppose. He had no watchword by which to rally the North German Protestants. He had no real power over his son-in-law’s actions, still less over those of Mansfeld. All that he could do was to bluster about keeping Mansfeld quiet by force; and when he found that no credit was given to his protestations, he had no other resource but to call upon Spain to help him out of the mire into which his blunders had so hopelessly plunged him.
The months during which the comedy was being played out at Brussels had brought increasing exasperation to the English people. August.English feeling.Even if the whole truth had been laid before them, there would have been more than enough to cause the most serious disquietude amongst all with whom the interests of Protestantism were worth a moment’s consideration. It was impossible to deny that, wherever the blame was to be laid, the very existence of Protestantism was seriously endangered over a large part of the Continent. In reality, the great mass of Englishmen knew very little of the real facts of the case. Of Frederick’s helplessness and vacillation, of Mansfeld’s atrocities, of the abominable anarchy which was certain to be the result of the victory of such allies, they were utterly and hopelessly ignorant. What they saw was only a new phase of the eternal conflict between virtue and vice, between freedom and tyranny; and, imperfect as this view of the case undoubtedly was, they were at least clearsighted enough in marking the evil which had arisen from their Sovereign’s faults. It was only in the pulpit that these feelings, freely expressed in private conversation, could find vent in public, and it is no wonder that a man like James, in his dislike at the free language which was springing up around him, Imprisonment of preachers.took refuge in sending the obnoxious preachers to prison. Dr. Everard, who had been committed in the preceding year to the Gatehouse for abusing the Spaniards in a sermon, now found his way into the Marshalsea. Another preacher, Mr. Clayton, was sent to prison for reproducing Coke’s scurrilous allusion to the introduction of the scab by sheep imported from Spain; and a third, Dr. Sheldon, was thought lucky to have escaped with a reprimand <347>for some harsh reflections upon the people who worshipped the beast and his image.[541]
Nor was it only against abuse of Spain that James had decided upon making war. He was now disquieted, as many Calvinists and Arminians.wiser men than he have often been disquieted, by the bitterness of theological polemics. Arminianism, silenced in Holland, had taken firm root in England, and had been welcomed by those who were most under the influence of the reaction against Puritanism. Of necessity, the new views were received with deep distrust by all who attached value to the Calvinistic theology. In every corner of the land, the pulpits rang with declamations on predestination and the final perseverance of the saints. Till lately, at least, James had regarded with favour the doctrine in which he had been educated. But he hated turmoil, and he thought, in spite of Barneveld’s example, that he might succeed in laying the storm by directing Abbot to issue a few well-meant instructions to the preachers. Directions to preachers.From henceforth, no one under the degree of a bachelor of divinity was to ‘presume to preach in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation, or of the universality, efficacy, resistibility or irresistibility of God’s grace; but leave those themes to be handled by learned men, and that moderately and modestly, by way of use and application rather than by way of positive doctrine, as being points fitter for the schools and universities than for simple auditories.’[542]
As mere advice, no exception can be taken against such words as these. But, coming as they did, as an attempt to Their effect.enforce silence on the great religious question of the day, they only served to embitter the quarrel which they were meant to calm. Left to itself, the tendency of the age was undoubtedly in favour of the Arminians. For whatever may be the theological or philosophical value of their opinions, they were doing the same work in the domain of <348>thought which Digby with his doctrine of territorial sovereignty was doing in the domain of practical politics. They were finding a middle course, which might put an end to that violent opposition which existed between the contending churches. It was to the decrease of theological virulence that they owed their existence as a school of thinkers. It was to their habits and modes of thought that the growth of a spirit of toleration would be mainly due. The greatest service that could be done to them was to allow them to win their way by argument. The greatest injury that could be done to them was to enable them to silence their adversaries by force. Men who could preach about nothing but predestination, and who could use no language better than coarse invective, were no doubt a great pest to the community; but, after all, liberty of thought is better in the end than correctness of reasoning or moderation of expression, and it is impossible for anyone external to the modes of a preacher’s thoughts to judge of the intimate connection which exists in his mind between the abstract doctrines which he professes and the practical lessons which he desires to enforce. The great battle of the sixteenth century had been waged between Catholicism and Protestantism. The great battle of the seventeenth century, as yet felt rather than understood, was to be waged on behalf of mental and personal liberty. It was the great misfortune of James’s character, that, whilst both in his domestic and foreign policy he was far in advance of his age in his desire to put a final end to religious strife, he was utterly unfit to judge what were the proper measures to be taken for the attainment of his object. Unfortunately it lay in his power to a great extent to decide whether the Arminians should range themselves, on the whole, on the side of the advancing or of the retrograde party amongst their countrymen. Laud, disputing with a Jesuit or a Calvinist, was a true Protestant, a genuine successor, according to the altered conditions of the age, of Luther and of Knox. Laud, entrusted with power to silence his opponents, to forbid the study of books which he considered objectionable, and to restrain the preaching of sermons which he held to be mischievous, would be upon the side of the Jesuits and the Pope.
<349>It was thus that James’s efforts at repression resulted, against his will, in giving new life to Puritanism. Invigorated by the restraints under which New invigoration of Puritanism.he placed it, it rose up once more with giant strength to suffer and to dare in the name of law and of religion. It gained the alliance of many a man who had no sympathy with the narrowness of its tenets, but who found, in the lofty and noble spirit by which it was pervaded, the strength which would enable him to shake off the weight which pressed so heavily upon the energies of the nation.
Little as the English people knew of what was passing at Rome and at Madrid, they were well aware that James had Release of the Catholic prisoners.lowered the dignity of the English crown till the laws of England had been made a subject of treaty with foreign statesmen and foreign priests. In the eyes of his contemporaries he had been guilty of sacrificing the national independence, the great cause of which Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had been the champions. In the eyes of posterity, he is guilty of defiling the sacred cause of religious liberty by making bargains over it for Spanish gold and Spanish aid. Even now an act, with which in itself no one can possibly find fault, had been contaminated by the mode in which it was accomplished. Writs were issued in August to set free from prison crowds of Catholics, who were suffering for their religion.[543] In defence of the act thus done, Williams was able to produce the most admirable arguments, and to plead the wisdom of showing mercy to the Catholics, at a time when the King was demanding mercy for Protestants abroad.[544] Yet all his arguments fell flat on the world, because men knew that the prisoners owed their release to Gondomar’s intercession,[545] and that it was likely to be a prelude to a long series of favours to be granted to Spain. Never, wrote the Venetian ambassador about this time, was the Catholic religion more freely exercised in England. But the Spaniards were not content. They wanted to have everything or nothing.[546]
<350>James gained no fresh popularity by giving directions, within a week after the Catholics had been set free, for the liberation of Coke, Phelips, and Mallory from the Tower, on condition that they, like Pym, would place themselves under restraint not to travel more than a limited distance from their own houses in the country.[547] The measure was in all probability dictated by a desire to be prepared to meet a Parliament, if the negotiations at Brussels should prove abortive. In Coke’s case, at least, nothing that now could be done was likely to soothe his exasperation. An unwise attempt to prosecute him in the Court of Wards upon some private offence which he was supposed to have committed had broken down completely, and he had been declared innocent by the unanimous decision of all the judges to whom the legal question involved in the case had been referred.[548] Nor, in the existing state of popular feeling, did it Punishment of Bennett.avail the Government much that Sir John Bennett, who had escaped punishment through the dissolution of Parliament, was now prosecuted in the Star Chamber for the faults which had brought an impeachment upon him, and was, before the year ended, condemned to a fine of 20,000l., to imprisonment during pleasure, and to perpetual disability from office.[549]
All through August, the news from Brussels had been growing worse and worse. At last, when the confusion was at its height, August 25.Arrival of Gage.James was startled by the unexpected arrival of Gage, the Englishman who had been commissioned to watch the course of the marriage negotiations at Rome, and who had now come to announce that, if the Pope was to be satisfied, new and unheard of concessions must be made.[550]
It was now about a year since, on August 11, 1621, a <351>congregation of four cardinals had been formed for the purpose of 1621.The Cardinals and the marriage treaty.examining the articles of the marriage treaty. They were not long in coming to the conclusion that the articles were altogether insufficient. Care had been taken for the religion of the Infanta and her household, but nothing was said about the general body of English Catholics. Unless something were done for them, it would be the duty of the Pope to refuse the dispensation. The vague promises which James had given in the preceding year, were flouted, as utterly insufficient. The cardinals had set their hearts upon the conversion of England, and it was certain that the conversion of England would never be effected by a mere promise that the Catholic missionaries should for the future escape the scaffold, and that the penal laws should be executed with moderation. October.Before the end of October, therefore, they had decided that nothing short of complete liberty of worship would suffice, and that for this they must have some stronger guarantee than the mere word of the King of England.
Before the end of the year, however, the cardinals discovered that their course was not so easy as they had supposed. The Resolution to send Gage to England.news which reached them of the first proceedings in the House of Commons after the adjournment, was not favorable to the supposition that the changes which they contemplated could be accomplished without opposition. It was not till they heard of the dissolution of the Parliament, 1622.of the quarrel with the Dutch Commissioners, and of the imprisonment of the Earl of Oxford, that they finally made up their minds to send Gage back to England, with orders to lay the Pope’s decision before the King.
Accordingly, on July 4, 1622, Gage was summoned before the congregation to receive his instructions. The King of England, said Cardinal Bandino, July.Instructions given to him.in the name of the others who were present, had read many Catholic books, and he had no doubt discovered that it was impossible for the Pope to grant a dispensation in such a case as this without the hope of some great public good. As, however, nothing of the kind was to be found in the articles which had been sent from Spain, they had determined to ask for a general <352>liberty of worship in all his kingdoms, and for a satisfactory guarantee of its maintenance. They had been informed, that it would be better that this change should proceed from a voluntary act of the King himself, and they therefore hoped that he would inform them what he was willing to do for his Catholic subjects. The Cardinal then proceeded to touch upon a still more delicate subject. It was utterly impossible, he said, to imagine that one so versed as the King was in controversial theology could be ignorant that the holy and apostolic Roman faith was the only true and ancient faith in which men could be saved. If, therefore, he did not openly declare his belief, it could only be from a fear of incurring disgrace by changing a religion which he had professed so many years, or from a dread of the personal consequences to himself. As for the first, he should remember that Henry IV. had gained honour by his conversion; and, as to the second, he need not be afraid. God would certainly protect him. Half his subjects, and the majority of his nobility, were Catholics already, and, if more were needed, the forces of the King of Spain, and of all Catholic princes, would be at his service. The Roman see would be ready to load him with honours. If he chose to pay a visit to Rome, a legate should be sent to meet him in Flanders, and the Pope himself would go as far as Bologna to welcome him. If he could not make up his mind to his own conversion, let the Prince of Wales be encouraged to take the step from which his father shrank.[551]
The articles, as they were returned to Gage, contained several important alterations. All the Infanta’s servants were Alteration in the articles.of necessity to be Catholics. Her Church was to be open to all who chose to enter, and not merely to her household. The priests were to be under the control of a bishop, and were to be freed from subjection to all laws excepting those which were imposed by their ecclesiastical superiors. The Infanta must have the education of her children; of the girls, till the age of twelve, of the boys, till the age of fourteen.
<353>The cardinals had, at least, done James one service by this plain-spoken declaration. He could no longer be in any doubt as to August.Reception of Gage.the views with which the marriage was regarded at Rome. In truth there was something very similar in the attitude taken by the Pope and that taken by the Emperor, on the two great questions of the day. Both Gregory and Ferdinand had definite objects in view, and from them neither friend nor enemy would have much difficulty in discovering precisely what was to be expected. To deal with them, all that was necessary was to form an equally definite plan of operations, to be ready to give way where it was possible to yield, and to organize opposition where opposition was needed. All this, however, required thought and trouble, and James preferred the easier course of throwing the burden upon Spain, and of trusting to Philip’s friendliness and sagacity to help him out of his difficulties.[552]
Gage arrived in England on August 25. On September 9, James poured out his distress in a letter to Digby. Everything September.James sends his answer to Digby.was going wrong at Brussels. He now expected, therefore, that as nothing was to be done with the Emperor, the King of Spain would actually give his assistance in the recovery of the Palatinate and of the Electorate. As for the proposals brought from Rome by Gage, the Infanta’s servants were to be nominated by the King of Spain, and there was now no object in insisting upon the omission of the words obliging them to be Catholics. It was unimportant whether the superior minister were to be a bishop or not. The other demands were of greater consequence. The cardinals ought to have known that it was out of his power to concede a public church, and that the exemption claimed for the ecclesiastics from the law of the land was a strange one, and was not universally allowed, even in Roman Catholic countries. He would bind himself to allow the children to remain under their mother’s care till the age of seven, though the time might be extended if it were found necessary for their health. As to the demand made for the general good of Catholics, he had gone as <354>far as he possibly could by his letter of April 27, 1620, in which he had promised that no Roman Catholic should again suffer death for his religion, or should be compelled to take any oath to which capital penalties were attached, whilst the existing penal legislation should be mitigated in practice.[553] If these terms were not accepted by Spain within two months, the treaty must be considered at an end.
James’s formal despatch to his ambassador was accompanied by a confidential letter from his favourite to Gondomar, in which Buckingham’s letter to Gondomar.the embarrassments of the hour were depicted as in a glass. “As for the news from hence,” wrote Buckingham, “I can in a word assure you that they are in all points as your heart could wish. For here is a king, a prince, and a faithful friend and servant unto you, besides a number of your other good friends that long so much for the happy accomplishment of this match, as every day seems a year unto us; and I can assure you, in the word of your honest friend, that we have a prince here that is so sharp set upon the business, as it would much comfort you to see it, and her there to hear it. Here are all things prepared upon our part; priests and recusants all at liberty; all the Roman Catholics well satisfied; and, which will seem a wonder unto you, our prisons are emptied of priests and recusants and filled with zealous ministers for preaching against the match, for no man can sooner now mutter a word in the pulpit, though indirectly, against it, but he is presently catched, and set in strait prison. We have also published orders, both for the universities and the pulpits, that no man hereafter shall meddle, but to preach Christ crucified. Nay, it shall not be lawful hereafter for them to rail against the Pope, or the doctrine of the Church of Rome, further than for edification of ours; and for proof hereof you shall, herewith, receive the orders set down and published. But if we could hear as good news from you, we should think ourselves happy men. But, alas! now that we have put the ball at your feet, although we have received a comfortable despatch from his Majesty’s Ambassador there, yet from all other parts in the world the effects appear directly contrary.”
Buckingham then went on to recite the causes of his <355>discontent. The new conditions sent from Rome were such as could tend to no other end but to bring his master in jealousy with the greatest part of his subjects. At Brussels Weston had been flouted by the Infanta, and the siege of Heidelberg was still going on.
“And now,” he continued, “let me, I pray you, in the name of your faithful friend and servant, beseech you to set apart all partiality in this case, and that you would be pleased as well, like a true Englishman, indifferently to consider of the straits we are driven into. If the Emperor shall in this fashion conquer the whole Palatinate, the ancient inheritance of his Majesty’s children, what can be expected but a bloody and unreconcilable war between the Emperor and my master, wherein the King of Spain can be an auxiliary to the Emperor against any other party but his Majesty? And, therefore, as my master lately offered to the Infanta for satisfaction of her desire, that in case the auxiliaries would not be contented with reason, but still perturb the treaty, he offered, in that case, to assist the Emperor and her against them; so can he in justice expect no less of the King your master, that, if the Emperor will, contrary to all promises both by his letters and ambassadors, proceed in his conquest and refuse the cessation, that the King your master will in that case, and in so just a quarrel, assist him against the Emperor, in imitation of the King my master’s just and real proceedings in this business from the beginning, who never looked, as you can well be witness, to the rising or falling hopes of his son-in-law’s fortunes, but constantly kept on that course that was most agreeable to honour and justice, to the peace of Christendom, and for the fastening of a firm and indissoluble knot of amity and alliance betwixt the King your master and him, which was begun at the time of our treaty with France, and then broken at your desire that we might embrace this alliance with you. You are the person that many times before your departure hence besought his Majesty once to suffer himself to be deceived by Spain.[554] We, therefore, do now <356>expect to find that great respect to honour in your master that he will not take any advantage by the changing of fortune and success of time, so to alter his actions as may put his honour in the terms of interpretation.[555] You see how all the rest of Christendom envy and malign this match and wished conjunction. How much greater need then hath it of a hasty and happy dispatch? And what comfort can the Prince have in her, when her friends shall have utterly ruined his sister and all her babes? You remember how yourself praised his Majesty’s wisdom in the election of so fit a minister as Sir Richard Weston in this business; but you see what desperate letters he writes from time to time of their cold and unjust treating with him in this business. You could not but wonder that any spark of patience could be left us here. And to conclude this point in a word, we ever received comfortable words from Spain; but find such contrary effects from Brussels, together with our intelligence from all other parts of the world, as all our hopes are not only cold but quite extinguished here.”
The writer then returned to the subject of the marriage. Gondomar, he said, could not but remember how, when the match was first moved, he had assured the King ‘that he should be pressed to nothing in this business that should not be agreeable to his conscience and honour, and stand with the love of his people;’ and he then went on to warn the Spaniard that if the match were to be broken off, ‘his Majesty would be importunately urged by his people, to whose assistance he must have his recourse, to give life and execution to all the penal laws now hanging upon’ the heads of the Catholics.
“It only rests now,” he concluded, “that as we have put the ball to your foot, you take a good and speedy resolution there to hasten the happy conclusion of this match. The Prince is now two and twenty years of age, and is a year more than full ripe for such a business. The King our master longeth to see an issue proceed from his loins, and I am sure you have reason to expect more friendship from the posterity which shall proceed from him and that little angel, your Infanta, <357>than from his Majesty’s daughter’s children. Your friends here are all discomforted with this long delay, your enemies are exasperated and irritated thereby, and your neighbours that envy the felicity of both kings, have the more leisure to invent new plots for the cross and hindrance of this happy business; and for the part of your true friend and servant Buckingham, I have become odious already, and counted a betrayer both of King and country.
“To conclude all, I will use a similitude of hawking. I told you already that the Prince is, God be thanked, extremely sharp set upon the match, and you know that a hawk, when she is first dressed and made ready to fly, having a great will upon her, if the falconer do not follow it at that time, she is in danger to be dulled for ever after.
“Take heed, therefore, lest in the fault of your delays there, our Prince and falcon gentle, that you know was thought slow enough to begin to be eager after the feminine prey, become not so dull upon these delays as in short time hereafter he will not stoop to the lure, though it were thrown out to him.
“And here I will end to you, my sweet friend, as I do in my prayers to God:— ‘Only in thee is my trust,’ and say, as it is written on the outside of the packets,— Haste, haste, post haste!”[556]
Excepting so far as they throw light upon the character of one whose influence was so ruinous to those who trusted him, Buckingham and James.Buckingham’s momentary expressions of opinion during the reign of James are of no importance whatever. Whilst, like his still more versatile son, he was “everything by turns, and nothing long,” it was only when the shifting tide of passionate impulses happened to coincide with some turn of his master’s thoughts, that he had any chance of moulding the general policy of the Crown in accordance with his wishes. For the time, however, there was a complete agreement between the two; for if the words of the letter were the words of Buckingham, the thoughts were the thoughts of James. If, amongst the many miseries with which history teems, there is one more sad than another, it is to see so noble <358>a policy as that of which Digby had been the mouthpiece, so utterly discredited and mishandled. It cannot be but that the historian, who has to tell, almost as a matter of course, of so many windy schemes and criminal follies, should feel a special regret when he is called upon to recount the failure of a wise and beneficent idea, in something of the same spirit as that which led the early poets to regard with peculiar sorrow the deaths of youthful warriors, the promise of whose lives was for ever to be unfulfilled, whilst they accorded but a few words of perfunctory sympathy to those whose existence had passed through the ordinary fortunes of men. To settle the war in Germany by Foreign and domestic policy of James.guaranteeing the independence of the Protestant States in religious matters, at the same time that the civil authority of the Emperor remained intact, and to settle the domestic difficulty by the gradual relaxation of the penal laws, was a policy worthy of the most consummate statesman. James, unhappily, was never able to appreciate either the greatness of his own projects, nor the magnitude of the obstacles which he would have to surmount. If he ever admitted lofty principles into his mind, it was always by their smallest side that he approached them. If he had judged rightly with respect to the contest for the Bohemian crown, it was simply because the large issues which were involved in it presented to him a narrow, technical idea which he was competent to grasp. If he now struggled for the religious independence of the Palatinate, it was not because he had formed any adequate notion of the requirements of the states of the Empire, but simply because the heirs of that territory happened to be his own grandchildren. In comparison with the claims of his daughter and her sons, all considerations of policy, all considerations for the cause of Protestantism, passed for very little in his eyes. And as it was with his foreign policy, so it was with his domestic policy. The great work of fostering the growth of a more tolerant spirit in the hearts of Englishmen, was thrown into the background in favour of a scheme for getting a richly dowered wife for his son, or for obtaining the co-operation of the King of Spain in a settlement of the German difficulties, to which, excepting under <359>compulsion, Philip could never give his consent without losing every feeling of self-respect.
As far as words could go, no man could be more unbending than James. Whatever might be the feeling of the English nation, Contrast between his words and actions.it was to accept from him precisely that system of religious toleration which happened for the moment to suit his own personal or political interests. Whatever might be the feeling of the German nation, or of Continental governments, they were to accept, without modification, precisely that arrangement of their disputes which happened to be consonant with the claims of his own family. If indeed he had shared in the beliefs which prevailed in the House of Commons, if he had thought with Phelips and Coke, that Frederick was an innocent martyr to the Protestant faith, he might well have used the language that he did. Nothing, however, was further from the true state of the case; for no one knew better than James how ruinous every act of his son-in-law’s had been to the cause which he imagined himself to be serving. All Frederick’s headstrong rashness, all his impracticable perversity and despicable incompetence, lay before him as in a book. In spite of all this he saw the solution of the question by which Germany was distracted, not in a mediation between the religious parties, not in a policy shaped in accordance with the public opinion of moderate men of all parties, but simply and solely in the complete restitution of his son-in-law, at whatever hazard to the future interests of the Empire.
After all, James’s fixity of purpose was confined to words alone. Ready at a moment’s notice to issue hazy manifestoes in which the most praiseworthy maxims were shrouded in an almost impenetrable veil of loose verbiage, he never ceased to expect that the plans which he had formed should be carried out by others rather than by himself. He resembled no one so much as that unfortunate wight in the well-known legend, who, finding a horn suspended by the side of a sword at a castle-gate, summoned the warder to admit him by a long blast, and was swept away to destruction by a whirlwind issuing from <360>the opening gates, with the terrible sentence ringing in his ears:—
“Woe to the wretch, that ever he was born,Who durst not draw the sword before he blew the horn.”
Already the stroke which James dreaded had fallen upon the Palatinate. The siege of Heidelberg, interrupted by the necessity of Sept. 6.The fall of Heidelberg.watching Mansfeld’s steps, had been recommenced by Tilly on August 15. That commander had, however, under-estimated the difficulties of his task, and the artillery of which he could dispose was so weak that during the first three days of its employment he only succeeded in killing a cat and two hens. During the succeeding fortnight the attack made little progress, and the besieged were beginning to speak more hopefully of their prospects. An attempt made on September 5 to carry the place by storm ended in complete failure; but that very evening the more powerful artillery of which Tilly was in need reached the camp of the besiegers. During the whole of the next morning the fortifications by which the western suburb was defended were subjected to a crushing fire, and it so happened that on that very day the money with which the garrison was paid had come to an end. The German mercenaries being what they were, the mere offscourings of the armies of Mansfeld and the Margrave of Baden, were mutinous and discontented. When, therefore, the enemy made a rush to storm the walls, it was found that in many places the defenders, instead of meeting the attack, threw down their arms and cried for quarter. The governor, Van der Merven, seeing that the suburb was lost, attempted to open negotiations with Tilly for the surrender of the town itself; but the keys of the place had been mislaid, and before they could be found the gate was blown open by the assailants, and the town was in their hands. Collecting such forces as he could, and surrounded by a huddled crowd of citizens and peasants, Van der Merven took refuge in the castle. Those who remained without were subjected to all those atrocities which in that age were the lot of a town taken by storm. Women were outraged, men were cut down in the streets or <361>tortured to force them to reveal the places in which their real or supposed wealth was hidden.
The castle was incapable of prolonged resistance. A strong outwork on the eastern side had been committed to the charge of Surrender of the castle.two English and Dutch companies under the command of Sir Gerard Herbert, a kinsman of the Earl of Pembroke. Nowhere did the enemy find so stout a resistance; but the little force was terribly outnumbered. Herbert, in whose hands four pikes had been broken, was killed by a shot, and the party, bringing away with them their guns and the bodies of the slain, retreated grimly into the fortress. It was in vain that they attempted to continue the struggle. The frightened citizens, who had fled for refuge to the castle, clung round the remains of Herbert’s band, and refused to allow them to exasperate the enemy by firing another shot. Under these circumstances the governor replied to Tilly’s summons by a request to be allowed to consult with Vere at Mannheim. Vere could give him no hope of support, and on the 9th the castle surrendered to the Bavarian commander. The troops were allowed to march out with the honours of war, on condition that they were not to join their comrades at Mannheim or at Frankenthal. The citizens were left to their fate.[557]
Tilly marched straight upon Mannheim. Placed at an angle between the Rhine and the Neckar, that renowned fortress The siege of Mannheim commenced.was only accessible on its southern side, and was for this reason justly regarded as the strongest post in that part of Germany. To Vere these advantages were likely to prove of small avail. His provisions and his money were running low; his men, exposed without hope of succour to the fury of the enemy, were showing signs of a thoroughly mutinous spirit. An unusually dry summer had lowered the water in the fosse, and his soldiers, even if they had been inspired with the confidence which had animated the burghers of Leyden, were far too few to man the vast extent <362>of fortification entrusted to his care. His first thought, therefore, was to call in Sir John Borough with the garrison of Frankenthal, in order that he might oppose to the enemy the utmost possible resistance at the point where resistance was likely to be of most avail. That, as a military man, he had judged correctly is beyond a doubt; but the citizens of Frankenthal refused to be abandoned. Sprung from the Protestant refugees who had fled from Alva’s cruelties in the Netherlands, they were bound together by a bitter hatred against the foe, which was hardly shared by the German inhabitants of Heidelberg or Mannheim. Every man amongst them had arms in his hands, and they were proud of the part which they had taken in the short siege of the preceding year. The moment, therefore, that Burroughs showed signs of moving they gave him plainly to understand that not a single soldier should leave the town alive. They were fighting for a common cause; and they must live and die together.
Under these circumstances, Vere reluctantly abandoned his intention. “I believe,” he wrote to Calvert, “no man’s estate Vere’s desperate position.can be more miserable. I am as careful as may be to smother these my opinions, knowing it a great weakness to suffer them to appear. But to your Honour, to whom it is proper to be informed in a business of this weight, I hold it fit to be rather free than otherwise. I endeavour myself, so far as means will give me leave, to keep the enemy at a far distance; but if he press strongly upon me, as I perceive he goes about, I shall then be forced, to my great grief, to draw my small numbers into a straiter room, for such is the vastness of the town and works, in many places unfinished, and by the now dryness of the ditches much weakened, as would require an army to defend them.”[558]
Vere could, at least, find some relief in the punctual performance of his duty. To Chichester, condemned to pass his time Chichester at Frankfort.in enforced idleness at Frankfort, even this solace was denied. Charged with the mission of protesting at Ratisbon against the Emperor’s audacity in daring <363>to consult the Princes of the Empire on a German question, instead of making a private arrangement with the King of England, he had been compelled by a taunting message from the governors of Worms and Spires to leave Frankenthal for the neutral territory of the Imperial city. They wished to know, they said, what he was doing amongst their master’s enemies. If he were an ambassador, why did he not deliver his message to the Emperor? He was now subjected to gibes of an opposite description. Men did not shrink from saying to his face that all the misery around had been caused by the King of England’s negotiations. If Frederick had not been forced to dismiss Mansfeld, his army might, ‘by living upon the Bishops’ countries and United Catholics, have ruined them, and have been at hand to have succoured and relieved his distressed towns and country.’ Chichester knew not what to do. There was no certainty whether the Emperor would go to Ratisbon or not. He therefore took the resolution of despatching Nethersole to England to Nethersole’s mission.lay the state of affairs before the King. Nethersole had accompanied Frederick in his ride across France in the spring, and had only left him when he retreated for the last time into Alsace. He was therefore in a position to give an accurate account of all that had passed, and he would be certain not to be remiss in the conveyance of Chichester’s warning, that vigorous and immediate action was indispensable, if the Palatinate was not to be abandoned altogether. He was to pass through the Hague on his way, and to consult with Elizabeth and the Prince of Orange.[559]
[504] Weston to Calvert, July 6, S. P. Flanders.
[505] Weston to Calvert, July 13, S. P. Flanders.
[506] Ferdinand II. to the King, June 8⁄18, S. P. Germany.
[507] The King to Ferdinand II., July 8, S. P. Germany.
[508] The Infanta Isabella to Philip IV., Dec. 14⁄24, 1621, Brussels MSS.
[509] Minutes of Oñate’s despatch, Nov. 7⁄17, 1621, Simancas MSS. 2403 fol. 8.
[510] Consulta of the Council of State, Jan. 8⁄18, Simancas MSS. 2403, fol. 8. Philip IV. to Oñate, Jan. 18⁄28, Brussels MSS.
[511] Khevenhüller, ix. 1765–1771. Philip IV. to Oñate, March 5⁄15, May 8⁄18, Brussels MSS.
[512] Calvert to Carleton, March 24, S. P. Holland.
[513] Bristol to the King, Aug. 18, 1623, S. P. Spain.
[514] Lafuente, Hist. Gen. de España, xvi. 21–28.
[515] The difference of opinion is scarcely indicated by Khevenhüller at this time. But from a later passage which will be afterwards quoted, in which he describes the cause of Zuñiga’s death, it is evident that it already existed.
[516] Relazioni Venete, Spagna, i. 600.
[517] Bristol to the King, Aug. 18, 1623, S. P. Spain.
[518] Digby to Calvert, June 30; Digby to the Prince of Wales, June 30. S. P. Spain.
[519] This is the explanation given in a despatch of Philip to the Infanta Isabella, March 5⁄15, Brussels MSS.
[520] Digby to the Prince of Wales, July 13, S. P. Spain.
[521] Digby to Calvert, Aug. 9, S. P. Spain.
[522] Weston to Calvert, July 19, S. P. Spain.
[523] The King to Ferdinand II., July 8, S. P. Germany.
[524] Mansfeld to the Duke of Lorraine, July, S. P. Holland.
[525] The Duke of Bouillon to Carleton (?), Aug. 5⁄15, S. P. Holland.
[526] Ferdinand II. to the Infanta Isabella, July 25⁄Aug. 4, Brussels MSS.
[527] October 1, N.S.
[528] Ferdinand II. to the King, Aug. 11⁄21; Simon Digby to Calvert, Aug. 14, S. P. Germany.
[529] Ferdinand II. to Khevenhüller, Aug. 8⁄18; Oñate to Philip IV., Aug. 10⁄20, Simancas MSS. 2403, fol. 218, 217; Simon Digby to Calvert, Aug. 14, 15, 22, S. P. Germany.
[530] Weston’s Proposition, Aug. 15, Weston’s Report, Inner Temple MSS. vol. 48.
[531] Weston to Calvert, Aug. 15, S. P. Flanders.
[532] Advertisement from Sedan, Aug. 8, S. P. Holland.
[533] Theatrum Europæum, i. 666. Carleton to Buckingham, Aug. 27, S. P. Holland.
[534] Weston to Calvert, Sept. 3, S. P. Flanders.
[535] The Infanta Isabella to Cordova, Aug. 14⁄24, Harl. MSS. 1581, fol. 177.
[536] i.e. Captain Weiss.
[537] Answer to Weston’s Proposition, Sept. 8, Weston’s Report, fol. 16. Inner Temple MSS. vol. 48.
[538] Mansfeld to Weston, Aug. 24⁄Sept. 3, S. P. Germany.
[539] Weston’s Reply, Sept. 12, in his Report, fol. 19, Inner Temple MSS. vol. 48.
[540] Weston to Calvert, Sept. 16, S. P. Flanders.
[541] Chamberlain to Carleton, Aug. 10, S. P. Dom. cxxxii. 91. Mead to Stuteville, Sept. 14, Harl. MSS. 389, fol. 228.
[542] Hacket, 89. The King to Abbot, Aug. 4; Abbot to the Bishops, Aug. 12, Sept. 4, Wilkins’s Concilia, iv. 465.
[543] Williams to the Judges, Aug. 2, S. P. Dom. cxxxii. 84.
[544] Williams to Annan, Cabala, 269.
[545] Ciriza to Aston, June 27⁄July 7, S. P. Spain.
[546] Valaresso to the Doge, Aug. 9⁄19, Venice MSS.
[547] Privy Council Register, Aug. 6.
[548] Chamberlain to Carleton, July 13, S. P. Dom. cxxxii. 38.
[549] Chamberlain to Carleton, July 1, Locke to Carleton, Nov. 30. S. P. Dom. cxxxii. 1; cxxxiv. 39.
[550] Valaresso to the Doge, Aug. 9⁄19, Venice MSS.
[551] Francisco de Jesus, 33–40.
[552] Resolutions upon the Marriage Articles [Sept. 9]. The King to Digby, Sept. 9. Prynne’s Hidden Works of Darkness, 14, 16.
[553] See Vol. III. p. 346.
[554] Meaning, perhaps, that Gondomar had answered James’s complaints that he had been deceived by the renewal of the war in 1621, by begging him to suffer it for once, and that all would come right in the end.
[555] That is to say, as may make it necessary for him to explain his actions, his honour having become doubtful and needing interpretation.
[556] Buckingham to Gondomar [Sept. 9], Cabala, 224. The holograph draft is in Harl. MSS. 1583, fol. 353.
[557] Theatrum Europæum, i. 647. Van der Merven’s Relatio Historica. Verantwortung der … Stadt Heidelberg. Londorp, ii. 743. Vere to Calvert, Sept. 7. Chichester’s relation of the loss of Heidelberg, Sept. 14. Burlamachi to Calvert, Sept. 12, 14, S. P. Germany.
[558] Vere to Calvert, Sept. 23, S. P. Germany.
[559] Chichester to Calvert, Sept. 14, S. P. Germany.