THE Protestant cause in Germany seemed to be in a desperate state, and with the triumph of the Roman Catholic Church was linked that of the house of Austria. France was too much occupied with the siege of Rochelle to interfere according to her usual policy of support to the German princes against the Emperor, and Ferdinand was on the way to be far more powerful than any of his predecessors.

However, there were other powers more directly interested in the Lutheran cause, not only politically but religiously, namely, Sweden and Denmark, where an Episcopal Lutheranism had been established by the strong hands of Gustavus Vasa and Christian III. In Sweden it is possible that the apostolical succession may have been kept up, though not valued; in Denmark it had certainly been dropped.

The ruling Kings of Sweden and Denmark were at this time the young Gustaf II.-Gustavus Adolphus as history usually calls himand Christian IV., brother to James I.'s queen, and thus uncle to Charles I. and Elizabeth of Bohemia. They had only lately concluded a war between themselves, and Gustavus was still fighting with Russia, so that the Thirty Years' War did not engulf Sweden till a later period. Christian II. was greatly esteemed by his own subjects. He had established trading companies in Iceland, Greenland, America, and India; made roads, established a university and military and naval colleges, greatly adorned Copenhagen, and had done his best to improve the condition of the serfs, who were ground down by the nobles. He had greatly disapproved of his niece's expedition to Bohemia; but when she was a fugitive, he was willing to co-operate with England to restore her husband, though finding that James I. would do nothing, he held back, and the ruin followed in consequence. He was Duke of

CAMFO XVIII.

The

Protestant

cause.

CAMEO
XVIII.

Holstein, and thus a member of the Imperial Diet, and he had obtained for one of his sons the lay bishopric of Verden and the reversion of the Treaty with archbishopric of Bremen, so that he was interested in keeping up the

Denmark.

1625.

custom of Protestant princes holding these secularised dioceses; and he well knew that the Roman Catholic dominion would soon put an end to such an anomaly. After some negotiation in 1625, Christian therefore undertook, on Charles I. engaging to pay him 30,000l. a month, that he would enter Germany with his army and 6,000 English. The Circle of Lower Saxony chose him for its commander, Mansfeld joined him with the remnant of the German army, and the English actually paid him 40,000l. by way of a beginning.

Elizabeth and her husband felt their hopes revive. They made a progress into North Holland, which was amusingly described in letters from one of Elizabeth's maids of honour. The ladies wore hats instead of hoods, a new fashion at the time, and thus the country people took them for boys; and at Haarlem the burgomaster fancied the rule for hats must be the same for ladies as for gentlemen, and seeing the Queen bareheaded in the house, repeated 'Couvrez vous, madame,' till she put on her hat. The good folk were shocked at the extravagance of the long dresses, and still more at the six horses which drew. the coaches; but the authorities entertained their guests so well that Elizabeth seems to have had plenty of enjoyment on her trip, for amid all her troubles she preserved a buoyant spirit.

On her return to the Hague, she gave a great entertainment in honour of her brother's marriage, but the English ambassador would not come to it. He was Sir Albert Morton, a great friend of hers, and she had been shortly before driving out with him in his coach when they encountered that of the French representative, who claimed precedence over the English one. Sir Albert held that a King's daughter naturally should go before any ambassador; the Frenchman persisted, and Elizabeth gave way; but not so the ambassador, who considered himself bound not to meet the Frenchman if he were to yield a jot to him. Such encounters were constantly taking place between ambassadors, till the matter was finally settled by giving the precedence according to length of residence at the court instead of the dignity of the monarch represented.

On the 18th of July, 1625, the imperial general, Count Tilly, crossed the Weser into Lower Saxony, and at the same time Bethlem Gabor threatened Transylvania. The Emperor was in the greatest perplexity. He had hardly any power over Maximilian of Bavaria, and not much over Tilly, and he had not resources to raise a single regiment on his own account; but in the midst of his difficulties a Bohemian noble came forward to offer to provide an army at his own expense. This was Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Waldstein, or, as he came to be better known, Wallenstein. He was of a noble old family in Bohemia, and was born in 1583. He had been designed to be a scholar, but his fierce turbulent nature made his father decide on placing him as a page with one of the

Austrian archdukes. His father soon after died, and his guardians put him under the strict teaching of the Bohemian brethren, since called Moravians, against whose teaching he revolted, and was wild and violent in conduct until a remarkable escape from injury in falling from a window gave him a strong religious impulse, under which he fled to a Jesuit College at Olmutz, and became a Roman Catholic. He then travelled through Holland, England, France, Spain, and Italy, and took up his abode for some time at the University of Padua, where he studied mathematics, astronomy, and especially astrology, with which he became so thoroughly imbued that the stars were the real guides of his life, and he had little actual faith in anything else. On his return he married a rich old widow in Moravia, and served as an officer under Ferdinand, while still Archduke of Styria. His old wife dying, he married the daughter of Count Harrack, and became known for his splendour of life and decision of character. When the Bohemians revolted, he was in command of one of the regiments in the service of the Estates of Moravia. Finding all resolved against the Emperor, he seized the treasure-box of the Estates, flung himself on his horse, and rode off with it to Vienna; but there Ferdinand was too honourable to accept of money thus captured, and returned it to the Moravians to be used against himself. He raised a regiment of a thousand horse at his own expense, and took part in the battle of the White Hills and the subjugation of Bohemia.

There, having money at his disposal, he was able to traffic in estates with the nobles whose lands were sequestrated or burthened as a penalty for their rebellion, and he thus gained such wealth that he was by far the richest subject in Bohemia. He kept up the utmost state, and his gravity and sternness were such as to impress the imagination of all who approached him. It was said that he never smiled, and the only person with whom he unbent was his Italian astrologer, Serlo.

In Ferdinand's distress, Wallenstein came forward with offers to raise an army of 30,000 men, and equip them at his own expense, also to feed and pay them without calls on the treasury, and without more than casual plunder, provided the Emperor would authorise him to levy contributions on the cities and states through which he passed. Ferdinand accepted the offer, though he never thoroughly trusted one whom he felt to be an instrument beyond his management.

The grand, unapproachable and mysterious general was the hero of the soldiery, and though his discipline was severe, the equipments he gave were perfect and the pay secure, so that hosts flocked to his banner. Count Pappenheim, his cavalry general, was a man of mark, of great personal strength and undaunted spirit, a devout Catholic, blameless in private life, tender and affectionate. He was the darling of the soldiers, whom he led to victory, and alas! in spite of all his virtues, he accepted their ferocity as a matter of course. Wallenstein was under orders to go and support Tilly against the Danes, but he did not choose to be second

CAMEO

XVIII.

Youth of Wallenstein,

CAMEO XVIII. Death of Christian of Brunswick. 1626.

in command, and besides, he would not risk his new and raw army against the well-organised Danes until he had them fully in hand. He therefore led them into the secularised Bishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, where he made the inhabitants pay heavily for their support, while he brought them into full power of acting together.

So passed the winter, in vain negotiation between the higher powers, and with the spring the war began again. Wallenstein and Tilly had 70,000 men between them, Christian of Denmark, Christian of Brunswick, and Mansfeld, 60,000; but while Wallenstein and Tilly forced contributions from the enemy, Christian II. was disappointed of the subsidies promised by England, which the Parliament refused to grant to King Charles until their own grievances were redressed.

The campaign began by an endeavour of Mansfeld to cut off Wallenstein from Tilly, and a battle was fought at the bridge of Dessau, which had been strongly fortified by Wallenstein. Mansfeld was totally defeated, and marched off towards Hungary to join Bethlem Gabor. The romantic Christian of Brunswick was left behind, dying, not of wounds, but of a painful disease, at the age of twenty-nine.

Elizabeth was greatly grieved at his death, and after the birth of her daughter, Henrietta, she was so ill that her brother sent the Queen's own physician, Theodore Mayerne, to attend her.

King Christian could stay no longer where he was, for he had no more money, and supplies had failed him. All he could attempt was a dash through Thuringia, in the hope of joining Bethlem Gabor and Mansfeld, in whose favour the Austrian Protestants were fast rising. But Tilly, reinforced by soldiers lent him by Wallenstein, pursued the Danes and overtook them at Lutter on the 27th of August, 1626. The Danish troops cried out for pay, fought ill, and were routed.

Mansfeld and Bethlem Gabor were meanwhile confronted by Wallenstein, who did not fight, but watched them and harassed them, while disease was doing its work on their armies and on themselves. Bethlem at length made peace, and one condition that was imposed on him was the expulsion of Mansfeld from Hungary. The Count then sold his artillery to the Turkish Pasha of Buda, and set out with only twelve men, meaning to make his way through Bosnia to the Venetian dominions, and thence return to Germany. He reached Zara, and there fell sick of a fever. Like the son of the old Northern heroes, he refused to die in his bed. 'Raise me,' he cried, 'I am dying now.' So, supported upright, he gazed on the dawn, and murmured, 'Be united! be united! Hold out like men.'

Bethlem Gabor died the same autumn, and thus, in the eighth year of the war, 1627, a large proportion of the first actors therein were removed.

Meantime Elizabeth kept her little court at the Hague, where the Prince of Orange complimented her by asking her to stand godmother to his young heir. Here, too, she had the pleasure of making a match between the noble and enthusiastic James Stanley, Lord Strange,

eldest son of the Earl of Derby, and Charlotte, daughter of the Huguenot Duke of la Tremouille, who was nearly related to the Elector Palatine. A portrait of her is extant, painted by Rubens at this period, a brilliant, buxom maiden, in a large hat and crimson dress, just as she must have been when she won the true heart of Lord Strange.

Wallenstein was rewarded for his services by being created Duke of Friedland, but there were numerous disputes among such conflicting interests. The Catholic League expected Wallenstein to support his army wholly by contributions from Protestants; and he, on the contrary, declared the Emperor's right to call for supplies from both alike. He never troubled himself about the religious opinions of his army, but hired Protestant and Catholic alike; and he tried to persuade the Emperor to regulate the Empire in the same manner, only looking at the rights of the princes; but this Ferdinand was never likely to do, as it would have been against all his principles. There were also minor disputes about the confiscated lands, and how they should be disposed of. The Bishopric of Halberstadt, which had been held in so strange a manner by the wild hero, poor Christian of Brunswick, was given to the Emperor's son, Leopold Wilhelm, who was really an ecclesiastic. He had been so devout from his infancy that his family called him 'the angel'; and his prayers were thought specially efficacious. He was extremely fond of pictures, antiquities, and botany, but as an act of self-denial he would not smell a flower! Yet devout as was Ferdinand as well as the youth, there was no scruple about heaping benefices on him. At eleven years old he was Abbot of Maurbach and Neiders, and Bishop of Strasburg and Bremen, and he was only sixteen at this time, when he was nominated to Halberstadt. At Magdeburg Wallenstein turned out the Protestant Bishop, one of the house of Brandenburg, and obliged the Canons to chose a son of the Elector of Saxony; but Catholic and Churchman though this prince was, the Emperor caused the election to be annulled, and once more put in Leopold, to whom he also gave a considerable abbey taken from Hesse, and crowned all with the Archbishopric of Bremen.

He seems to have thought himself predestined to reconquer Europe to the Roman Catholic Church with such an instrument as Wallenstein, and even thought of dethroning the two Scandinavian kings! He tried to get a hold of the Hanse towns, so as to have a footing on the Baltic Sea, but the stout citizens knew their own interests too well to agree to this; and his next step was to put the two dukes of Mecklenburg under the ban of the Empire, and make Wallenstein his generalissimo by land and sea, though all the exertions of that great general could only get fifteen ships together. He then invaded the Duchy of Pomerania without the least excuse, save that the reigning Duke Bogislav was the last of his race, and the fief must be secured for the Emperor! Then, having occupied the isles of Rugen and Dunholm, he summoned Stralsund, which, though nominally Pomeranian, was a Hanse town and independent.

САМЕО XVIII.

Success of Wallenstein. 1627.