A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 11

Whilst the cardinal was holding La Roch.e.l.le besieged, the Duke of Mantua had died in Italy, and his natural heir, Charles di Gonzaga, who was settled in France with the t.i.tle of Duke of Nevers, had hastened to put himself in possession of his dominions. Meanwhile the Duke of Savoy claimed the marquisate of Montferrat; the Spaniards supported him; they entered the-dominions of the Duke of Mantua, and laid siege to Casale.

When La Roch.e.l.le succ.u.mbed, Casale was still holding out; but the Duke of Savoy had already made himself master of the greater part of Montferrat; the Duke of Mantua claimed the a.s.sistance of the King of France, whose subject he was; here was a fresh battle-field against Spain; and scarcely had he been victorious over the Roch.e.l.lese, when the king was on the march for Italy. The Duke of Savoy refused a pa.s.sage to the royal army, which found the defile of Suza Pa.s.s fortified with three barricades.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Defile of Suza Pa.s.s----278]

Marshal Ba.s.sompierre went to the king, who was a hundred paces behind the storming party, ahead of his regiment of guards. "'Sir,' said he, 'the company is ready, the violins have come in,'and the masks are at the door; when your Majesty pleases, we will commence the ballet.' 'The king came up to me, and said to me angrily, "Do you know, pray, that we have but five hundred pounds of lead in the park of artillery?" 'I said to him, 'It is a pretty time to think of that. Must the ballet not dance, for lack of one mask that is not ready? Leave it to us, sir, and all will go well.' "Do you answer for it?" said he to me. 'Sir,' replied.

the cardinal, 'by the marshal's looks I prophesy that all will be well; rest a.s.sured of it.'" [_Memoires de Ba.s.sompiere._] The French dashed forward, the marshals with the storming party, and the barricades were soon carried. The Duke of Savoy and his son had hardly time to fly.

"Gentlemen," cried the Duke to some Frenchmen, who happened to be in his service, "gentlemen, allow me to pa.s.s; your countrymen are in a temper."

With the same dash, on debouching from the mountains, the king's troops entered Suza. The Prince of Piedmont soon arrived to ask for peace; he gave up all pretensions to Montferrat, and promised to negotiate with the Spanish general to get the siege of Casale raised; and the effect was that, on the 18th of March, Casale, delivered "by the mere wind of the renown gained by the king's arms, saw, with tears of joy, the Spaniards retiring desolate, showing no longer that pride which they had been wont to wear on their faces,--looking constantly behind them, not so much from regret for what they were leaving as for fear lest the king's vengeful sword should follow after them, and come to strike their death-blow."

[_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 370.]

The Spaniards remained, however, in Milaness, ready to burst again upon the Duke of Mantua. The king was in a hurry to return to France in order to finish the subjugation of the Reformers in the south, commanded by the Duke of Rohan. The cardinal placed little or no reliance upon the Duke of Savoy, whose "mind could get no rest, and going more swiftly than the rapid movements of the heavens, made every day more than twice the circuit of the world, thinking how to set by the ears all kings, princes, and potentates, one with another, so that he alone might reap advantage from their divisions. [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. iv. p. 375.] A league, however, was formed between France, the republic of Venice, the Duke of Mantua, and the Duke of Savoy, for the defence of Italy in case of fresh aggression on the part of the Spaniards; and the king, who had just concluded peace with England, took the road back to France.

Scarcely had the cardinal joined him before Privas when an imperialist army advanced into the Grisons, and, supported by the celebrated Spanish general Spinola, laid siege to Mantua. Richelieu did not hesitate: he entered Piedmont in the month of March, 1630, to march before long on Pignerol, an important place commanding the pa.s.sage of the Alps; it, as well as the citadel, was carried in a few days; the governor having asked for time to "do his Easter" (take the sacrament), Marshal Crequi, who was afraid of seeing aid arrive from the Duke of Savoy, had all the clocks in the town put on, to such purpose that the governor had departed and the place was in the hands of the French when the re-enforcements came up.

The Duke of Savoy was furious, and had the soldiers who surrendered Pignerol cut in pieces.

The king had put himself in motion to join his army. "The French n.o.blesse," said Spinola, "are very fortunate in seeing themselves honored by the presence of the king their master amongst their armies; I have nothing to regret in my life but never to have seen the like on the part of mine." This great general had resumed the siege of Casale when Louis XIII. entered Savoy; the inhabitants of Chambery opened their gates to him; Annecy and Montmelian succ.u.mbed after a few days' siege; Maurienne in its entirety made its submission, and the king fixed his quarters there, whilst the cardinal pushed forward to Casale with the main body of the army. Rejoicings were still going on for a success gained before Veillane over the troops of the Duke of Savoy, when news arrived of the capture of Mantua by the Imperialists. This was the finis.h.i.+ng blow to the ambitious and restless spirit of the Duke of Savoy. He saw Mantua in the hands of the Spaniards, "who never give back aught of what falls into their power, whatever justice and the interests of alliance may make binding on them;" it was all hope lost of an exchange which might have given him back Savoy; he took to his bed and died on the 26th of July, 1630, telling his son that peace must be made on any terms whatever.

"By just punishment of G.o.d, he who, during forty or fifty years of his reign, had constantly tried to set his neighbors a-blaze, died amidst the flames of his own dominions, which he had lost by his own obstinacy, against the advice of his friends and his allies."

The King of France, in ill health, had just set out for Lyons; and thither the cardinal was soon summoned, for Louis XIII. appeared to be dying. When he reached convalescence, the truce suspending hostilities since the death of the Duke of Savoy was about to expire; Marshal Schomberg was preparing to march on the enemy, when there was brought to him a treaty, signed at Ratisbonne, between the emperor and the amba.s.sador of France, a.s.sisted by Francis du Tremblay, now known as Father Joseph, perhaps the only friend and certainly the most intimate confidant of the cardinal, who always employed him on delicate or secret business.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Richelieu and Father Joseph----280]

But Marshal Schomberg was fighting against Spain; he did not allow himself to be stopped by a treaty concluded with the emperor, and speedily found himself in front of Casale. The two armies were already face to face, when there was seen coming out of the intrenchments an officer in the pope's service, who waved a white handkerchief; he came up to Marshal Schomberg, and was recognized as Captain Giulio Mazarini, often employed on the nuncio's affairs; he brought word that the Spaniards would consent to leave the city, if, at the same time, the French would evacuate the citadel. Spinola was no longer there to make a good stand before the place; he had died a month previously, complaining loudly that his honor had been filched from him; and, determined not to yield up his last breath in a town which would have to be abandoned, he had caused himself to be removed out of Casale, to go and die in a neighboring castle.

Casale evacuated, the cardinal broke out violently against the negotiators of Ratisbonne, saying that they had exceeded their powers, and declaring that the king regarded the treaty as null and void; there was accordingly a recommencement of negotiations with the emperor as well as the Spaniards.

It was only in the month of September, 1631, that the states of Savoy and Mantua were finally evacuated by the hostile troops. Pignerol had been given up to the new Duke of Savoy, but a secret agreement had been entered into between that prince and France: French soldiers remained concealed in Pignerol; and they retook possession of the place in the name of the king, who had purchased the town and its territory, to secure himself a pa.s.sage into Italy. The Spaniards, when they bad news of it, made so much the more uproar as they had the less foreseen it, and as it cut the thread of all the enterprises they were meditating against Christendom. The affairs of the emperor in Germany were in too bad a state for him to rekindle war, and France kept Pignerol. The house of Austria, in fact, was threatened mortally. For two years Cardinal Richelieu had been laboring to carry war into its very heart. Ferdinand II. had displeased many electors of the empire, who began to be disquieted at the advances made by his power. "It is, no doubt, a great affliction for the Christian commonwealth," said the cardinal to the German princes, "that none but the Protestants should dare to oppose such pernicious designs; they must not be aided in their enterprises against religion, but they must be made use of in order to maintain Germany in the enjoyment of her liberties." The Catholic league in Germany, habitually allied as it was with the house of Austria, did not offer any leader to take the field against her. The King of Denmark, after a long period of hostilities, had just made peace with the emperor; and, "in their need, all these offended and despoiled princes looked, as sailors look to the north," towards the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gustavus Adolphus----282]

"The King of Sweden was a new rising sun, who, having been at war with all his neighbors, had wrested from them several provinces; he was young, but of great reputation, and already incensed against the emperor, not so much on account of any real injuries he had received from him as because he was his neighbor. His Majesty had kept an eye upon him with a view of attempting to make use of him in order to draw off, in course of time, the main body of the emperor's forces, and give him work to do in his own dominions." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. v. p. 119.] Through Richelieu's good offices, Gustavus Adolphus had just concluded a long truce with the Poles, with whom he had been for some time at war: the cardinal's envoy, M. de Charnace, at once made certain propositions to the King of Sweden, promising the aid of France if he would take up the cause of the German princes; but Gustavus turned a cold ear to these overtures, "not seeing in any quarter any great encouragement to undertake the war, either in England, peace with the Spaniards being there as good as determined upon, or in Holland, for the same reason, or in the Hanseatic towns, which were all exhausted of wealth, or in Denmark, which had lost heart and was daily disarming, or in France, whence he got not a word on which he could place certain reliance." The emperor, on his side, was seeking to make peace with Sweden, "and the people of that country were not disinclined to listen to him."

G.o.d, for the accomplishment of his will, sets at nought the designs and intentions of men. Gustavus Adolphus was the instrument chosen by Providence to finish the work of Henry IV. and Richelieu. Negotiations continued to be carried on between the two parties, but, before his alliance with France was concluded, the King of Sweden, taking a sudden resolution, set out for Germany, on the 30th of May, 1630, with fifteen thousand men, "having told Charnace that he would not continue the war beyond that year, if he did not agree upon terms of treaty with the king; so much does pa.s.sion blind us," adds the cardinal, "that he thought it to be in his power to put an end to so great a war as that, just as it had been in his power to commence it."

By this time Gustavus Adolphus was in Pomerania, the duke whereof, maltreated by the emperor, admitted him on the 10th of July into Stettin, after a show of resistance. The Imperialists, in their fury, put to a cruel death all the inhabitants of the said city who happened to be in their hands, and gave up all its territory to fire and sword. "The King of Sweden, on the contrary, had his army in such discipline, that it seemed as if every one of them were living at home, and not amongst strangers; for in the actions of this king there was nothing to be seen but inexorable severity towards the smallest excesses on the part of his men, extraordinary gentleness towards the populations, and strict justice on every occasion, all which conciliated the affections of all, and so much the more in that the emperor's army, unruly, insolent, disobedient to its leaders, and full of outrage against the people, made their enemy's virtues s.h.i.+ne forth the brighter." [_Memoires de Richelieu,_ t. vi. p. 419.]

Gustavus Adolphus had left Sweden under the impulse of love for those glorious enterprises which make great generals, but still more of a desire to maintain the Protestant cause, which he regarded as that of G.o.d. He had a.s.sembled the estates of Sweden in the castle of Stockholm, presenting to them his daughter Christina, four years old, whom he confided to their faithful care. "I have hopes," he said to them, "of ending by bringing triumph to the cause of the oppressed; but, as the pitcher that goes often to the well gets broken, so I fear it may be my fate. I who have exposed my life amidst so many dangers, who have so often spilt my blood for the country, without, thanks to G.o.d, having been wounded to death, must in the end make a sacrifice of myself; for that reason I bid you farewell, hoping to see you again in a better world."

He continued advancing into Germany. "This snow king will go on melting as he comes south," said the emperor, Ferdinand, on hearing that Gustavus Adolphus had disembarked; but Mecklenburg was already in his hands, and the Elector of Brandenburg had just declared in his favor: he everywhere made proclamation, "that the inhabitants were to come forward and join him to take the part of their princes, whom he was coming to replace in possession." He was investing all parts of Austria, whose hereditary dominions he had not yet attacked; it was in the name of the empire that he fought against the emperor.

The diet was terminating at Ratisbonne, and it had just struck a fatal blow at the imperial cause. The electors, Catholic and Protestant, jealous of the power as well as of the glory of the celebrated Wallenstein, creator and commander-in-chief of the emperor's army, who had made him Duke of Friedland, and endowed him with the duchies of Mecklenburg, had obliged Ferdinand II. to withdraw from him the command of the forces. At this price he had hoped to obtain their votes to designate his son King of the Romans; the first step towards hereditary empire had failed, thanks to the ability of Father Joseph. "This poor Capuchin has disarmed me with his chaplet," said the emperor, "and for all that his cowl is so narrow he has managed to get six electoral hats into it." The treaty he had concluded, disavowed by France, did not for an instant hinder the progress of the King of Sweden; and the cardinal lost no time in letting him know that "the king's intention was in no wise to abandon him, but to a.s.sist him more than ever, insomuch as he deemed it absolutely necessary in order to thwart the designs of those who had no end in view but their own augmentation, to the prejudice of all the other princes of Europe." On the 25th of January, 1631, at Bernwald, the treaty of alliance between France and Sweden was finally signed. Baron Charnace had inserted in the draft of the treaty the term protection as between France and Gustavus Adolphus. "Our master asks for no protection but that of Heaven, said the Swedish plenipotentiaries; "after G.o.d, his Majesty holds himself indebted only to his sword and his wisdom for any advantages he may gain." Charnace did not insist; and the victories of Gustavus Adolphus were an answer to any difficulties.

The King of Sweden bound himself to furnish soldiers,--thirty thousand men at the least; France was to pay, by way of subsidy, four hundred thousand crowns a year, and to give a hundred thousand crowns to cover past expenses. Gustavus Adolphus promised to maintain the existing religion in such countries as he might conquer, "though he said, laughingly, that there was no possibility of promising about that, except in the fas.h.i.+on of him who sold the bear's skin;" he likewise guaranteed neutrality to the princes of the Catholic league, provided that they observed it towards him. The treaty was made public at once, through the exertions of Gustavus Adolphus, though Cardinal Richelieu had charged Charnace to keep it secret for a time.

Torquato Conti, one of the emperor's generals, who had taken Wallenstein's place, wished to break off warfare during the long frosts.

"My men do not recognize winter," answered Gustavus Adolphus. "This prince, who did not take to war as a pastime, but made it in order to conquer," marched with giant strides across Germany, reducing everything as he went. He had arrived, by the end of April, before Frankfurt-on-the Oder, which he took; and he was preparing to succor Magdeburg, which had early p.r.o.nounced for him, and which Tilly, the emperor's general, kept besieged. The Elector of Saxony hesitated to take sides; he refused Gustavus Adolphus a pa.s.sage over the bridge of Dessau, on the Elbe. On the 20th of May Magdeburg fell, and Tilly gave over the place to the soldiery; thirty thousand persons were ma.s.sacred, and the houses committed to the flames. "Nothing like it has been seen since the taking of Troy and of Jerusalem," said Tilly in his savage joy. The Protestant princes, who had just been reconst.i.tuting the Evangelical Union, in the diet they had held in February at Leipzig, revolted openly, ordering levies of soldiers to protect their territories; the Catholic League, renouncing neutrality, flew to arms on their side; the question became nothing less than that of restoring to the Protestants all that had been granted them by the peace of Pa.s.sau. The soldiery of Tilly were already let loose on electoral Saxony; the elector, constrained by necessity, intrusted his soldiers to Gustavus Adolphus, who had just received re-enforcements from Sweden, and the king marched against Tilly, still encamped before Leipzig, which he had forced to capitulate.

The Saxons gave way at the first shock of the imperial troops, but the King of Sweden had dashed forward, and nothing could withstand him; Tilly himself, hitherto proof against lead and steel, fell wounded in three places; five thousand dead were left on the field of battle; and Gustavus Adolphus dragged at his heels seven thousand prisoners. "Never did the grace of G.o.d pull me out of so bad a sc.r.a.pe," said the conqueror. He halted some time at Mayence, which had just opened its gates to him.

Axel Oxenstiern, his most faithful servant and oldest friend, whose intimacy with his royal master reminds one of that between Henry IV. and Sully, came to join him in Germany; he had hitherto been commissioned to hold the government of the conquests won from the Poles. He did not approve of the tactics of Gustavus Adolphus, who was attacking the Catholic League, and meanwhile leaving to the Elector of Saxony the charge of carrying the war into the hereditary dominions of Austria.

. . . "Sir," said he, "I should have liked to offer you my felicitations on your victories, not at Mayence, but at Vienna." "If, after the battle of Leipzig, the King of Sweden had gone straight to attack the emperor in his hereditary provinces, it had been all over with the house of Austria," says Cardinal Richelieu; "but either G.o.d did not will the certain destruction of that house, which would perhaps have been too prejudicial to the Catholic religion, and he turned him aside from the counsel which would have been more advantageous for him to take, or the same G.o.d, who giveth not all to any, but distributeth his gifts diversely to each, had given to this king, as to Hannibal, the knowledge how to conquer, but not how to use victory."

Gustavus Adolphus had resumed his course of success: he came up with Tilly again on the Leek, April 10, 1632, and crushed his army; the general was mortally wounded, and the King of Sweden, entering Augsburg in triumph, proclaimed religious liberty there. He had moved forward in front of Ingolstadt, and was making a reconnoissance in person. "A king is not worthy of his crown who makes any difficulty about carrying it wherever a simple soldier can go," he said. A cannon-ball carried off the hind quarters of his horse and threw him down. He picked himself up, all covered with blood and mud. "The fruit is not yet ripe," he cried, with that strange mixture of courage and fatalism which so often characterizes great warriors; and he marched to Munich, on which he imposed a heavy war-contribution. The Elector of Bavaria, strongly favored by France, sought to treat in the name of the Catholic League; but Gustavus Adolphus required complete rest.i.tution of all territories wrested from the Protestant princes, the withdrawal of the troops occupying the dominions of the evangelicals, and the absolute neutrality of the Catholic princes. "These conditions smacked rather of your victorious prince, who would lay down and not accept the law." He summoned to him all the inhabitants of the countries he traversed in conqueror's style: _"Surgite d mortuis,"_ he said to the Bavarians, _"et venite ad judieium" (Rise from the dead, and come to judgment)_.

Protestant Suabia had declared for him, and Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, one of his ablest lieute ants, carried the Swedish arms to the very banks of the Lake of Constance. The Lutheran countries of Upper Austria had taken up arms; and Switzerland had permitted the King of Sweden to recruit on her territory. "Italy began to tremble," says Cardinal Richelieu; "the Genevese themselves were fortifying their town, and, to see them doing so, it seemed as if the King of Sweden were at their gates; but G.o.d had disposed it otherwise."

The Emperor Ferdinand had recalled the only general capable of making a stand against Gustavus Adolphus. Wallenstein, deeply offended, had for a long while held out; but, being a.s.sured of the supreme command over the fresh army which Ferdinand was raising in all directions, he took the field at the end of April, 1632. Wallenstein effected a junction with the Elector of Bavaria, forcing Gustavus Adolphus back, little by little, on Nuremberg. "I mean to show the King of Sweden a new way of making war," said the German general. The sufferings of his army in an intrenched camp soon became intolerable to Gustavus Adolphus. In spite of inferiority of forces, he attacked the enemy's redoubts, and was repulsed; the king revictualled Nuremberg, and fell back upon Bavaria.

Wallenstein at first followed him, and then flung himself upon Saxony, and took Leipzig; Gustavus Adolphus advanced to succor his ally, and the two armies met near the little town of Liitzen, on the 16th of November, 1632.

There was a thick fog. Gustavus Adolphus, rising before daybreak, would not put on his breastplate, his old wounds hurting him under harness: "G.o.d is my breastplate," he said. When somebody came and asked him for the watchword, he answered, "G.o.d with us;" and it was Luther's hymn, _"Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" (Our G.o.d is a strong tower),_ that the Swedes sang as they advanced towards the enemy. The king had given orders to march straight on Lutzen. "He animated his men to the fight,"

says Richelieu, "with words that he had at command, whilst Wallenstein, by his mere presence and the sternness of his silence, seemed to let his men understand that, as he had been wont to do, he would reward them or chastise them, according as they did well or ill on that great day."

It was ten A. M., and the fog had just lifted; six batteries of cannon and two large ditches defended the Imperialists; the artillery from the ramparts of Liitzen played upon the king's army, the b.a.l.l.s came whizzing about him; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar was the first to attack, pus.h.i.+ng forward on Liitzen, which was soon taken; Gustavus Adolphus marched on to the enemy's intrenchments; for an instant the Swedish infantry seemed to waver; the king seized a pike and flung himself amidst the ranks. "After crossing so many rivers, scaling so many walls, and storming so many places, if you have not courage enough to defend yourselves, at least turn your heads to see me die," he shouted to the soldiers. They rallied: the king remounted his horse, bearing along with him a regiment of Smalandaise cavalry. "You will behave like good fellows, all of you,"

he said to them, as he dashed over the two ditches, carrying, as he went, two batteries of the enemy's cannon. "He took off his hat and rendered thanks to G.o.d for the victory He was giving him."

Two regiments of Imperial cuira.s.siers rode up to meet him; the king charged them at the head of his Swedes; he was in the thickest of the fight; his horse received a ball through the neck; Gustavus had his arm broken; the bone came through the sleeve of his coat; he wanted to have it attended to, and begged the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg to a.s.sist him in leaving the battle-field; at that very moment, Falkenberg, lieutenant- colonel in the Imperial army, galloped his horse on to the king and shot him, point-blank, in the back with a pistol. The king fell from his horse; and Falkenberg took to flight, pursued by one of the king's squires, who killed him. Gustavus Adolphus was left alone with a German page, who tried to raise him; the king could no longer speak; three Austrian cuira.s.siers surrounded him, asking the page the name of the wounded man; the youngster would not say, and fell, riddled with wounds, on his master's body; the Austrians sent one more pistol-shot into the dying man's temple, and stripped him of his clothes, leaving him only his s.h.i.+rt. The melley recommenced, and successive charges of cavalry pa.s.sed over the hero's corpse; there were counted nine open wounds and thirteen scars on his body when it was recovered towards the evening.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Death of Gustavus and his Page----290]

One of the king's officers, who had been unable to quit the fight in time to succor him, went and announced his fall to Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. To him a retreat was suggested; but, "We mustn't think of that," said he, "but of death or victory." A lieutenant-colonel of a cavalry regiment made some difficulty about resuming the attack: the duke pa.s.sed his sword through his body, and, putting himself at the head of the troops, led them back upon the enemy's intrenchments which he carried and lost three times. At last he succeeded in turning the cannon upon the enemy, and "that gave the turn to the victory, which, nevertheless, was disputed till night."

"It was one of the most horrible ever heard of," says Cardinal Richelieu; "six thousand dead or dying were left on the field of battle, where Duke Bernard encamped till morning."

When day came, he led the troops off to Weisenfeld. The army knew nothing yet of the king's death. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar had the body brought to the front. "I will no longer conceal from you," he said, "the misfortune that has befallen us; in the name of the glory that you have won in following this great prince, help me to exact vengeance for it, and to let all the world see that he commanded soldiers who rendered him invincible, and, even after his death, the terror of his enemies." A shout arose from the host, "We will follow you whither you will, even to the end of the earth."

"Those who look for spots on the sun, and find something reprehensible even in virtue itself, blame this king," says Cardinal Richelieu, "for having died like a trooper; but they do not reflect that all conqueror-princes are obliged to do not only the duty of captain, but of simple soldier, and to be the first in peril, in order to lead thereto the soldier who would not run the risk without them. It was the case with Caesar and with Alexander, and the Swede died so much the more gloriously than either the one or the other, in that it is more becoming the condition of a great captain and a conqueror to die sword in hand, making a tomb for his body of his enemies on the field of battle, than to be hated of his own and poniarded by the hands of his nearest and dearest, or to die of poison or of drowning in a wine-b.u.t.t."

Just like Napoleon in Egypt and Italy, Gustavus Adolphus, had performed the prelude, by numerous wars against his neighbors, to the grand enterprise which was to render his name ill.u.s.trious. Vanquished in his struggle with Denmark in 1613, he had carried war into Muscovy, conquered towns and provinces, and as early as 1617 he had effected the removal of the Russians from the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic. The Poles made a pretence of setting their own king, Sigismund, upon the throne of Sweden; and for eighteen years Gustavus Adolphus had bravely defended his rights, and protected and extended his kingdom up to the truce of Altenmarket, concluded in 1629 through the intervention of Richelieu, who had need of the young King of Sweden in order to oppose the Emperor Ferdinand and the dangerous power of the house of Austria. Summoned to Germany by the Protestant princes who were being oppressed and despoiled, and a.s.sured of a.s.sistance and subsidies from the King of France, Gustavus Adolphus had, no doubt, ideas of a glorious destiny, which have been flippantly taxed with egotistical ambition. Perhaps, in the n.o.ble joy of victory, when he "was marching on without fighting," seeing provinces submit, one after another, without his being hardly at the pains to draw his sword, might he have sometimes dreamed of a Protestant empire and the imperial crown upon his head; but, a.s.suredly, such was not the aim of his enterprise and of his life. "I must in the end make a sacrifice of myself," he had said on bidding farewell to the Estates of Sweden; and it was to the cause of Protestantism in Europe that he made this sacrifice. Sincerely religious in heart, Gustavus Adolphus was not ignorant that his princ.i.p.al political strength was in the hands of the Protestant princes; and he put at their service the incomparable splendor of his military genius. In two years the power of the house of Austria, a work of so many efforts and so many years, was shaken to its very foundations. The evangelical union of Protestant princes was re-forming in Germany, and treating, as equal with equal, with the emperor; Ferdinand was trembling in Vienna, and the Spaniards, uneasy even in Italy, were collecting their forces to make head against the irresistible conqueror, when the battle-field of Lutzen saw the fall, at thirty years of age, of the "hero of the North, the bulwark of Protestantism," as he was called by his contemporaries, astounded at his greatness. G.o.d sometimes thus cuts off His n.o.blest champions in order to make men see that He is master, and He alone accomplishes His great designs; but to them whom He deigns to thus employ He accords the glory of leaving their imprint upon the times they have gone through and the events to which they have contributed. Two years of victory in Germany at the head of Protestantism sufficed to make the name of Gustavus Adolphus ill.u.s.trious forever.

Richelieu had continued the work of Henry IV.; and Chancellor Oxenstiern did not leave to perish that of his master and friend. Scarcely was Gustavus Adolphus dead when Oxenstiern convoked at Erfurt the deputies from the Protestant towns, and made them swear the maintenance of the union. He afterwards summoned to Heilbronn all the Protestant princes; the four circles of Upper Germany (Franconia, Suabia, the Palatinate, and the Upper Rhine), and the elector of Brandenburg alone sent their representatives; but Richelieu had delegated M. de Feuquieres, who quietly brought his weight to bear on the decision of the a.s.sembly, and got Oxenstiern appointed to direct the Protestant party; the Elector of Saxony, who laid claim to this honor, was already leaning towards the treason which he was to consummate in the following year; France at the same time renewed her treaty with Sweden and Holland; the great general of the armies of the empire, Wallenstein, displeased with his master, was making secret advances to the cardinal and to Oxenstiern; wherever he did not appear in person the Imperial armies were beaten. The emperor was just having his eyes opened, when Wallenstein, summoning around him at Pilsen his generals and his lieutenants, made them take an oath of confederacy for the defence of his person and of the army, and, begging Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and the Saxon generals to join him in Bohemia, he wrote to Feuquieres to accept the king's secret offers.

Amongst the generals a.s.sembled at Pilsen there happened to be Max Piccolomini, in whom Wallenstein had great confidence: he at once revealed to the emperor his generalissimo's guilty intrigues.

Wallenstein fell, a.s.sa.s.sinated by three of his officers, on the 15th of February, 1634; and the young King of Hungary, the emperor's eldest son, took the command-in chief of the army under the direction of the veteran generals of the empire. On the 6th of September, by one of those reversals which disconcert all human foresight, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and the Swedish marshal, Horn, coming up to the aid of Nordlingen, which was being besieged by the Austrian army, were completely beaten in front of that place; and their army retired in disorder, leaving Suabia to the conqueror. Protestant Germany was in consternation; all eyes were turned towards France.

Cardinal Richelieu was ready; the frequent treasons of Duke Charles of Lorraine had recently furnished him with an opportunity, whilst directing the king's arms against him, of taking possession, partly by negotiation and partly by force, first of the town of Nancy, and then of the duchy of Bar; the duke had abdicated in favor of the cardinal, his brother, who, renouncing his ecclesiastical dignity, espoused his cousin, Princess Claude of Lorraine, and took refuge with her at Florence, whilst Charles led into Germany, to the emperor, all the forces he had remaining. The king's armies were coming to provisionally take possession of all the places in Lothringen, where the Swedes, beaten in front of Nordlingen, being obliged to abandon the left bank of the Upper Rhine, placed in the hands of the French the town of Philipsburg, which they had but lately taken from the Spaniards. The Rhinegrave Otto, who was commanding in Elsa.s.s for the confederates, in the same way effected his retreat, delivering over to Marshal La Force Colmar, Schlestadt, and many small places; the Bishop of Basle and the free city of Mulhausen likewise claimed French protection.

On the 1st of November, the amba.s.sadors of Sweden and of the Protestant League signed at Paris a treaty of alliance, soon afterwards ratified by the diet at Worms, and the French army, entering Germany, under Marshals La Force and Breze, caused the siege of Heidelberg to be raised on the 23d of December. Richelieu was in treaty at the same time with the United Provinces for the invasion of the Catholic Low Countries. It was in the name of their ancient liberties that the cardinal, in alliance with the heretics of Holland, summoned the ancient Flanders to revolt against Spain; if they refused to listen to this appeal, the confederates were under mutual promises to divide their conquest between them. France confined herself to stipulating for the maintenance of the Catholic religion in the territory that devolved to Holland. The army destined for this enterprise was already in preparation, and the king was setting out to visit it, when, in April, 1635, he was informed of Chancellor Oxenstiern's arrival. Louis XIII. awaited him at Compiegne. The chancellor was accompanied by a numerous following, worthy of the man who held the command of a sovereign over the princes of the Protestant League; he had at his side the famous Hugo Grotius, but lately exiled from his country on account of religious disputes, and now accredited as amba.s.sador to the King of France from the little queen, Christina of Sweden. It was Grotius who acted as interpreter between the king and the chancellor of Sweden. A rare and grand spectacle was this interview between, on the one side, the Swede and the Hollander, both of them great political philosophers in theory or practice, and, on the other, the all-powerful minister of the King of France, in presence of that king himself. When Oxenstiern and Richelieu conferred alone together, the two ministers had recourse to Latin, that common tongue of the cultivated minds of their time, and n.o.body was present at their conversation.

Oxenstiern soon departed for Holland, laden with attentions and presents: he carried away with him a new treaty of alliance between Sweden and France, and the a.s.surance that the king was about to declare war against Spain.

And it broke out, accordingly, on the 19th of May, 1635. The violation of the electorate of Treves by the Cardinal Infante, and the carrying-off of the elector-archbishop served as pretext; and Louis XIII. declared himself protector of a feeble prince who had placed in his hands the custody of several places. Alencon, herald-at-arms of France, appeared at Brussels, proclamation of war in hand; and, not be able to obtain an interview with the Cardinal Infante, he hurled it at the feet of the Belgian herald-at-arms commissioned to receive him, and he affixed a copy of it to a post he set up in the ground in the last Flemish village, near the frontier. On the 6th of June, a proclamation of the king's summoned the Spanish Low Countries to revolt. A victory had already been gained in Luxembourg, close to the little town of Avein, over Prince Thomas of Savoy, the duke-regnant's brother, who was embroiled with him, and whom Spain had just taken into her service. The campaign of 1635 appeared to be commencing under happy auspices. These hopes were deceived; the Low Countries did not respond to the summons of the king and of his confederates; there was no rising anywhere against the Spanish yoke; traditional jealousy of the heretics of Holland prevented the Flanders from declaring for France; it was necessary to undertake a conquest instead of fomenting an insurrection. The Prince of Orange was advancing slowly into Germany; the Elector of Saxony had treated with the emperor, and several towns were accepting the peace concluded between them at Prague; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, supported by Cardinal Valette, at the head of French troops, had been forced to fall back to Metz in order to protect Lothringen and Elsa.s.s. In order to attach this great general to himself forever, the king had just ceded to Duke Bernard the landgravate of Elsa.s.s, hereditary possession, as it was, of the house of Austria.

The Prince of Conde was attacking Franche-Comte; the siege of Dole was dragging its slow length along, when the emperor's most celebrated lieutenants, John van Weert and Piccolomini, who had formed a junction in Belgium, all at once rallied the troops of Prince Thomas, and, advancing rapidly towards Picardy, invaded French soil at the commencement of July, 1636. La Capelle and Le Catelet were taken by a.s.sault, and the Imperialists laid siege to Corbie, a little town on the Somme four leagues from Amiens.

Great was the terror at Paris, and, besides the terror, the rage; the cardinal was accused of having brought ruin upon France; for a moment the excitement against him was so violent that his friends were disquieted by it: he alone was unmoved. The king quitted St. Germain and returned to Paris, whilst Richelieu, alone, without escort, and with his horses at a walk, had himself driven to the Hotel de Ville right through the mob in their fury. "Then was seen," says Fontenay-Mareuil, "what can be done by a great heart (vertu), and how it is revered even of the basest souls, for the streets were so full of folks that there was hardly room to pa.s.s, and all so excited that they spoke of nothing but killing him: as soon as they saw him approaching, they all held their peace or prayed G.o.d to give him good speed, that he might be able to remedy the evil which was apprehended."

On the 15th of August, Corbie surrendered to the Spaniards, who crossed the Somme, wasting the country behind them; but already alarm had given place to ardent desire for vengeance; the cardinal had thought of everything and provided for everything: the bodies corporate, from the Parliament to the trade-syndicates, had offered the king considerable sums; all the gentlemen and soldiers unemployed had been put on the active list of the army; and the burgesses of Paris, mounting in throngs the steps of the Hotel de Ville, went and shook hands with the veteran Marshal La Force, saying, "Marshal, we want to make war with you." They were ordered to form the nucleus of the reserve army which was to protect Paris. The Duke of Orleans took the command of the army a.s.sembled at Compiegne, at the head of which the Count of Soissons already was; the two princes advanced slowly; they halted two days to recover the little fortress of Roze; the Imperialists fell back; they retired into Artois; they were not followed, and the French army encamped before Corbie.

Winter was approaching; n.o.body dared to attack the town; the cardinal had no confidence in either the Duke of Orleans or the Count of Soissons. He went to Amiens, whilst the king established his headquarters at the castle of Demuin, closer to Corbie. Richelieu determined to attack the town by a.s.sault; the trenches were opened on the 5th of November; on the 10th the garrison parleyed; on the 14th the place was surrendered. "I am very pleased to send you word that we have recovered Corbie," wrote Voiture to one of his friends, very hostile to the cardinal [_OEuvres de Voiture,_ p. 175]: "the news will astonish you, no doubt, as well as all Europe; nevertheless, we are masters of it. Reflect, I beg you, what has been the end of this expedition which has made so much noise. Spain and Germany had made for the purpose their supremest efforts. The emperor had sent his best captains and his best cavalry. The army of Flanders had given its best troops. Out of that is formed an army of twenty-five thousand horse, fifteen thousand foot, and forty cannon. This cloud, big with thunder and lightning, comes bursting over Picardy, which it finds unsheltered, our arms being occupied elsewhere. They take, first of all, La Capelle and Le Catelet; they attack, and in nine days take, Corbie; and so they are masters of the river; they cross it, and they lay waste all that lies between the Somme and the Oise. And so long as there is no resistance, they valiantly hold the country, they slay our peasants and burn our villages; but, at the first rumor that reaches them to the effect that Monsieur is advancing with an army, and that the king is following close behind him, they intrench themselves behind Corbie; and, when they learn that there is no halting, and that the march against them is going on merrily, our conquerors abandon their intrenchments. And these determined gentry, who were to pierce France even to the Pyrenees, who threatened to pillage Paris, and recover there, even in Notre-Dame, the flags of the battle of Avein, permit us to effect the circ.u.mvallation of a place which is of so much importance to them, give us leisure to construct forts, and, after that, let us attack and take it by a.s.sault before their very eyes. Such is the end of the bravadoes of Piccolomini, who sent us word by his trumpeters to say, at one time, that he wished we had some powder, and, at another, that we had some cavalry coming, and, when we had both one and the other, he took very good care to wait for us. In such sort, sir, that, except La Capelle and Le Catelet, which are of no consideration, all the flash made by this grand and victorious army has been the capture of Corbie, only to give it up again and replace it in the king's hands, together with a counterscarp, three bastions, and three demilunes, which it did not possess. If they had taken ten more of our places with similar success, our frontier would be in all the better condition for it, and they would have fortified it better than those who hitherto have had the charge of it. . . . Was it not said that we should expend before this place many millions of gold and many millions of men with a chance of taking it, perhaps, in three years? Yet, when the resolution was taken to attack it by a.s.sault, the month of November being well advanced, there was not a soul but cried out. The best intentioned avowed that it showed blindness, and the rest said that we must be afraid lest our soldiers should not die soon enough of misery and hunger, and must wish to drown them in their own trenches. As for me, though I knew the inconveniencies which necessarily attend sieges undertaken at this season, I suspended my judgment; for, sooth to say, we have often seen the cardinal out in matters that he has had done by others, but we have never yet seen him fail in enterprises that he has been pleased to carry out in person and that he has supported by his presence. I believed, then, that he would surmount all difficulties; and that he who had taken La Roch.e.l.le in spite of Ocean, would certainly take Corbie too in spite of Winter's rains. . . . You will tell me, that it is luck which has made him take fortresses without ever having conducted a siege before, which has made him, without any experience, command armies successfully, which has always led him, as it were, by the hand, and preserved him amidst precipices into which he had thrown himself, and which, in fact, has often made him appear bold, wise, and far-sighted: let us look at him, then, in misfortune, and see if he had less boldness, wisdom, and far sightedness. Affairs were not going over well in Italy, and we had met with scarcely more success before Dole.

When it was known that the enemy had entered Picardy, that all is a-flame to the very banks of the Oise, everybody takes fright, and the chief city of the realm is in consternation. On top of that come advices from Burgundy that the siege of Dole is raised, and from Saintonge that there are fifteen thousand peasants revolted, and that there is fear lest Poitou and Guienne may follow this example. Bad news comes thickly, the sky is overcast on all sides, the tempest beats upon us in all directions, and from no quarter whatever does a single ray of good fortune s.h.i.+ne upon us. Amidst all this darkness, did the cardinal see less clearly? Did he lose his head during all this tempest? Did he not still hold the helm in one hand, and the compa.s.s in the other? Did he throw himself into the boat to save his life? Nay, if the great s.h.i.+p he commanded were to be lost, did he not show that he was ready to die before all the rest? Was it luck that drew him out of this labyrinth, or was it his own prudence, steadiness, and magnanimity? Our enemies are fifteen leagues from Paris, and his are inside it. Every day come advices that they are intriguing there to ruin him. France and Spain, so to speak, have conspired against him alone. What countenance was kept amidst all this by the man who they said would be dumbfounded at the least ill-success, and who had caused Le Havre to be fortified in order to throw himself into it at the first misfortune? He did not make a single step backward all the same. He thought of the perils of the state, and not of his own; and the only change observed in him all through was that, whereas he had not been wont to go out but with an escort of two hundred guards, he walked about, every day, attended by merely five or six gentlemen. It must be owned that adversity borne with so good a grace and such force of character is worth more than a great deal of prosperity and victory. To me he did not seem so great and so victorious on the day he entered La Roch.e.l.le as then; and the journeys he made from his house to the a.r.s.enal seem to me more glorious for him than those which he made beyond the mountains, and from which he returned with the triumphs of Pignerol and Suza."

This was Cardinal Richelieu's distinction, that all his contemporaries, in the same way as Voiture, identified the mishaps and the successes of their country with his own fortunes, and that upon him alone were fixed the eyes of Europe, whether friendly or hostile, when it supported or when it fought against France.

For four years the war was carried on with desperation by land and sea in the Low Countries, in Germany, and in Italy, with alternations of success and reverse. The actors disappeared one after another from the scene; the emperor, Ferdinand II., had died on the 15th of February, 1637;--the election of his son, Ferdinand III., had not been recognized by France and Sweden; Bernard of Saxe-Weimar succ.u.mbed, at thirty-four years of age, on the 15th of July, 1639, after having beaten, in the preceding year, the celebrated John van Weert, whom he sent a prisoner to Paris.