XXIX.

troops occupying the town, whilst the citadel still CHAP. remained in the possession of the French under Thoiras. It was neither in the field nor in the cabinets of Italy that the fate of that country was to be decided, but in a German diet at Ratisbon, where another ecclesiastical agent, the Capucin monk, Joseph, was as busy and as influential as Mazarini.

It is remarkable how the progress of monarchs in the acquisition of civil and religious despotism, so complete in the south of Europe, and so triumphant.even as far as the Scheldt and the Maine, still met with a marvellous and what to some might appear a miraculous check as soon as it approached the north. The arms of Ferdinand the Second and his ruthless generals had been fully as successful over the German Protestants as those of Richelieu had been over the French Huguenots. Princes and aristocracy beyond the Rhine had been humbled before the throne as much as the French. Not merely the Palatine, but the Duke of Mecklenberg, were deprived of their estates at the bidding of the emperor; and the Protestant north was so completely at his feet, that he issued an edict ordering the restitution to the Catholics of the church property of countries where not a single Catholic remained.

The German emperor, however, had not those foundations laid for despotism which existed in Spain and France. The very corner-stone was wanting the hereditary right of succession to the crown. Ferdinand, who had gone so far, shrank from going the whole length to despotic power; not that he had constitutional scruples or respect for others' rights, but that he entertained a superstitious belief of his being heaven-ordained to restore Catholic and despotic power. Believing that Divine providence had undertaken to do all for him, he neglected to take the worldly steps absolutely neces*MS. Life of Mazarini discovered Cotemporanea of November, 1855. at Turin, and published in Revista Memoirs of De Pontis, &c.

CHAP.
XXIX.

sary
for success. Instead of proclaiming his son his
heir, which in the hour of his triumph none could
have disputed, he resolved to pursue the traditional
and legal course of summoning the electors to a diet,
in order to the nomination of a king of the Romans.*

This was giving back to the elector princes the power of which the emperor had deprived them. He was complete master of Germany by means of a numerous army, more than 100,000 strong, which, under Wallenstein, defied every foreign and domestic foe, and levied itself the provisions and contributions which supported it. Confident in his power and in his mission, the emperor summoned a diet at the only time the only year, perhaps, of his reign-in which it could have indulged in a thought of opposition. At any period previous, the Catholic and Protestant electors were so jealous of each other, and the Lutherans, at the same time, so abhorrent of the Calvinists, that no common action against the imperial power could have been concerted; whilst, had the assembly been deferred to a later period, the King of Sweden would have come south in arms, and compelled the Catholics, at least, to rally to Ferdinand. But in 1630, when the latter summoned the Diet of Ratisbon, the King of Sweden was indeed threatening war; but no one deemed that a prince of such insignificant power could accomplish more than the King of Denmark had done. The Catholics were in no apprehension of him. The Protestant princes were crushed by the licence and the ravages of Wallenstein's army, which had literally eaten up Brandenburg and Saxony. The Catholic princes, too, began to perceive that they had committed the same fault as the Catholic aristocracy and grandees in France, who, by aiding the crown to crush the Huguenot nobility, had merely contributed to the annihilation of the power and pri

* Menzel, Neuere Geschichte der Deutschen, vol. vii. chap. xv.

XXIX.

vileges of the aristocracy altogether as a caste. When CHAP. the last of the Huguenot nobles, Rohan and Soubise, were crushed, there remained for the French nobles, whether Catholic or Protestant, but to yoke themselves alike to the car of the all-powerful cardinal.

When the emperor, therefore, opened the diet, he found the Duke of Bavaria, the chief of the Catholic princes, as indignant and as difficult to treat with as the envoys of Brandenburg or Saxony, of which the electors absented themselves, saying Wallenstein had not left them wherewith to pay their travelling expenses. The diet soon made it known to the emperor that, if he wished to have his son elected Emperor of the Romans, he must begin by dismissing Wallenstein, disbanding his army, ordering the Spanish troops to quit Germany, and grant fair terms and a restoration of rights to the Protestant princes. Strange to relate, the imperious emperor acquiesced; he dismissed Wallenstein, disbanded his army, offered such terms of peace to France, and such mitigation of his severity towards Protestants, even the Palatine, as the Catholic powers should advise, and demanded, in return, the election of his son to be King of the Romans.

There was no one more utterly astounded and perplexed at this unexpected revolution than the French envoys, the Capuchin, Père Joseph, and Brulart. They had come to Ratisbon ostensibly with the mission of begging the emperor not to interfere in Italian politics, by expelling the House of Gonzaga from Mantua. Their real aim was to urge the electors, especially the Catholic ones, to mistrust the emperor, and refuse the election of an Austrian prince to be the King of the Romans. The emperor's blandness defeated this latter design: and the Catholic electors, finding that they had in this gone contrary to French wishes, sought to make amends by compelling the emperor to promise the restoration of the Gonzagas

XXIX.

CHAP. in Mantua, with peace for Italy. To this, too, the emperor consented. He agreed to sign a treaty of peace with France, not only with regard to Italy, but to all countries. And a clause was inserted, stipulating that neither France nor Austria should afford succour to the enemies of each other. This was abandoning the King of Sweden, which the Père Joseph must have well known to be contrary to the designs, and interrupting all the negotiations of Richelieu. The treaty of Ratisbon, though it really left the emperor at the mercy of the electors, displays him also a complete master of Germany by virtue of the accord with them -not only master, but with the succession secured to his son. Yet, if the Père Joseph declined to sign the treaty, he must, breaking with the emperor, break also with these electors, even with the Protestants, who had in this peace, by withdrawing all countenance and encouragement from the King of Sweden, sought to put an end to his enterprise altogether. Never were negotiators so nonplussed. In the end they signed the treaty (October, 1630), although it left the Duke of Mantua at the mercy of the emperor, and patched up the affairs of Italy in a manner little to the honour of France, and sent it to Richelieu with a world of excuses—one of which was, that they had learnt the dangerous illness of the king, and feared the probable substitution of other influence for that of the cardinal in court and government, and the serious results that must ensue to the monarchy were the treaty of Ratisbon refused.*

The French negotiators in Germany might indeed have been well alarmed by the tidings which reached them from France. Towards the close of September the king, who, though always delighted with the excitement of camps and armies, generally caught from

*Mémoires de Richelieu; also his Lettres, end of tom. iii. Mercure Frauçais.

thence the seeds of fever, was taken ill at Lyons. The
immediate cause of his fever was this time of the most
serious kind, an abscess having formed in his intestines.
For a week he lay in a declining, and at last in a
hopeless state; so much so, that Monsieur, whom
Richelieu had tempted back from Lorraine with the
appanage of Orleans and Blois, but who was by no
means reconciled to the minister, conceived almost
certain hopes of succeeding to the crown. The courtiers,
with very few exceptions, looked wistfully for the
moment which would allow them to take vengeance
upon the cardinal. Not the least ardent amongst
these were the two queens, who tended the bed of the
apparently dying monarch. Unexpectedly for all,
Louis the Thirteenth recovered. His abscess burst,
and in October he was convalescent.
But the queens

did not abandon their hopes of overthrowing Richelieu;
the convalescent monarch being most grateful for their
attention to him in his illness. Marie de Medicis was
indignant, not only that Pignerol should have been
taken from her son-in-law, but even the hereditary duchy
of Savoy conquered and occupied by the French. She
was, at the same time, able to show the cardinal's policy
as completely unsuccessful. Mantua had been captured,
Casale in immense danger of sharing the same fate; the
cardinal's diplomacy bearing as little fruit in Germany as
in Spain. These considerations had most influence with
the king, who prized his minister solely for his able and
triumphant policy, Richelieu's manners being overbear-
ing and his character intractable. Sickly in body and
weak in temperament, the great minister could enjoy
none of the pleasures of that luxurious age. He was nei-
ther avaricious nor amorous. The story of his having
paid his addresses to Queen Anne seems to have small
foundation. And whilst he had nothing in common
with the gallants of the day, he had as little with
the saintly or the bigot churchmen. He stood alone,

CHAP.

XXIX.