it fit to break it by equivocations, or by changing of forins and names." 1 James's last words in this matter-for they were his last― were entirely in consonance with his earlier ones. The Palatinate, and the Palatinate alone, was the object at James's part in Mansfeld's which he aimed. War with Spain was to be avoided expedition. as long as possible. Impartial posterity will perhaps be inclined to think that he was wise in looking to the recovery of the Palatinate, rather than to vengeance upon Spain, as the true object of the war; but his mind, indolent in itself, and becoming more indolent as years rolled by and health failed, shrank from the fatigue of planning a large scheme of foreign policy as a whole, and he did not see that the enmity of Spain was the inevitable result of any serious attempt to recover the Palatinate. Even if he had been right in thinking it possible to interfere in Germany without provoking Spain, it would have been a grave mistake to pursue this object in close connection with France and Holland. For the first interest both of France and Holland was to diminish the power of Spain, and not to recover the Palatinate. The army Whilst the Governments were disputing, the soldiers were dying. In little more than a week after James's last refusal was given, out of a force of 12,000 men, barely 3,000 wastes were capable of carrying arms. The French cavalry away. was equally thinned by sickness and desertion. When at last Christian of Brunswick brought his troops from Calais only a few hundreds out of the two thousand men originally under his orders were disembarked on the Dutch coast.2 Whilst Mansfeld's prospects of finding his way into Germany were becoming more hopeless every day, where were those allies upon whom James ought to have been able to reckon before he allowed a single Englishman Germany. to take part in an enterprise for the recovery of the What had been done to engage the assistance of Negotia. tions in Palatinate? 1 Rusdorf, Mem. i. 498-510. Conway to Carleton, March 21, S. P. Holland. 2 Villermont, E. de Mansfeldt, ii. 285. 1624 ANSTRUTHER'S MISSION. 291 the North German States, or of the Kings of Denmark and Sweden? When Anstruther unfolded his master's plans in August to Christian IV. of Denmark, the King answered that he was quite 1624. ready to take arms, but that he must first be assured August. Anstruther's of the support of England and of the Protestant States of North Germany. It was therefore arranged that Anstruther should visit the princes who had most to fear from the progress of the Imperialists, and that Christian should give him a final answer on his return.1 mission. and the ecclesiastical territories. The position of the King of Denmark was a typical one. Like the other princes of North Germany he had looked with Christian IV. disfavour upon Frederick's Bohemian enterprise; but he looked with equal disfavour upon the establishment of a strong Imperial authority, and his zeal for Protestantism was quickened by the knowledge that, whether the secularised ecclesiastical possessions held by his house in Germany were held legally or not, no doubt existed in the Emperor's mind that they were still rightfully the property of the Church. His personal interest in the great question of the ecclesiastical lands was by no means slight. His younger son Frederick had the dioceses of Bremen, Verden, and Halberstadt either in possession or reversion. The North German bishoprics. As usual, personal and political objects were closely intertwined with objects which were neither personal nor political. These North German sees were occupied by Protestants, who, though they called themselves bishops, or sometimes, more modestly, administrators, were simply lay princes, like the dukes and counts around them, the only difference being that, instead of holding their rank by hereditary right, they were elected for life by the chapters of Anstruther, in his account of his negotiations, March (?) 1625, S. P. Denmark, says 'that the King did ingenuously advise me, and did not forbear to second me by invitation of the Electors of Saxe and Brandenburg and others, by his own particular letters by me sent, and since again by letters of the King of Great Britain.' Droysen (Gustaf Adolf, i. 207-224), not being aware of this evidence, fancied that Christian assented to take part in the war at a later period through jealousy of Gustavus, the dioceses, which often consisted, at least in part, of aristocratic sinecurists like themselves. It was quite natural that Catholics should regard such an arrangement as wholly indefensible, and, if no more had been at stake than the loss by the neighbouring princes of so rich a provision for their younger sons, the sooner a change came the better for Germany. Danger to The results of the forcible dispossession of the Protestant administrators would, however, have been widely felt. Their lands were inhabited by a Protestant population, which would at once have been doomed to compulsory reconversion. Their fortresses would have been occupied by troops hcstile to the order of things established in the neighbouring territories, and their revenues would have served as a bait to those Protestants who were anxious to make provision for their families, and who might perhaps not be slow to learn that canonries and bishoprics would fall into the laps of ardent converts to the doctrines of the Emperor and the Pope. What was at stake. Were the North German princes so steadfast in their faith that they could be trusted to withstand the temptation? It is hardly too much to say that the fate of German Protestantism was at stake. With the fortunes of German Protestantism would come at last to be involved the fortunes of German nationality. The intellectual giants who since the days of Lessing and Göthe have overshadowed Europe, have all sprung up on Protestant soil; and the generation which has only just passed away could tell of the peaceful conquest over the ignorance of Catholic Germany achieved at the beginning of this century by men of the Protestant North,' and which paved the way for that political unity which is at last healing the wounds inflicted by the great war of the 17th century. Though the Emperor had accepted the agreement made at Was the Emperor ikely to reclaim the Mühlhausen in 1620, by which the Protestant administrators were declared safe from attack as long as they remained obedient subjects, doubts were freely expressed whether he would keep, in the days of his prosperity, the promise which he had made in adversity. Even See specially the life of Friedrich Thiersch, by his son, Dr. H. Thiersch.. bishoprics? 1624 THE NORTH GERMAN BISHOPRICS. 293 if scant justice were done to Ferdinand in this surmise, he might fairly be expected to urge that the diocese of Halberstadt was no longer under the protection of the agreement of Mühlhausen. Its Administrator, Christian of Brunswick, had certainly not been an obedient subject to the Emperor. Though he had now abdicated, in the hope that the chapter would choose a Protestant successor, in the eyes of the Emperor such an election would have no legal basis. Christian's treason, he would argue, had replaced the see in the position in which it was before the agreement of Mühlhausen, and the chapter was therefore bound to elect a really Catholic bishop, instead of a cavalry officer who called himself a bishop in order that he might enjoy the revenues of the see. There were, moreover, other ways, besides that of force, by which Protestantism could be undermined in the bishoprics. If a majority of a chapter could be gained over, a Catholic bishop would be chosen at the next election. Many of the canons were Catholics still, and, with the help of an armed force, it was easy to find legal grounds for turning the minority into a majority. In this way Osnabrück had lately been won from Protestantism; and other sees might be expected, unless something were done, to follow soon.1 Anstruther's successful At such a time Anstruther had not much difficulty in gaining the ear of most of the princes to whom he addressed himself. The Elector of Saxony, indeed, continued to stand aloof; but in other quarters there was no lack of readiness to stand up against the Emperor, if only the English ambassador could engage to bring into the field a force large enough to give promise of success. negotiation. He Whilst Anstruther was passing from one German state to another, Spens was engaged in making similar advances to the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus was bound by Gustavus Adolphus. every conceivable tie to the Protestant cause. had to fear a Catholic pretender to the Swedish crown in the person of his cousin Sigismund. If the Emperor extended his authority to the shores of the Baltic, the throne of Gustavus On the position of these bishoprics, and of Halberstadt especially, see Dr. Opel's Niedersächsische Dänische Krieg. and the national independence of Sweden would be exposed to serious danger. The dominion over the Baltic was for him a question of life or death. Yet it would be in the highest degree unjust to speak of him as taking a merely selfish or even a merely national view of the work of his life. Politics and religion were closely intertwined in the minds of the men of his generation. To him, the consummate warrior and statesman, the defence of Protestantism was no empty phrase. It filled him with the consciousness that he was sent forth upon a high and holy mission. It taught him to believe that in prosecuting the aims of his own policy he was a chosen instrument in the hands of God. in 1624. For Sweden he had already done much. Succeeding to his father in an hour of desperate trial, when the armies of Christian of Denmark were sweeping over the desolate land, the His position youthful hero had stemmed the tide of invasion at its highest, and had wrung from the invader a peace which had preserved the independence of the country. He had since driven back the Russians from the coast of the Baltic, and was able to boast that the subjects of the Czar could not launch a boat on its waters without the permission of the King of Sweden. He had struggled, not unsuccessfully, against his Polish rival. But his eye had never been removed 'from the strife in Germany. To drive back the Imperial armies from the North, if not to overthrow the House of Austria altogether, was the object of his ambition. Yet no man was less likely than Gustavus to interpret the conditions of success by his wishes; and it was certain that he would never throw himself, as Frederick of the Palatinate had done, into the labyrinth of a desperate enterprise, on the complacent assurance that what he was desirous of doing was certain to obtain the approval and the support of Heaven. Already, the year before, Gustavus had made proposals to the exiled Frederick for a general Protestant league. Those proposals had been, with the consent of the States-General, communicated to the Prince of Wales; and when Spens arrived Mission of at Stockholm in August 1624, he brought with him, Spens. in addition to his public instructions from James, verbal directions from Charles and Frederick to come to an under |