1623 of arms. FREDERICK WILL NOT NEGOTIATE. 1 73 On April 21 it was agreed to by the Commissioners. It bound Suspension James and his son-in-law to enter into no leagues or confederacies by which the peace of the Empire might be disturbed, and to abstain from actual hostilities for fifteen months, during which time negotiations were to be opened at Cologne for a definite peace. The article relating to the associates of Frederick, that is to say to Christian and Mansfeld, was purposely left in obscurity. If they continued to carry on war, they were to be considered as enemies of the Empire, and to be disavowed by James and his son-in-law. Three months were to be allowed for completing the arrange ments for the conferences at Cologne. Saving so far as it might pave the way to a general treaty, this agreement was evidently of no importance whatever. James had no intention of sending an army into the Empire it he could by any possibility avoid it, and Frederick, who wouid have been delighted to send as many armies as he could, was unable to dispose of a single man. Frederick signature. Scarcely, indeed, had the treaty been ratified by the Infanta, when it appeared that the prospect of a general peace was as distant as ever. Without Frederick's signature refuses his the treaty was worth no more than the paper on which it was written, and that signature Frederick resolutely refused to give. Then ensued a long and bitter controversy between James and his son-in-law, James imperiously insisting upon negotiation as the only way in which past losses could be made good, and Frederick no less obstinately refusing to believe that anything could be regained excepting by force of arms. In truth the controversy was one of those the details of which are worthy only of oblivion. Both parties were thoroughly in the wrong. There was doubtless large scope in Germany for diplomacy. There was doubtless large scope for military resistance; but nothing but ruin could come either from an attempt to make peace under the guidance of James, or from an attempt to carry on war under the guidance of Frederick. What James proposed was, not to discover an arrangement 1 Treaty of Suspension, April 21, S. P. Germany. Impracticability of James's which would suit the altered circumstances of the case, and would have been acceptable in the existing state of opinion to the German princes and the German diplomacy, people, but simply to blot out the history of the last four years as though they had never been. He fancied that with the help of Spain he could wring from the Emperor a complete restitution of all of which his son-in-law had been in possession before his acceptance of the Bohemian crown. Against this, as the Commissioners for the treaty wisely asserted, the transference of the Electorate effected at Ratisbon was a complete bar. It was certain that Ferdinand would never be induced solely by diplomatic pressure to undo that day's work ; and when James continued to speculate on the possibility of such a concession, he was plainly talking in ignorance both of the special facts of the case, and of the general laws by which human nature is guided. Frederick was therefore undoubtedly in the right in pronouncing against his father-in-law's proposal. He saw clearly and of that the complete restitution which he sought was Frederick's only to be obtained by victory. How victory was to military designs. be obtained he was the last man in Europe to know. In fact, there were two courses before him, neither of which was likely to yield the results at which he was aiming. He might hound on Mansfeld and Christian to their bloody work, and might once more summon Bethlen Gabor with his hated allies, the Turks, to pour ruin and desolation over Ferdinand's hereditary dominions. Or, on the other hand, by an almost superhuman effort of self-sacrifice, he might have declared that his own personal claims should not be an obstacle to a general pacification, and might thus have paved the way, by his own abdication, for that reconciliation with the Lutheran States of Northern Germany which would have given the surest guarantee for the future stability of Protestantism in the Empire. Such was the choice which lay before Frederick; but the unfortunate man did not even comprehend that there could be His wild ex- any choice at all. What he pictured to himself was a pectations. general league, in which the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, the Kings of England and Denmark, and the 1623 BATTLE OF STADTLOO. 77 States-General of the Netherlands, should agree, in loving union with Christian and Mansfeld, to fight out the quarrel which he had done more than any living man to embitter. Of course all this was but a dream. The Lutheran Princes may have been sluggish and unwarlike. They may have cared quite as much about the security of their domains as they cared about their religion. But if one thing was clearer than another, it was that they detested the armies of freebooters which Frederick was ready, without the slightest compunction, to pour over Germany, far more than they detested the Emperor's treatment of their fellow-Protestants in Bohemia and the Palatinate. A meeting of the two Protestant Electors ended in nothing more than a resolution to levy troops enough to protect their own territories from invasion. A meeting of the States of Lower Saxony ended in an almost similar manner. From all this, however, Frederick learned nothing. He had not indeed much to expect from Mansfeld, who was not likely to quit his comfortable quarters in East Friesland as long as anything remained to plunder; but from Christian he hoped great things. That headlong warrior Christian of had been taken into pay by his brother the Duke of Brunswick. Brunswick, and efforts had been made, not without success, to obtain his pardon from the Emperor. But all the while his head had been teeming with vaster projects. Covering himself with the negotiations for a pardon, he intended to wait till Bethlen Gabor was ready to move. He would then throw himself suddenly upon Silesia, and before their joint efforts Bohemia and Moravia would once more be snatched from the House of Austria. July 27. Battle of Stadtloo. 1 These wild plans received a sudden check. The Elector of Saxony prudently refused to Christian and his men permission to pass through his dominions, and the Circle of Lower Saxony ordered them not to presume to make its territories the seat of war. Christian knew that Tilly was approaching, and his first thought was to throw himself upon the enemy. He succeeded in obtaining an advantage over a detachment of Tilly's forces. The old general, 'Frederick to Bethlen Gabor, June 17, July 3. July 1, S. P. Germany. Nethersole to Calvert, however, knew his man. Placing his troops in an unassailable position, he waited till Christian was compelled to retreat for want of supplies. He had not long to remain in inaction. As usual, Christian had no money to pay his men, or provisions with which to feed them, and in the face of so wary an enemy it was impossible to scatter them in search of spoil.1 An immediate retreat was necessary, and Christian had no choice but to hurry on for the Dutch frontier, with Tilly following hard upon his heels. Before he reached the boundary, Tilly had been joined by reinforcements which gave him a decided superiority. At Stadtloo, with the Dutch terri tority almost in sight, Christian reached a heath to which the only entrance was a narrow road amongst the marshes. There, on July 27, he took up a position which he fondly imagined to be unassailable; but the troops which he had placed to guard the entrance, whilst the rest of the army continued its march, gave way almost at the first shock, and the whole of the cavairy, seized with sudden panic, fled at the sight. Christian, seeing that the day was lost, followed their example. A terrible butchery ensued amongst the infantry, which was only stopped by the personal interference of Tilly. Of the whole army which had marched against the enemy little less than twenty thousand strong, five thousand five hundred men alone sought refuge under the flag of the Republic.2 As in 1622, so in 1623, Frederick's design of reconquering his position by the help of adventurers without money or means had ended in disaster. As in 1622, so in 1623, a defeat wrung from him a grudging compliance with his father-in-law's wishes. The battle of Stadtloo Aug. 16. Frederick signs the treaty of arms. suspension of was fought on July 27. On August 16 Frederick accepted the treaty for the suspension of arms.3 was then too late. The three months prefixed for making the arrangements for the conference at Cologne had already expired, and all that the Infanta could say when the treaty was presented to her at Brussels was that she wished well to the success of the Nethersole to Calvert, July 25, S. P. Germany. 2 Carleton to Calvert, July 30, Aug. 1, Aug. 16, S. P. Holland. • Carleton to Conway, Aug. 16, ibid. 1623 THE DUNKIRKERS AND THE DUTCH. 79 negotiations, but that it would now be necessary to consult the Emperor afresh.1 Such were the results of the divergent efforts of James and The pro posed attack upon the Dutch. strange, indeed, if Charles at Madrid were able to reduce the chaos into order. It might be thought that in his treatment of the affairs of Germany James had done his worst ; but, in dealing with the other difficulty to which he had referred in his letter of July 21,2 he had strayed even farther from the paths of common sense. It might well have been supposed that after the final settlement of the long disputes between the two East Indian Companies, nothing more would have been heard of that senseless project for a joint invasion of the free Netherlands by Spain and Eng land. Yet it was this very project which James chose to revive at the critical moment when he was talking of engaging in a Continental war, unless the Emperor gave his consent to abandon all the advantages which he had gained during so many weary years. The renewal of the war between Spain and Holland had been accompanied by the imposition of a strict blockade upon The Flemish the Flemish ports. Deprived of all share in the privateers. commercial enterprise upon which their northern kinsmen were thriving, the seafaring populations of Dunkirk and Ostend gave themselves up to privateering. The swiftsailing vessels which from time to time contrived to slip through the blockading squadron were the terror of the smaller Dutch trading vessels, and especially of the fleet of herring boats, which, as James had bitterly complained, were engaged in reaping the harvest of the sea along the whole line of the east coast of England. It happened that, in the summer of 1622, two of these privateers, chased by Dutch menof-war, took refuge, the one in Aberdeen and the Leith and other in Leith, and that in the ardour of the chase, the Dutch captain, who was in pursuit of one of them, had continued to fire his guns after entering Leith harbour, and 1622. September. Dunkirk vessels in Aberdeen. 1 Trumbull to Calvert, Sept. 5, S. P. Flanders. 2 See p. 73. |