THIRTY
651
THIRTY
a rrisis aroso in the internal affairs ot' the empire
nliich larnely influenced the continuanre of the war.
Wallenslein's method of recruiting and maintain- ing liis army required the establishment of extremely large divisions of the army. Following a custom introduced by Ferdinand in Austria, he assigned to each of these divisions a definite district for the col- lection of recruits and supplies. At first these dis- tricts were in the domains of the rulers and nobles hostile to the emperor; gradually, however, the t-erri- tories of the spiritual princes who had been united by MaximiUan in the League were thus assigned and finally, in May, 1628, the domains of the Elector of Saxony who had, in other respects, been protected by the Ilabsburgs. The estates resisted, appealing to the Law of the Imperial Diet of 1570, and complaining that their countries were used as recruiting depots without their consent. They protested against the extraor- dinary amount of the enforced contributions, their long duration, and against the amount of plunder. They emphasized these complaints by threats to take the law in their own hands. They watched the emperor with suspicion when, after he had placed (11)21) the Elector Palatine under the ban of the em- I)ire without the consent of the Electors, he revived other imperial privileges that had fallen into disuse. Thus he declared the estates of. Lower Saxony, which had taken part in the Danish war against his orders, guilty of treason punishable by the loss of their terri- tories. The estates knew instinctively that their territorial sovereignty, which had existed as a fact from 15.55, depended solely on the passivity of the empire in foreign affairs, and that they would have to be more submissive to the emperor's authority should the civil war develop into a European one, as ap- peared more likely from year to year. This thought troubled them greatly. Their horizon was narrow; they were ignorant of European politics. They said that under Wallenstein's influence Ferdinand would make the imjierial .power absolute, and that German liberty, that is their freedom as princes, was en- dangered. The fact that Wallenstein's army was compo.sed of Catholics and Protestants ahke, and that he appointed as general so zealous a Lutheran as Hans Oeorg von .-Vrnim, impressed the Catholic estates with the idea that their community of interests with the emperor had become weaker, and induced them through self-interest to unite with the Protestant estates in opposition to the emperor. Maximilian in particular was anxious and discontented. An Italian Capuchin, Valerio Magni, irritated him by reports about Wallenstein and the intentions of the emperor, while Wallenstein fanned the flame by his harsh treatment of the Bavarian Elector, by his con- stant demands for greater military authority from the emperor, and by securing his own appointment as prince of the empire (.April, 1628).
The first clear symptoms of the tension between the emperor and the estates of the empire were: the meet- ing of the Ix'ague at Wiirzburg in .January, 1627; the session of the Electors at Miilhausen in October-No- vember, 1627; and the meeting of the Catholic Elec- tors at Bingen in .June, 1628. The assembly at Miilhausen already demanded a change in the mili- tary organization and the dismissal of Wallenstein. At first Ferdinand sought to reduce the tension by working upon Maximihan; in the Treaty of Munich, 1628, he guaranteed to him the Electoral dignity and the pos.session both of the I'pper Electoral Palatinate and of that on the right bank of the Rhine for thirty years. In the course of 1628, however, the emperor'8 markedly advantageous position over the estates was seriously injured by his desire, after completing the reorganization of his Austrian territories, to secure the continuance of the imperial crown in his family by the election of his son as King of the Romans. This desire made him dependent on the good will of the
Electors. In the spring of 1628 he forced Wallen-
stein to reduce the size of his army a little, and in the
autumn of the same year to make a nmch larger
reduction. Encouraged thereby the Electors refused
to accede to the emperor's wish for the convocation
of the Electoral College, and wanted to defer it until
the end of the war. The Edict of Restitution also
deferred the meeting, but only for a short time. At
Ferdinand's demand the Elector of Mainz finally
convoked the college for June, 1630. Before it met
the emperor again forced Wallenstein to dismiss a
large part of his troops. The meeting of the Electors,
which was held at Ratisbon from ',i July till 12
November, 1630, the two Protestant Electors not
attending, took place under entirely changed polit-
ical and military
conditions.
V. The War Becomes a Euro- pean Conflict. — About 1625 the Spanish Habsburgs began to develop an energetic pol- icy, as they had done in the six- teenth century. They believed a great opportunity had come to give Protestantism a crushing blow; they even hoped for the aid of France, although this hope proved vain. The Spanish troops were sent first against the i ..i , i ,,, , . im -i n ,, ,
Netherlands; in I idu :. > .ui. iii]...i,ii:, pm,!
1()26 Spinola took the important fortress of Breda. In the meantime Austria and Bavaria were to aid Spain by cutting off the Netherlands from its main .source of commercial revenue, the Baltic. In this way the Spaniards thought to use against the I')utch the same means which the latter had employed against them when they strove to cut off the Spanish fleets carrying to Spain the product of the silver mines of America. At first Ferdinand hesitated and Maximilian still more. However, it was agreed at the Brussels conference of 1626 to blockade the coast of the North Sea and at least one port on the Baltic. Austria soon found that it could further its own interests in this enterprise. Ferdinand planned to gain a free water-route to the sea for his products by treaties with the countries on the banks of the Elbe and Oder, and by treaties with the large Dutch commercial cities to obtain a good outlet for his ex-ports, especially in sending Hungarian copper to Spain. In 1627 the Dukes of Mecklenburg were deprived of their possessions for aiding the King of Denmark, and Wismar was confiscated as a good port on the Baltic. In pursuance of the scheme the Spaniards were now to appear with a fleet in the Bal- tic so as to enable Wallenstein to gain the supremacy at sea. During this period, however, Spain's per- formances on sea were a disappointment, and on this occasion, also, no fleet ajipeared. Upon this the Ilanseatic towns, whose aid in carrying out the plan had been counted on from the first, were intimidated by Denmark from sending ships. Wallenstein attempted to build a fleet him.self, but only a small flotilla, capable of inflicting occasional surjjriscs under Gabriel Leroy, came into existence. The last hope of aid from Spain vanished when the Spanish fleet carrying silver was destroyed in the autvmui of 1628. The defects of Wallenstein's method of carry- ing on war appeared at the same time in consequence
