dilemmas in which it would involve him, after Olivarez and Cottington had signed the treaty he withheld his ratification. By this prudent act, however, he forfeited all right to demand from Philip aid in regaining the patrimony of the prince palatine.
Whether prudence, a rare virtue in Charles, or other more congenial motives, determined him in withdrawing from the compact with Spain regarding Holland is doubtful, for in the very next year he was found busily engaged with the catholic states of Flanders and Brabant, in a project to drive thence his new ally Philip of Spain. France and Holland were equally eager to assist in this design; but the people of Flanders were suspicious of their motives, dreading to find in such powerful allies only fresh masters. They therefore applied to the king of England, and a great correspondence took place through the medium of Gerbier and secretary Coke; in which Coke was at great pains to show how much more to the advantage of the people of Flanders and Brabant would be the alliance of England, than that of the ambitious, encroaching French, or the stern Calvinistic "boors" of Holland. In religion Coke was zealous to show them that the catholic and Anglican churches were almost identically the same; but all this fine flourish of persuasion ended not in offering substantial support in the struggle which must come, but in promising to protect them against anybody but the king of Spain, with whom he was recently united in peace; and that therefore "it would be against honour and conscience to debauch his subjects from their allegiance." If all this was not just that precise fact of debauching them, it would be difficult to imagine what could be; and moreover it was just the king of Spain against whom they required protection. Coke advised them from his master to declare their independence, and then the king of England, he told them, could help them as an independent state; and Philip would not then have cause of offence from Charles, but ought rather to be obliged to him for endeavouring to prevent the states falling into the hands of France, or some other of his powerful enemies. This precious state casuistry, however, was not by any means encouraging to revolt, and in the meantime Philip, learning what was going on, settled the question by sending into the provinces an overwhelming force of soldiers.
But the war which ought to have excited the deepest interest in Charles as a protestant prince, and as the brother-in-law of the protestant prince palatine, was the great war—since called the Thirty Years' War—which was raging in Germany. It was a war expressly of catholicism for the utter extirpation of protestantism. The resistance had begun in Bohemia: the protestants had invited Frederick of the Palatinate to become their king and defend them against the power of Austria and the exterminating catholic emperor. We have seen that Frederick had, without weighing the hazards of the enterprise sufficiently, accepted the crown, lost it immediately, together with his hereditary dominions, and that all the efforts of England, Denmark, of an allied host in Germany, had utterly failed to make head against Austria, Spain, and Bavaria. Germany was overrun with the victorious troops of Austria, led on by the ruthless and victorious generals Wallenstein, Piccolomini, Tilly, and Pappenheim. The most horrible desolation had followed the triumphant march of their armies all over Germany; the greater part of its cities were sacked or plundered; its fields laid waste; its cultivation stopped; its people destroyed or starving; and, with the exception of Saxony and Bavaria, the power of the princes was prostrated, and they were thoroughly divided amongst themselves, and therefore the more readily trodden upon by their oppressors.
But at this moment relief came out of an unexpected quarter. Christian IV., of Denmark, had attempted a diversion in favour of the German protestant princes, and had not only been repulsed, but had drawn the Austrian generals into his own kingdom with fire and sword. But in Sweden had risen up a king, able, pious, earnestly desirous of the restoration of protestantism, and qualified by a long military experience, though yet a young man, to cope with any general of the age. Gustavus Adolphus had mounted the Swedish throne at the age of eighteen, and was now only seven-and-thirty; yet he had already maintained a seventeen years' war against Poland, backed by the power of Austria. But now an armistice of six years was settled with Poland. Wallenstein, the ablest general of Austria, had been removed from the command, in consequence of the universal outcry of the German princes, in an imperial council at Ratisbon, against his cruelties and exactions; and the far-seeing Richelieu, who was attacking the Spaniards in Italy and the Netherlands, perceiving the immense advantage of such division in Germany, had others to make an alliance with the Swede.
On the 23rd of June, 1630, Gustavus embarked fifteen thousand of his veteran troops at Elfsnab, and crossed into Pomerania. The imperial troops were to a certain extent withdrawn from that province, and he speedily overran it, and possessed himself of its towns and fortifications. The Austrian field-marshal, Torquato Conti, retreated before him to Garz, on the Oder, where he put himself in a posture of defence; but he left the country a desert behind him on his march. The inhabitants had been stripped of everything, even their clothes; their harvests burnt; the villages lay in ashes; the blood of the murdered people dyed the fields and highways; the mills were destroyed, and the corn already threshed, thrown into the rivers. During whole days' march, Gustavus Adolphus saw not a single head of cattle, but wretched creatures crowding round them, imploring food to save them from death, and presenting the appearance rather of ghosts than men. Gustavus pushed on, carrying all before him: at Fraukfort-on-the-Oder be beat the Austrians, and called on the German protestant princes to join him, but in vain. At Landsberg he heard of the danger of Magdeburg, invested by Tilly and Pappenheim, and urged the elector of Brandenburg to assist him in hastening to its relief, but without success. Indignant at this timidity in their own cause, he threatened to march back to Stockholm, yet the danger of Magdeburg urged him forward, and he sent to the citizens a message, entreating them to hold out for three weeks, when he hoped to arrive and relieve them. The time which he had spent in Brandenburg, vainly endeavouring to raise the cowardly elector, proved fatal to one of the fairest and most affluent cities of Germany.
