CHAPTER IX.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

From the death of Luther, in 1546, to the appearing of Lessing, two hundred years later, there is little German literature which requires from us more than the briefest notice. It is proper that mention should be made of the causes which produced so long a silence; for want of a literature to consider, let us for awhile turn to history. In the preceding chapter, allusion was made to Göthe's condemnation of Luther. It seems almost impious to call in question the value of the Reformer's work, almost as if one should speak of the career of the Apostle Paul as a failure; and we are not to understand, I take it, that Göthe would deny the power and sincerity of the man. Luther felt that he must break his way, in the words of that line of his mighty hymn, "through this world, with devils filled." Never were the powers infernal more vigorously fought, and to this day we feel a tremor from the stamp of his foot. With all my heart I acknowledge the grandeur of the figure as he towers in history; and yet we cannot open the story of the Thirty Years' War without being in a mood to believe that any man whatever his virtues - who was influential in bringing upon the world that

total eclipse of things bright and good, had a hand in the infliction of a curse for which scarcely any beneficence could atone; that the view of Göthe was not entirely without reason.

Luther's own century was a time of wrangling, rather than actual warfare. Most uncompromising and exhaustless of disputants was Luther himself, whose tongue was indeed a two-edged sword, and whose pen was dipped in gall. But tongue and pen were his only weapons, and his successors, for some generations, fought their battles in halls of debate and upon parchment fields, rather than with pike and musket. Charles V., indeed, and the princes of the Smalcaldic League fell into sterner controversy. At Mühlberg, on the Elbe, toward the middle of the century, John, elector of Saxony and head of the Protestant cause, underwent defeat; and a little later Charles himself, with the brave and cunning Maurice of Saxony close upon his tracks, fled from Germany in haste through the passes of Tyrol. But the spirit of this time was a benignant genius in comparison with the fury who flapped woe unutterable from her gloomy wings upon the Germany of the succeeding age.

In the early years of the seventeenth century Ferdinand II. came to his own, -the headship of the hereditary states of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire. He was the mightiest prince upon the face of the earth, able and persistent, a pupil of the Jesuits, and devoted to their policy. The Bohemians, who had revolted from him, chose as their king a young potentate of Western Germany,

Friedrich, Elector Palatine. A year or two before, this young man had gone to England, and, amid feasting and the performance of brilliant masques, which the Elizabethan poets furnished, married the lovely sister of the prince who was soon to be Charles I. Heidelberg castle is to-day a place of princely magnificence, devastated though it has been by time and powder-bursts, and nothing about the castle is fairer than the English garden, on its terrace three hundred feet above the Neckar. This was the home to which Friedrich brought his wife; here he ruled, and the Princess Elizabeth, walking in the garden laid out in her honor, with her husband's statue among the ivy on the wall above, as it stands to-day,- could behold as lovely a domain as Heaven had ever given into the hands of a prince. When at length, however, the Bohemians offered Friedrich their crown and he hesitated, the princess is reported to have said, "Thou hast married the daughter of a king, and fearest to accept a kingly crown! I would rather eat black bread at thy royal board than feast at thy electoral table." So Friedrich went out into the storms after a crown. Presently he was a fugitive, for Ferdinand swept through Bohemia with sword and fire, and the conflagration spread to the world outside. The Protestants were disunited, and often lukewarm. Among their leaders were brilliant soldiers, but the emperor was, for ten years, resistless. To the Rhine on the west, and northward, even throughout Denmark, his armies marched, and burned, and slew. Through

rough conversion the adherents of the Church were multiplied; the Protestants opposed in battle order; the emperor's armies passed; the Protestants still were ranked in rows, but they were rows of graves. Meantime the keenest eye that ever watched the complications of politics was fixed anxiously on the course of events. Richelieu saw humiliation for France in the aggrandizement of Ferdinand, and found means to curb the conquerer.

In a room of the fortress of Coburg hang side by side the life-size portraits of two martial figures, in the military dress of two hundred and fifty years ago. One of them is the chief instrument through whom Ferdinand succeeded in making himself omnipotent in Germany,- Wallenstein, duke of Friedland; the other is the instrument through whom, together with Richelieu, the emperor's power was broken, Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden. The portrait of Gustavus represents a man of tall, large frame, with light hair, large, intense blue eyes, a full lower face, with the pointed mustaches and chin-beard of the time, in attire of blue and buff, set off with point-lace; a man, one would say, of action rather than thought, with a full store of impetuous will, and sound stomach and muscles for carrying out his purposes. The healthful countenance too has suggestions of warm temper, but also of joviality; and one thinks that the capacious doublet might upon occasion shake mightily with laughter, a figure of bearing most manly, frank, and winning. The figure of Wallenstein is also tall, but meagre, in gloomy attire, with hair dark,

but showing a reddish tinge, a complexion somewhat sallow, forehead high rather than broad, and small, sparkling eyes, a countenance and mien that repel approach, as the open face and bearing of the companion picture court it. Hung about the pictures are arms and armor of the time in which the two leaders played their part, -the steel caps and cuirasses, the pikes and muskets, still gleaming before the portraits as they gleamed before the living eyes of these men.

No leader ever fell more gloriously, or left behind a purer fame, than Gustavus. He fought for a grand cause, and if there was in his motive a taint of selfishness, history scarcely mentions it.' He was tolerant,2 devout, and fearless. Perhaps no man was ever more loved. Wallenstein is & character, in a certain sense, even more fascinating,—a saturnine, inscrutable personage, -as Gustavus was cheerful and frank. Although the leader of the Catholic party, he was religionless, as the

1 See, however, Gfrörer: Das Leben Gustav Adolfs.

2 "Gustave Adolphe, élevé dans les sentiments étroits d'une église aussi intolérante que le Catholicisme, étonna et scandalisa ses amis d'Allemagne, en assistant à la messe. Il traita avec une rare indulgence ses plus grands ennemis, les moines, même les jesuites. Les Protestants ne comprenaient pas le héros du nord; les historiens modernes ne le comprennent pas davantage, quand ils attribuent à des calculs politiques des sentiments qui étaient l'instinct du génie. Il y a un trait qui le caractérise admirablement; il se fit aimer des Catholiques comme des Protestants, et les chroniqueurs contemporains lui sont tous également favorables, à quelque parti qu'ils appartiennent. La religion de Gustave Adolphe est la religion de l'avenir, de l'humanité. Il plane au-dessus des confessions et de leur haineuses rivalités."-F. Laurent, Les Guerres de la Religion.