The Thirty Years War | Page 4

the
rulers, that the subject contended too for his own cause, while he was
fighting their battles. Fortunately at this date no European sovereign
was so absolute as to be able, in the pursuit of his political designs, to
dispense with the goodwill of his subjects. Yet how difficult was it to
gain and to set to work this goodwill! The most impressive arguments
drawn from reasons of state fall powerless on the ear of the subject,
who seldom understands, and still more rarely is interested in them. In
such circumstances, the only course open to a prudent prince is to
connect the interests of the cabinet with some one that sits nearer to the
people's heart, if such exists, or if not, to create it.
In such a position stood the greater part of those princes who embraced
the cause of the Reformation. By a strange concatenation of events, the
divisions of the Church were associated with two circumstances,

without which, in all probability, they would have had a very different
conclusion. These were, the increasing power of the House of Austria,
which threatened the liberties of Europe, and its active zeal for the old
religion. The first aroused the princes, while the second armed the
people.
The abolition of a foreign jurisdiction within their own territories, the
supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, the stopping of the treasure which
had so long flowed to Rome, the rich plunder of religious foundations,
were tempting advantages to every sovereign. Why, then, it may be
asked, did they not operate with equal force upon the princes of the
House of Austria? What prevented this house, particularly in its
German branch, from yielding to the pressing demands of so many of
its subjects, and, after the example of other princes, enriching itself at
the expense of a defenceless clergy? It is difficult to credit that a belief
in the infallibility of the Romish Church had any greater influence on
the pious adherence of this house, than the opposite conviction had on
the revolt of the Protestant princes. In fact, several circumstances
combined to make the Austrian princes zealous supporters of popery.
Spain and Italy, from which Austria derived its principal strength, were
still devoted to the See of Rome with that blind obedience which, ever
since the days of the Gothic dynasty, had been the peculiar
characteristic of the Spaniard. The slightest approximation, in a
Spanish prince, to the obnoxious tenets of Luther and Calvin, would
have alienated for ever the affections of his subjects, and a defection
from the Pope would have cost him the kingdom. A Spanish prince had
no alternative but orthodoxy or abdication. The same restraint was
imposed upon Austria by her Italian dominions, which she was obliged
to treat, if possible, with even greater indulgence; impatient as they
naturally were of a foreign yoke, and possessing also ready means of
shaking it off. In regard to the latter provinces, moreover, the rival
pretensions of France, and the neighbourhood of the Pope, were
motives sufficient to prevent the Emperor from declaring in favour of a
party which strove to annihilate the papal see, and also to induce him to
show the most active zeal in behalf of the old religion. These general
considerations, which must have been equally weighty with every
Spanish monarch, were, in the particular case of Charles V., still further

enforced by peculiar and personal motives. In Italy this monarch had a
formidable rival in the King of France, under whose protection that
country might throw itself the instant that Charles should incur the
slightest suspicion of heresy. Distrust on the part of the Roman
Catholics, and a rupture with the church, would have been fatal also to
many of his most cherished designs. Moreover, when Charles was first
called upon to make his election between the two parties, the new
doctrine had not yet attained to a full and commanding influence, and
there still subsisted a prospect of its reconciliation with the old. In his
son and successor, Philip the Second, a monastic education combined
with a gloomy and despotic disposition to generate an unmitigated
hostility to all innovations in religion; a feeling which the thought that
his most formidable political opponents were also the enemies of his
faith was not calculated to weaken. As his European possessions,
scattered as they were over so many countries, were on all sides
exposed to the seductions of foreign opinions, the progress of the
Reformation in other quarters could not well be a matter of indifference
to him. His immediate interests, therefore, urged him to attach himself
devotedly to the old church, in order to close up the sources of the
heretical contagion. Thus, circumstances naturally placed this prince at
the head of the league which the Roman Catholics formed against