The Thirty Years War | Page 6

of imperfect policy, accidental circumstances
alone could determine distant states to afford one another a mutual
support. The differences of government, of laws, of language, of
manners, and of character, which hitherto had kept whole nations and
countries as it were insulated, and raised a lasting barrier between them,
rendered one state insensible to the distresses of another, save where
national jealousy could indulge a malicious joy at the reverses of a rival.
This barrier the Reformation destroyed. An interest more intense and
more immediate than national aggrandizement or patriotism, and
entirely independent of private utility, began to animate whole states
and individual citizens; an interest capable of uniting numerous and
distant nations, even while it frequently lost its force among the
subjects of the same government. With the inhabitants of Geneva, for

instance, of England, of Germany, or of Holland, the French Calvinist
possessed a common point of union which he had not with his own
countrymen. Thus, in one important particular, he ceased to be the
citizen of a single state, and to confine his views and sympathies to his
own country alone. The sphere of his views became enlarged. He began
to calculate his own fate from that of other nations of the same
religious profession, and to make their cause his own. Now for the first
time did princes venture to bring the affairs of other countries before
their own councils; for the first time could they hope for a willing ear to
their own necessities, and prompt assistance from others. Foreign
affairs had now become a matter of domestic policy, and that aid was
readily granted to the religious confederate which would have been
denied to the mere neighbour, and still more to the distant stranger. The
inhabitant of the Palatinate leaves his native fields to fight side by side
with his religious associate of France, against the common enemy of
their faith. The Huguenot draws his sword against the country which
persecutes him, and sheds his blood in defence of the liberties of
Holland. Swiss is arrayed against Swiss; German against German, to
determine, on the banks of the Loire and the Seine, the succession of
the French crown. The Dane crosses the Eider, and the Swede the
Baltic, to break the chains which are forged for Germany.
It is difficult to say what would have been the fate of the Reformation,
and the liberties of the Empire, had not the formidable power of Austria
declared against them. This, however, appears certain, that nothing so
completely damped the Austrian hopes of universal monarchy, as the
obstinate war which they had to wage against the new religious
opinions. Under no other circumstances could the weaker princes have
roused their subjects to such extraordinary exertions against the
ambition of Austria, or the States themselves have united so closely
against the common enemy.
The power of Austria never stood higher than after the victory which
Charles V. gained over the Germans at Muehlberg. With the treaty of
Smalcalde the freedom of Germany lay, as it seemed, prostrate for ever;
but it revived under Maurice of Saxony, once its most formidable
enemy. All the fruits of the victory of Muehlberg were lost again in the

congress of Passau, and the diet of Augsburg; and every scheme for
civil and religious oppression terminated in the concessions of an
equitable peace.
The diet of Augsburg divided Germany into two religious and two
political parties, by recognizing the independent rights and existence of
both. Hitherto the Protestants had been looked on as rebels; they were
henceforth to be regarded as brethren--not indeed through affection, but
necessity. By the Interim, the Confession of Augsburg was allowed
temporarily to take a sisterly place alongside of the olden religion,
though only as a tolerated neighbour.
[A system of Theology so called, prepared by order of the Emperor
Charles V. for the use of Germany, to reconcile the differences between
the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, which, however, was rejected
by both parties--Ed.]
To every secular state was conceded the right of establishing the
religion it acknowledged as supreme and exclusive within its own
territories, and of forbidding the open profession of its rival. Subjects
were to be free to quit a country where their own religion was not
tolerated. The doctrines of Luther for the first time received a positive
sanction; and if they were trampled under foot in Bavaria and Austria,
they predominated in Saxony and Thuringia. But the sovereigns alone
were to determine what form of religion should prevail within their
territories; the feelings of subjects who had no representatives in the
diet were little attended to in the pacification. In the ecclesiastical
territories, indeed, where the unreformed religion enjoyed an
undisputed supremacy, the free exercise of their religion was obtained
for all who