Ferdinand, who possessed no army, and was not safe in his palace at Vienna from the insurgents who sympathised with Prague, had no means of coping with the insurrection. He turned for aid to his friends in Germany. There, defensive confederacies had been formed both by Protestants and Catholics. The Catholics, consisting chiefly of ecclesiastical princes with the Duke of Bavaria at their head, composed what was known as the League, to protect their interests against more aggressive adversaries. And the aggressive adversaries, chiefly Calvinists, for Lutherans combined more easily with Catholics, const.i.tuted what was called the Union. For some time they had expected hostilities, and were preparing recruits. There was no lack of fighting material; but the nation was poor in organisation, and ill supplied with money, and was therefore insufficiently armed. They looked abroad for auxiliaries--the Union, to Savoy and Venice, Holland and England; the League, to Spain. Henry IV had been on the point of seizing the occasion of this open rivalry, and of a disputed succession, to invade the Empire in the summer of 1610. After his death France dropped for a time out of European complications, and thereby helped to postpone the outbreak of expected war. After the insane and stupid outrage at Prague it became an immediate certainty, and Maximilian of Bavaria, the ablest prince who ever reigned in that country, came to the aid of his cousin the emperor, with his own statesmanship, the forces of the League, and an ever-victorious general. The Bohemians had the support of the Union; and the chief of the Union, the elector Palatine, was elected to be their king. As his wife was the Princess Elizabeth, King James"s only daughter, there was hope of English aid. Without waiting to verify that expectation, the elector quitted his castle at Heidelberg, and a.s.sumed the proffered crown. But the coalition between Rhenish Calvinists and the Lutherans of Prague did not work. The new subjects exhibited none of the warlike vigour which, under Ziska, had made the Empire tremble; and the Scottish father-in-law was too good a conservative and professor of kingcraft to abet revolution.
When the army of the League, under Tilly, appeared before Prague, on the slopes of what is called the White Mountain, there was no real resistance, and the new king became a fugitive and an exile, dependent on friends. As he spent but one winter in his capital, he is remembered as the Winter King. For us, he is the father of Rupert and of the Electress Sophia, from whom the king has his crown. Bohemia was treated as a conquered country. The Protestant religion was gradually suppressed, and the insurgents punished by immense confiscations. The country, which had been civilised and prosperous, was the first portion of the empire ruined by the outbreak of hostilities. Ferdinand made the most of the Catholic triumph. Tilly led his victorious army across Germany, from the Moldau to the Rhine.
The Palatinate was conquered. Frederic was outlawed, and Maximilian of Bavaria became an Elector in his stead, so that the Catholic Electors, who had been four to three, were now five to two. The Heidelberg Library was removed from the castle, then the finest in Germany, and was sent as a present to the Pope.
Tilly was a Belgian, born in the town of that name, near Waterloo, to which Blucher retreated after Ligny. He had learnt war under Farnese, and served with the League at Ivry. He fought against the Turks on the Danube, and became a marshal in 1605. He was a soldier of the Spanish school, rigid and severe; but he was no criminal, like Alva and Farnese, and was the best and most trustworthy servant of the Catholic cause in Germany. For ten years, from the White Mountain, he carried all before him. The Union was dissolved. But German princes and adventurers took arms one after the other, and dashed themselves to pieces against him. When he was master of the valley of the Rhine, foreign Powers, alarmed at his progress, began to intervene. France, England, Holland, advanced funds, and Christian IV of Denmark led an army into Northern Germany. Tilly defeated him, as he had defeated every other enemy. His incessant success strengthened the Catholics, the League, the Duke of Bavaria, more than the emperor.
Ferdinand"s allies served him so well that they threw him into the shade. The losses of the Protestants were not directly his gains.
For that, in order that he might reap the full harvest which others had sown, he needed a great army commanded by a general of his own.
In due time he acquired both one and the other. He commissioned Wallenstein to raise an Imperial force, independent of the League, and to complete the conquest of Germany.
Wallenstein was a Bohemian n.o.ble, a convert and pupil of the Jesuits, better known for his success in finance than in war. When the confiscations were going on, he speculated in land. Having thriven greatly, he lent large sums to the emperor. He gave valuable a.s.sistance in debasing the coinage, and became by far the richest man in the country. Watching the moment, he was able to offer Ferdinand an army of 24,000 men, to be raised by himself, paid by himself, commanded by himself, and by officers appointed by him. The object of the armament was not to save the empire from the foe, for the foe was being perpetually defeated; but to save the emperor from the League, and the oppressive superiority of Bavaria.
It was the beginning of the Austrian army. The regiments that followed Wallenstein to the sea still subsist, and are the same that fought under Eugene and the archduke Charles. They were quickly victorious; they overran Silesia, and at the bridge of Dessau they gained a victory over Mansfeld.
Mansfeld was one of the mere adventurers who disgrace the war. But he was a born soldier. Repulsed on the Elbe, he made his way through the hereditary provinces, intending to embark at Venice for England. In a Bosnian village his strength gave out. His death was n.o.bler than his life, and is a legendary reminiscence in Germany. For he buckled on his armour, made his companions hold him upright, and met death standing, with his drawn sword.
Wallenstein was rewarded by being made Duke of Mecklenburg and admiral of the Baltic. He governed his princ.i.p.ality well; but his fleet and his docks were destroyed by the Danes, and he was forced to raise the siege of Stralsund. He was unable to act in combination with Tilly and the League. They wished to make their religion dominate, without detriment to their position in the empire. Wallenstein meant that the emperor should dominate, at the expense of the princes, whether Catholic or Protestant, between whom he made no distinction. The very existence of the force under his command implied that the purpose and policy of the Habsburgs were not those of their allies, and that, after profiting by their services, he meant to rob them of their results. His imperialism was so dazzling, his success so unbroken, that Ferdinand would not check him, but strove to appease the League with fair a.s.surances, and to induce its efficient leader Maximilian to trust the commander-in-chief.
Ferdinand had now reached a degree of power that Charles V never enjoyed. He had crushed the revolution at home, the opposition in Germany, and Lutheran loyalty was still unshaken. In his desire to conciliate the League, while he made their conquests serve his power, in March 1629 he published an edict restoring to the clergy all the Church property in Protestant hands. The Lutherans would have to give back two archbishoprics, twelve bishoprics, innumerable abbeys; while the Calvinists were to lose the benefit of the Peace of Religion. The Edict of Rest.i.tution gave up the immediate purposes of the empire for those of the Church, and drove all Protestant forces to unite in resistance to it. And it extended the rights of conquest over princes who had taken no part in the war. It was the repudiation of Wallenstein"s policy, and of his schemes for regenerating the Empire, and he caused it to be known that he would not execute the new orders.
Ferdinand had to choose between Wallenstein and the League. By the advice of France, represented by a Capuchin, who was the ablest diplomatist then living, he dismissed his generalissimo, and accepted the dictation of the Catholic League. He had to face the consequences of his Edict of Rest.i.tution at the moment when he disarmed.
Just then, when all the Protestants were roused to anger and alarm, and when Wallenstein had laid down his sword, Gustavus landed in Rugen. He had been fighting in Poland for the Baltic coast, and there he had encountered an imperial force. Richelieu aided him in making peace with the Poles, and he went forth with a trained army, a.s.sured that he would unite all the Protestants of Germany against the Habsburgs. He spent many months in securing his base of operations, by onerous alliances imposed on Pomerania, and on his reluctant brother-in-law, the elector of Brandenburg.
When at length the way through Silesia to the heart of Austria lay open before him, Tilly arrested his march by laying siege to Magdeburg, which commanded the Elbe, and was a Protestant stronghold in the North. The King of Sweden made no attempt to relieve the besieged city; and in May 1631 Pappenheim, the hardest hitter among the German commanders, took the place by storm. The defenders deprived him of the fruits of victory by setting fire to Magdeburg, and burning it to the ground. Tilly, with difficulty, saved the Cathedral, and handed it over to the Catholics. He then took Leipzig without resistance, hoping to coerce Saxony; but the Elector, in this extremity, abandoned the neutrality he had maintained throughout the war, and went over to the Swedes. At Breitenfeld, a few miles out of Leipzig, Gustavus, feebly aided by the Saxons, defeated the Imperialists in the greatest battle of the war. It was a victory of the musket over the pike, and the beginning of the long struggle between line and column. Tilly"s ranks were ten deep, and the Swedes only three, so that every musketeer fired. The world now perceived that the tardy, patient soldier, who had seemed too cautious about his retreat to prepare his advance, was a mighty conqueror, full of invention and resource and untold design.
He struck at once for the heart of the empire, made himself master of Wurzburg, and overran the ecclesiastical princ.i.p.alities of the Rhine, which were the basis of Catholic power. At Mentz Gustavus held his court, treating the princes as his inferiors, endeavouring to conciliate the population. He did not live to declare his schemes of policy; but all men knew that he meant to be the head of a great Protestant Confederation, and to disarm their adversaries by secularising the dominions of the clergy. He had made no settlement for the future when he marched against Bavaria, the other stronghold of the League. Below Augsburg Gustavus forced the pa.s.sage of the Lech, which Tilly disputed, and where the latter received the wound of which he died soon after, in the impregnable fortress of Ingolstadt. For more than two centuries his remains were so perfectly preserved that I have looked on his austere features. Down to the last months of his life he had been victorious over every foe, and was the most dangerous enemy of the Protestant cause. Legend took possession of him, and down to the last generation he was accused of being the destroyer of Magdeburg, and of having, from mere fanaticism, deprived himself of his prize. All that he had achieved in incessant triumph fell to pieces at his first defeat; and the armies of the League no longer stood between Gustavus, now at the head of 100,000 men, and the Austrian capital. But his career of success ended with the fall of his great rival.
When Tilly was defeated, the despairing emperor appealed once more to Wallenstein, who was living in great splendour, aloof from affairs, and showing as much capacity in the administration of his domains as he had shown in war. It was not two years since he had been deposed in disgrace, at the instance of the German princes. Therefore when, in their extremity, they turned to him for protection, they placed themselves in the power of an enemy on whom they had inflicted a mortal injury. He had felt it so deeply that he was in actual treaty, at the time, with Gustavus, for an expedition against Vienna. As Duke of Mecklenburg he was an independent potentate, and he regarded himself as released from the allegiance of a subject. Before breaking off his negotiation with the Swede, he beheld his enemies at his feet.
Wallenstein was able to dictate his terms, and to make himself secure against a second dismissal. His army was his own. He meant to obey while obedience suited his purpose, and to act for himself when it did not. Unlike Tilly, the aims of his life were political, not ecclesiastical. With so many reasons for distrust on one side and resentment on the other, a catastrophe could hardly be averted. With Saxony and the Saxon general Arnim, who had been one of his colonels, he kept up an understanding; and they evacuated Bohemia, which they had occupied after Breitenfeld.
Wallenstein"s new battalions came into line, and he took up a strong fortified position near Nuremberg, with 60,000 men; while Gustavus stood at the foot of the Alps, and his adherents wondered whether he meant to cross them, and to attack Catholicism in its centre. When the king knew that the imperial army had risen again, and threatened his communications on the road through Franconia, he hurried to measure swords with Wallenstein. He was heavily repulsed, and moved once more towards the Danube, expecting to be followed. He was still the dominating force in Germany, supported, if not trusted, by Lutheran and Calvinist alike. At that moment Gustavus committed a fatal mistake. If, as Oxenstiern advised, he had descended the valley of the Danube into the hereditary provinces, the Imperialists must have pursued him at a disadvantage, and could not have reached Vienna before him. But Gustavus turned westward, towards Suabia, and Wallenstein disregarded his movements. Gathering his forces, he threw them upon Saxony, which had refused to give up the Swedish alliance.
The King of Sweden hastened to the rescue, while the Saxon army stood apart, waiting the event. Pappenheim had been detached, and the Swedes, in superior force, found a great opportunity before them. But Wallenstein sent an order in good time to his famous Lieutenant-divisionnaire, telling him to give up everything and join at once. That paper, which saved the empire, one of the most memorable autographs in the world, can still be seen, darkened with Pappenheim"s blood, in the Museum of the Austrian army. He rode into battle at Lutzen with eight regiments of horse, seeking Gustavus.
They never met, for they were both killed, and as the king"s charger flew in terror along the line, the empty saddle told his soldiers of their loss. It was an indecisive day, leaving the balance of forces nearly as they remained, until Moltke, in one pitched battle, succeeding where Gustavus, Turenne, Frederic, and even Napoleon failed, overthrew for ever the military power of Austria.
Neither the Duke of Weimar nor Oxenstiern enjoyed the personal ascendency of Gustavus Adolphus. The minister could not deal as he did with German princes, nor the German prince with German territory.
The Swedish cause was very seriously weakened, and as the emperor gave up the idea of rest.i.tution, which was hopeless, and which had done so much to intensify animosities, and as Wallenstein commanded and Tilly was dead, it became possible to discuss terms of peace with the Saxons, who dreaded the moderated emperor less than the formidable Swedes. That situation gives the basis of the tragedy that followed.
Wallenstein enjoyed undivided command. If the enemy accepted his proposals, he thought himself strong enough to compel their acceptance at Vienna. He opened two negotiations, one with the Saxons, to get rid of the Swedes, the other with the Swedes themselves. The latter was promoted by his friends, the Bohemian exiles; but Oxenstiern was reluctant, and required that Wallenstein should declare against his master. If he would do that, he should have the crown of Bohemia.
Wallenstein refused, and the matter was allowed to drop.
The scheme which he proposed to the Saxons and Brandenburgers was the restoration of peace on the principles of religious liberty; the control of belief by Government abolished; everything rescinded which had been done since 1618 in contradiction with this principle; the departure of the Swedes to be purchased by an indemnity. These are the main ideas. They were reasonable conditions of a lasting peace, and would have saved many years of useless war, and prevented the ruin of Germany. Wallenstein designed that the emperor should be compelled to submit, if necessary, by a display of force. What Ferdinand wished for beyond this, what he had striven for all along, the Catholic domination, was hopeless. And if not hopeless, it was a thing not to be desired, and not worthy of the cruel sacrifice of continued warfare. It was the interest of Spaniard, Bavarian, and clergy to frustrate Wallenstein"s scheme. They represented that he was a traitor, that he was plotting with the enemies of the empire, that he crowded his camp with Protestants, that he wanted to be king, and compa.s.sed the death of his master. Some of it was plausibly near the truth; and their suspicions were confirmed when the Duke of Weimar took Ratisbon. The Elector of Bavaria had sent full warning; the Aulic Council had sent positive orders. But Wallenstein refused to move.
Fearing that he might be deposed before he could execute what he had long meditated, he summoned his colonels to Pilsen, and threatened to resign. They pledged themselves to stand by him. The clause, saving their duty to the emperor, was struck out of the declaration by him.
He still hoped to succeed. But Ferdinand issued orders that he should be no longer obeyed; and these orders, proclaimed at Prague to sound of drum, were accepted by the army. A successor was appointed; Piccolomini, the real victor at Lutzen, was made field-marshal; and the officers were drawn away by the prospect of the impending confiscations. They amounted, eventually, to fourteen millions of florins. The Spanish envoy, Onate, at last sent word in Ferdinand"s name that Wallenstein should be mastered, alive or dead. Wallenstein understood that he was in danger, and begged Weimar to come to his a.s.sistance with cavalry.
He started from Pilsen, with the remnant of his troops, to meet Weimar at Eger, where two Scotch Presbyterians were in command, who inspired confidence. But on the way he met the Irish regiment of dragoons, with their colonel, Butler, and required them to accompany him. They were going to Prague, to join his enemies, and were the authors of his death. Butler persuaded the two Scotsmen, Lesley and Gordon, and the few officers, known to be Wallenstein"s immediate friends, were invited to a banquet in the castle of Eger, and there cut down. When the Countess Kinsky, who was the wife of one of them, learnt of her husband"s death, she had the presence of mind instantly to destroy his papers, and the secret of Wallenstein"s treason was lost in that conflagration. Devereux, one of Butlers captains, went with a handful of men to the general"s quarters and despatched him. The deed was approved by the emperor, and the murderers were rewarded. This is the dramatic end of the struggle, so far as it was caused by genuine problems of Church and State.
A war of aggression and desolation ensued, and lasted many years, without higher significance. When the Imperialists had gained another victory at Nordlingen, Lutheran Saxony made its peace, at Prague, in 1635.
Then Richelieu took up the conflict, to carry on his feud with both branches of the House of Habsburg, and the empire sank lower and lower, German princes and generals betraying their country to the national enemy. In 1643, when Richelieu was dead, a chance of peace began. Five years later it was concluded for Germany, at Munster and Osnabruck, not for Spain. The Empire lost much in population and territory, which were taken by France; still more in authority, which fell from the emperors hands into the hands of the several princes, now virtually sovereign and subject to no control. The peace of Westphalia gave no accession to the Protestant interest.
In extension, the Protestants lost by the Thirty Years" War. They lost one-half of the Palatinate, incorporated in Bavaria; and they submitted to exclusion from the Austrian dominions, all but Silesia.
Calvinists were now admitted to equal rights with the rest.
Protestants and Catholics recovered what they had possessed in 1624.
Therefore the cause of the insurgent Bohemians was abandoned, and the men who were thrown out of the window triumphed in the end.
Concerning liberty of conscience, not a word was said. The power of the interfering State was not shorn, but the idea that the division of Christendom might be healed by force pa.s.sed away from the minds of men. It had taken thirty years of incessant bloodshed to extinguish the Counter-Reformation.
XI
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION
AT THE death of Elizabeth, England separated from the Continent in politics, and moved thenceforth in a different direction. Long before, political observers like Commynes and Fortescue recognised the distinctive character and the superiority of the insular inst.i.tutions; but these were not strong enough to withstand the Tudors, and the work had to be begun over again. It was begun, upon the ancient ways, with tradition and precedent; and when that was found to be not quite convincing, it was pursued by means of new, general, and revolutionary principles. The combination, or alteration, of these methods of policy is the peculiar note of the times before us.
When King James of Scotland became King James of England, the country obtained the benefit of being an island, protected by the sea. There was no longer a hostile and warlike neighbour, compelling military preparation and the concentration of power, which made foreign governments absolute. An English officer once congratulated Moltke on the splendid army which he had created and led. The marshal shook his head, and replied that the German army was a terrible burden on the country, but that the long Russian frontier made it a necessity.
James, who had been helpless at home against the n.o.bles and the Kirk, conceived high notions of authority, high ideals of what a monarch may legitimately do for his country, acting by his own lights, his own will, his own conscience, not as flotsam on the changing and uncertain wave of opinion. And he came to England expecting that its wealth and civilisation, and its intellectual culture, which reached just then its culminating point, would afford a more favourable field for advanced theories of State. The Stuarts owed something to each of the two strongest and most obvious currents of political thought in their time. From Machiavelli they took the idea of the State ruling itself, for its own ends, through experts, not depending on the forces of society or the wishes of men uninformed upon complex problems of international policy, military administration, economy and law. And they adopted from Luther his new and admired dogma of the divine right of kings. They consistently rejected an opposite theory, well known to James from his teacher Buchanan, derived from Knox and his medieval masters, and wrongly imputed to Calvin--the theory of revolution.
They had the judges with them, that is, the laws of England. They had the Established Church, the keepers of conscience and consecrated expounders of the divine will. They had the successful example of the Tudors, showing that a government may be absolute and at the same time popular, and that liberty was not the supreme desire of English hearts. And they had the general drift and concurrence of Europe, as well as of the intellectual world at home, of Hooker, of Shakespeare, and of Bacon. The best philosophers, the most learned divines, many even of the most consummate jurists in the universe sustained their cause. They were not bound to believe that idle squires or provincial busybodies understood the national interest and the reason of State better than trained administrators, and claimed to be trusted in the executive as they were in the judiciary. Their strength was in the clergy, and the Anglican clergy professed legitimacy and pa.s.sive obedience, in indignant opposition to the Jesuits and their votaries.
The king could not be less monarchical than the divines; he could not renounce their support; and the bond between them was therefore a close one. Starting from the position that the sovereign will shall control and not be controlled, there was no certain evidence that the opposition to it would be deep, or formidable, or sincere. The quick increase of the middle cla.s.s, which was the seat of sectarianism, could not well be discovered from the returns of taxation. The Stuarts might fairly be persuaded that they were not only wiser than their opponents, but more liberal than they, for the Puritans repeatedly demanded that the wages of heresy should be death. The distinction in point of liberality between King and parliament is manifest in the Catholic question.
James I wished to avoid persecution. In discussion with two superior men, Andrewes and Casaubon, he developed conciliatory views pointing to eventual reunion. His mother had been the champion and martyr of Catholic monarchy. His wife was a convert of the Jesuits. He regarded the Penal Laws as defensible on the ground of political danger only, not on the ground of religion. He desired to obtain a working arrangement with Rome, which should ensure the loyalty of the Catholics, in return for the inestimable benefit of toleration. Pope Clement VIII, Aldobrandini, was not satisfied, and sent instructions that James should not be acknowledged unless he pledged himself to much larger concessions. He feared, he said, to go too far in favour of a heretic. His briefs were not made public, but they came to the knowledge of Catesby, to whom they were very welcome. A king who might not be acknowledged was a king who might be deposed. When his advances were rejected, James issued a proclamation against the priests, which was the determining provocation of the plot. The violence with which Elizabeth defended her life against a mult.i.tude of conspirators was easily understood. But her successor was under no sentence of deprivation, and the legitimacy of his claim was untouched by arguments forged against the daughter of Anne Boleyn. The Catholics had reasonably hoped that the better treatment which they received at the beginning of the new reign, of the new dynasty, would be continued.
Under the shock of disappointment some deemed themselves absolved from allegiance, and left to their own means of self-defence. They regarded James as their aggressor. We cannot tell how much they knew of the odious filthiness of his private life and conversation, which foreign envoys described in language which n.o.body has ever had the courage to print. In any group there might be desperate and pa.s.sionate men capable of devising crimes which they disguised under the gilding of a higher purpose. We have seen some of them at the murder of Riccio and the defenestration of Prague. But here there were deeper waters. Some of the accomplices, such as Digby, were men otherwise of blameless and honourable character, who could not be accused of hypocrisy. Then certain leading Jesuits were implicated.
They were so far from encouraging the scheme that they procured from Rome a formal prohibition of violent designs. But they gave no hint of danger, and their silence was defended on the ground that although a general warning might have been given to save a Catholic prince, the seal of confession was absolute as against a Protestant.
A belief arose that these people were incorrigible. The precedent of 1572 established the right of murder. The doctrinaires of the League and their contemporaries added to it the right of revolution, applying to princes the rule followed against less exalted Protestants. How theorists were divided, or by what subtle exceptions the theory was qualified, n.o.body rightly knew. The generation that had beheld Guy Fawkes remained implacable. Not so King James. He resolved to perpetuate a broad division between the men of blood and their adversaries, and he founded thereon the oath of allegiance, which did no good. The Stuarts could honestly believe that the motives of persecuting parliaments were not inspired by a genuine sense of public duty, and that they themselves were defending the sacred cause against furious oppressors. The issues are not as plain, the edge is not as sharp as we suppose when we look back on the result. The question to be fought out between king and parliament was not monarchy or republic, democracy or aristocracy, freedom or the proteus that resists or betrays freedom. At many points the Stuart cause resembles that of const.i.tutional monarchy on the Continent, as it was in France under Lewis XVIII, and in Prussia under the Emperor William. If Bismarck had been there he would have been the strength of the Royalists, and Cromwell might have met his match.
On almost every occasion, under James I, opposition made itself felt, and it became practically important, and antic.i.p.ated the future in 1621. Then the Commons, guided by the most famous English lawyer, c.o.ke, struck down Bacon, and deprived the Stuarts of the ablest counsellor they ever had. Impeachment and responsibility of ministers remained.
James"s reign is also the beginning of colonial empire. Virginia was a cavalier settlement, proceeding from the epoch of exploration and the search for gold; and New England was a plebeian and sectarian establishment, planted by men who fled from oppression. They did not carry with them very clear notions of human right; but these ripened under their oppressive rule among those whom they persecuted. There were local self-government and federation in Connecticut, and spiritual self-government and toleration in Rhode Island; and from there the two inst.i.tutions spread to the United States, and when the time came, the cavaliers of Virginia, who went out under James I, surpa.s.sed the fugitives of the Mayflower. They produced the Declaration of Independence, and bequeathed to America religious liberty and the political function of the Supreme Court. Of the first five presidents, four were Virginians. And in our own history, the ablest of the men who resisted Cromwell had studied practical politics in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay.
The third political event by which the reign of the first Stuart profoundly influenced the modern world is the rise of those whom we call Congregationalists when we think of them as a Church, and Independents when we mean a party. It is on their account that this epoch is more fitly called the Puritan Reformation than the Puritan Revolution. For it is by the sects, including the Independents, that the English added to what was done by Luther and Calvin, and advanced beyond the sixteenth-century ideas. Continental Protestantism reacted on the Anglican settlement, and our exiled sectaries, before crossing the Atlantic, came into touch, in Holland, with the most original and spiritual remnant of the German Reformation. There Robinson completed the system of Robert Browne, a secondary and uninspiring figure, of whom we read: "Old father Browne, being reproved for beating his old wife, distinguished that he did not beat her as his wife, but as a curst old woman."
The power of Independency was not in relation to theology, but to Church government. They did not admit the finality of doctrinal formulas, but awaited the development of truth to come. Each congregation governed itself independently, and every member of the Church partic.i.p.ated in its administration. There was consociation, but not subordination. The Church was governed, not by the State or by bishops or by the presbytery, but by the mult.i.tude of which it was composed. It was the ideal of local self-government and of democracy. Inst.i.tutions which are the work of History were abolished in favour of popular control; and an Established Church, a Church connected with the State, was the supreme abomination, and went by the name of Babylon.
The political consequences reached far. The supremacy of the people, being accepted in Church government, could not be repudiated in the State. There was a strong prejudice in its favour. "We are not over one another," said Robinson, "but one with another." They inclined not only to liberty, but to equality, and rejected the authority of the past and the control of the living by the dead. The sovereignty of the yellow parchment fell before the light of reason. As there was no State Church, there could be no right of coercion over consciences. Persecution was declared to be spiritual murder. The age of Luther and the Reformation was an age of darkness. All sects alike were to be free, and Catholics, Jews, and Turks as well. The Independents fought, as they expressed it, not for their religion, but for liberty of conscience, which is the birthright of man. There was no place in their creed for a special prerogative of Englishmen over other nations, or of Independents over other churches. All this was in the stringent logic of the system, the immediate consequence of their dogmas on the const.i.tution of the Church, and this gave to their liberalism the invaluable foundation of religion. Not every one of them saw equally far, or applied principles with equal courage. In the matter of tolerance they were supported by the Baptists, and, after the appearance of Penn, by the Quakers, though their historian deplores it as an unheard-of dogma. In 1641 there was only one congregation in London, and it consisted of sixty or seventy members.
Ten years earlier Lord Brooke writes that there were not above two hundred Nonconformists in all England. It is clear that the rapid growth of numbers baffled all calculation. The Independents did not bring on the Civil War, but they were strong enough to bring it to a conclusion; and when all the direct effects of their victory pa.s.sed away, their ideas survived.
Charles, a better man but a worse king than his father, had none of his insight. When, after the Pet.i.tion of Right, he governed without a parliament, the problem is whether he did it for the sake of power or for the sake of religion. It resembles the problem of the American Civil War, whether the confederates were fighting for State rights or for slavery. We call him the martyr of Anglicanism. But there is one moment in his career when, at the price of unparliamentary monarchy, he could have saved Episcopacy. He was in the hands of Strafford and of Laud, and they were strong men. When Charles had to think and act for himself, it may be that his thoughts were not always clear. He was attached to the English Church, but the religious controversy puzzled him. There was a very able man among the queen"s chaplains who held that the Thirty-nine Articles might be interpreted favourably to Rome. "The religion of Rome and ours," said Laud, "is all one." It is not strange, perhaps, that he should have been suspected, when so many of the king"s ministers--Windebanke, Cottington, Weston--became Catholics, and the same thing was whispered of others. After Worcester, when the Earl of Derby was being taken to Newark to be executed, a strange horseman joined the cavalcade, and rode for a time by the prisoners side. It was said that this was a priest, who received him, and absolved him, in the hour of death. Although the Roman emissaries who negotiated with the archbishop, and offered him the red hat of a cardinal, never quite understood him, and could not explain why he who was so near was yet so far, they had no hopes of bringing him over. There was even a time when they reported more promising things of Ussher.
But for the religious question, the political opposition could not have carried the country with it. The Roman agents and nuncios were part of the religious question, and it is not prelacy alone that was at stake. In considering the old charge of a design to carry over England to Rome, we must remember this, that the art of understanding adversaries is an innovation of the present century, characteristic of the historic age. Formerly, a man was exhausted by the effort of making out his own meaning, with the help of his friends. The definition and comparison of systems which occupy so much of our recent literature, were unknown, and everybody who was wrong was supposed to be very wrong indeed.
We cannot avoid the question whether the three great victims --Strafford, Laud, and Charles--deserved their fate. It is certain that they were put to death illegally, and therefore unjustly. At the same time, the superior enlightenment and wisdom were not always on the side of parliament. But we have no thread through the enormous intricacy and complexity of modern politics except the idea of progress towards more perfect and a.s.sured freedom, and the divine right of free men. Judged by that test, the three culprits must be condemned. That is a principle which cuts very deep, and reaches far, and we must be prepared to see how it applies in thousands of other instances, in other countries, and in other times, especially the times in which we live.
When war broke out, the country was divided, not unequally. North and west were for the king; but north and west were backward in comparison with the south-east, which possessed London and the longer purse. The familiar line from South Devon to the Humber simplifies too much. For Charles held Oxford and Nottingham, while the parliament had the seaports, though not all the intervening region, from Plymouth to Hull, and reached the Severn at Gloucester, and the Irish Sea about the Mersey. Parties were not moved to their depths on either side, as men are by the question of existence, and the contending armies were generally small. Therefore, the struggle was slack and slow, and the Presbyterian sects became masters of the situation, and decided for the parliament. At first, through want of energy, great opportunities were lost. In Montrose Scotland produced a soldier of genius; but in England the Ironsides prevailed by their organisation and discipline. German writers on military history declare Cromwell to have been the best leader of cavalry in modern war, the master and superior of their own Frederic, whose fame is due largely to his skill in that arm. The end was an overwhelming victory and a crushing defeat. But as the chief cause was the genius of one extraordinary man, and the sudden growth and spreading of the religious party to which he belonged, the effect lasted no longer than his life. The fabric he had reared was overthrown without an effort, offering no resistance to the destroyer. The soldier, therefore, was greater than the statesman. Opinion, of late years, has become very favourable to Cromwell, thanks chiefly to Mr. Gardiner. But until the Lives by Mr. Firth and Mr. Morley are completed, the last word, for our time, will not be spoken.
Those to whom the great Noncomformist is an object of admiration, have certain conspicuous flaws to contemplate. Cromwell, by his approval of Pride"s Purge, was an accomplice after the fact. Colonel Pride expelled the majority, in order that the minority might be able to take the life of the king. It was an act of illegality and violence, a flagrant breach of the law, committed with homicidal intent. In ordinary circ.u.mstances such a thing would have to bear a very ugly name. Nor was it an act of far-sighted policy, for the outraged Presbyterians restored Charles II without making terms. Then, the Protector professed to see the hand of G.o.d, a special intervention, when he succeeded, and things went well. It was not the arm of the flesh that had done these things. They were remarkable Providences, and the like. There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success. Thirdly, he was the constant enemy of free inst.i.tutions. Scarcely any Englishman has so bad a record in modern history. Having allowed all this, we cannot easily say too much of his capacity in all things where practical success is concerned, and not foresight or inst.i.tutions. In that respect, and within those limits, he was never surpa.s.sed by any man of our race, here or in America.
As political thinkers both Vane and Harrington are more profound.
Harrington is the author of what Americans have called the greatest discovery since the printing-press. For he has given the reason why the great Rebellion failed, and was followed by the reaction under Charles II. He says that it failed because it omitted to redistribute the property of the kingdom. The large estates const.i.tuted an aristocratic society, on which it was impossible to construct a democratic state. If the great estates had been broken up into small ones, on a definite plan, the nation would have been committed to the new order of things, and would have accepted the law of equality.