Polish Intervention: Thirty Years War

The Ottomans defeated the Poles, who were supporting the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years' War, at the Battle of Cecora in September–October 1620, but were not able to further intervene efficiently before the Bohemian defeat at the Battle of the White Mountain in November 1620. File:Defending the Polish banner at Chocim, by Juliusz Kossak, 1892


The attack on Transylvania followed long Habsburg efforts to enlist Polish support. Poland was potentially a more important ally than Spain, and Sigismund III was as devout a Catholic as Philip III. Poland’s military power was to be demonstrated in 1621 when it was to raise an army of 45,000 backed by 40,000 Cossacks. More significantly, Poland bordered on Silesia and Hungary, placing it in a direct position to help, and it had signed a mutual assistance pact in 1613 promising aid against rebellions. As Emperor Ferdinand’s sister, the Polish queen naturally championed intervention, but the king remained undecided. His own ambitions remained firmly fixed on the Baltic and he was disappointed at his in-law’s lack of assistance when Sweden invaded Livonia in 1617–18. (Ferdinand would again fail to help against a second invasion in 1621.) Sigismund also had to consider his nobles who preferred raiding against their traditional targets, the Turks and Muscovites. However, the Russians had made peace in December 1618, widening Sigismund’s options.

Many Polish clergy were receptive to Habsburg arguments that the Protestant Bohemians posed a common threat. Sigismund had instructed his son Wladyslaw to decline a Bohemian invitation to stand in their royal election. As the situation worsened during 1619, Ferdinand held out inducements, including an offer to relinquish the bishopric of Breslau to Poland. Many Polish historians regard the Thirty Years War as a lost opportunity, arguing that Sigismund should have accepted this offer, or grabbed Silesia by playing the role later adopted by Sweden and joining the German Protestants. Sigismund had no such plans. Instead, he sought a way of satisfying the Polish pro-Habsburg lobby without committing himself to a long war that would distract from his primary objective of recovering Sweden. The leaders of the Sejm agreed, because limited intervention provided a way of removing the 30,000 unpaid Cossacks. These troops had been discharged after the recent war with Russia and their raiding across the southern frontier risked provoking a new conflict with the sultan. The Cossacks have entered history as the Lisowczycy, after their original commander, Aleksander Lisowczycy, a Lithuanian veteran who commanded a regiment in the Russian war. The Lisowczycy were the kind of cavalry that ‘God would not want and the Devil was afraid of’. Unlike the traditional Polish cavalry, they wore no body armour, relying on speed and fake retreats to lure opponents into traps. They were happy to be paid, but also fought for booty, deliberately terrorizing civilians into submission.

The Habsburg ambassador intended to recruit the Cossacks to reinforce the imperial army, but they were reluctant to serve too far from home in a land they considered full of impregnable fortresses where plunder would be hard to take. Plans were changed so that 4,000 Lisowczycy joined 3,000 other Cossacks recruited by György Homonnai, an Upper Hungarian magnate who was also a member of the Transylvanian Estates and a personal enemy of Bethlen, who he believed had cheated him in that country’s election of 1613. Having been driven into exile, Homonnai had already fostered two failed rebellions. He now struck across from his estates in Podolia at the end of October 1619. Bethlen had left Rákóczi with only 4,000 men in Transylvania, refusing to believe Homonnai posed a threat. The two armies met near Ztropka (Stropkow in modern Slovakia) on 22 November, where Rákóczi’s men were routed after they mistook the classic feigned retreat for the real thing.

Homonnai’s attack fuelled an already volatile situation in east Central Europe. Despite the grand vizier’s promise, the Ottomans had hesitated to break their truce with the Habsburgs. Nonetheless, they regarded Bethlen as their client and did not want him driven from Transylvania, especially by the Poles who were already interfering in neighbouring Moldavia. Peace had just been concluded with Persia, allowing the sultan to send the Tartars, backed by Ottoman regulars, into Moldavia where they routed a Polish relief force at Cecora in October 1620. Sigismund sent a huge army the following year that entrenched at Chocim (Hotim) on the Dneister and managed to repel almost twice its number of Tartars and Turks. Fresh problems with Sweden forced Sigismund to agree peace later in 1621, restoring the pre-1619 situation, though Poland had to accept the sultan’s candidate as prince of Moldavia. This conflict was separate from the Thirty Years War, but nonetheless proved significant for the Empire in preventing Poland and the Ottomans from intervening.

The threat to Bethlen was already receding before he left his camp outside Vienna. He had arrested most of Homonnai’s supporters after the earlier rebellions. Finding few willing to support him, Homonnai was already in retreat by 2 December. With the wider situation remaining unclear, Bethlen was nonetheless forced to accept the mediation of the Hungarian diet, agreeing an eight-month truce with Ferdinand on 16 January 1620. Bethlen remained a threat to Ferdinand, but the immediate danger had passed.

Sigismund refused to allow the Lisowczycy back into Poland, and redirected them along the mountains into Silesia to join the imperial army. Five detachments totalling 19,000 fighters set out between January and July 1620, though some were intercepted by the Silesian militia. The steady reinforcement enabled Bucquoy to resume the offensive, launching three attacks from Krems in March, April and early June against Thurn’s Bohemians and Austrians entrenched around Langenlois to the north. The Silesians and Moravians returned, bringing the Confederate army up to 25,000 by May when Anhalt arrived to take command. They were joined by 8,000 Hungarian and Transylvanian cavalry sent by Bethlen who, despite Ferdinand’s generous terms, still distrusted the emperor and decided to re-enter the war. Bethlen and Frederick had already sent a joint delegation to Constantinople in March 1620 to seek Ottoman assistance for the revolt. Mehmed Aga reached Prague in July to deliver the sultan’s belated congratulations on Frederick’s coronation. He asked to see where the Defenestration had taken place and enthusiastically promised 60,000 Ottoman auxiliaries for Bohemia. Many in Prague were deeply uncomfortable with courting the Ottomans, yet the leadership was seduced by the fantastical scheme of a grand alliance smashing both Poland and the Habsburgs. Scultetus did a theological somersault to stress common ground between Calvinism and Islam, while Baron Tschernembl argued any means were justified provided they saved the true cause from the papists. Despite misgivings, Frederick wrote to the sultan on 12 July, making Bohemia a tributary state of the Ottoman empire in return for assistance. A delegation of a hundred Bohemians, Hungarians and Transylvanians set out for Constantinople with 70,000 fl. in bribes to seal the deal. Meanwhile, Frederick promised 300,000 fl. to Bethlen, even pawning his jewels to raise the first instalment.

With support growing, and having easily repulsed another attack by Homonnai in August 1620, Bethlen seized control of the diet at Neusohl in Upper Hungary. This had convened in May at Ferdinand’s request to broker peace among all Hungarians. Bethlen’s supporters declared the abolition of the clerical Estate and the confiscation of the property of all who opposed them. Ferdinand ordered the diet to disband on 13 August. Twelve days later, Bethlen’s supporters elected him king of Hungary. Throughout, the solidly Catholic Croatian diet (Sabor) rejected the Hungarians’ overtures and aligned itself with its Inner Austrian neighbours, still loyal to the Habsburgs.

French Napoleonic Artillery in Action

 

 General Dampierre (who was saved from the guillotine by being mortally wounded in 1793) said that the French soldier depended implicitly on the superiority of his artillery and that there was a noticeable lessening of his courage if he saw that artillery receive a check or draw back. Throughout the wars of the Republic the excellent French artillery made up for many deficiencies in the other arms. The new horse artillery made its first effective appearance of the Battle of Jemappes on 6th November 1792, when several batteries went into action. Although many of the men could as yet hardly ride, the batteries did so well that every general wanted them.

Marshal Saint-Cyr gives in his Mémoires an incident at the siege of Kehl in January 1797 which showed the tremendous pride in their arm possessed by men of the horse artillery. One of the siege batteries had been especially allotted to a company of horse artillery. But although the battery came under very heavy enfilade fire the men would not construct any earthworks to protect themselves from it. Their reply to instructions to do so was that they were horse artillery who fought in the open, and not behind entrenchments; and that if they were permitted to do so they would demolish the defences which had been erected against frontal fire. They had their way, and each morning by 9 o’clock their guns had been smashed and half their men killed or wounded.

The superiority of the French artillery was not due to its equipment, but to its tactical handling and to the efficiency and esprit de corps of its officers and men. That superiority was very marked, for instance, in the Jena-Auerstädt campaign of 1806. The Prussian army had a greater ratio of artillery to infantry than the French; but in the artillery, as in the other arms, the Prussian officers were still following the teachings of Frederick the Great. In their time these had been revolutionary, but that student of the art of war, Napoleon, had absorbed the lessons and had superimposed his own system of a massive artillery reserve, in order to achieve artillery superiority at the decisive point.

To take another example, the Russian artillery was excellent as regards its equipment, but it was poorly commanded. Sir Robert Wilson writes: ‘The Russian artillery is of the most powerful description. No other army moves with so many guns and with no other army is there a better state of equipment, or more gallantly served. The piece is well formed, and the carriage solid, without being heavy. The harness and the rope-tackling is of the best quality for service, and all the appurtenances of the gun complete and well arranged. The draught horses are small, but of great muscular strength, strongly loined, and with high blood. Four draw the light field pieces, and eight the twelve pounders; the latter have sometimes indeed ten horses.’ The extra horses were required for the dreadful Polish roads, before the frost stabilised the bottomless mud and after the thaw some months later. ‘The drivers,’ says Wilson, ‘are stout men: like all other drivers, they require superintendence in times of danger, to prevent their escape with the horses, but on various occasions they have also shown great courage and fidelity; and they have the essential merit of carefully providing subsistence for their horses. Neither gun, tumbril, nor cart belonging to the artillery is ever seen without forage of some kind, and generally collected by the prudence and diligence of the drivers.’ But the junior officers in the artillery were poor, and on active service an officer of cavalry or infantry was frequently appointed to the command of batteries.

‘The horse artillery’, says Wilson, ‘is no less well appointed, and the mounted detachments that accompany the guns ride excellent powerful horses.… The Cossaque artillery, worked by Cossaques, which is a late institution, consisted of 24 pieces, extremely light, and the carriages were fashioned with a care and nicety which did great credit to Russian workmanship.’

Earlier in this chapter there is mention of the division of artillery which Chef d’Escadrom Boulart was directed to raise for attachment to the Imperial Guard. This division went into action at Jena, and Boulart recounts his experiences as follows: ‘The Guard marched to Jena. It was a long day and we only arrived there as night was falling; but it was necessary to cross the town, including a street where a fire was raging both to right and left of the crossing. To pass this obstacle took much time and demanded many precautions; guns and wagons had to be sent over one by one, after unloading the forage, which as usual they were carrying. I was lucky that there was no unfortunate incident. I had been ordered, as soon as I had passed through Jena, to go into camp on a high plateau, which dominated the town and the valley of the Saale, where the Guard had taken up a position. But my leading vehicles had hardly entered the steep and sunken road which led to the plateau, when they were brought to a halt because the road was too narrow. My anxiety was great because I knew we would be fighting the next day and my horses, worn out from their long march, were in great need of food and rest. There was no time to lose. At the foot of the height, I parked as well as I could all my vehicles which had not yet entered the sunken road; then, equipping my gunners with all the pick-axes that I had, I got them to hew at the rock to widen the road. It was difficult and heavy work and progress was slow. I was striving desperately to quicken the pace, and was everywhere— animating, pressing, and encouraging my men. I was worn out with fatigue and anxiety; I felt that the Guard could not fight without me, or at least that I would be dishonoured if my artillery did not appear in time to take part in the action. At last, at daybreak, at the very moment when the Guard left their fires to stand to arms, my last vehicles arrived on the plateau and I began to breathe in the happy relief that I had achieved my aim. The first musket shots were soon heard and a little later the action became general. The din gradually moved further away, but the Guard took no part; it remained in order of battle during the whole action, only changing position to move forward as the leading lines gained ground, and containing its impatience whilst awaiting an order to move into the attack. In fact an order arrived at midday, but it only concerned my artillery. The Emperor sent instructions that it was to move forward immediately and that I was to ride ahead and get his orders. In an instant my batteries were on the way, and whilst they advanced at a trot, I galloped off to report their arrival to His Majesty. I found him just finishing an address to a large body of cavalry. This cavalry had just returned from the brilliant charges which had decided the victory, and the Emperor was expressing his satisfaction. It was a stirring moment. I approached to take his orders. “Well done!” he said to me, “I do not need your artillery; return to my Guard.”’

Shortly after the Battle of Jena, the artillery of the Guard arrived, and Boulart, with his artillery division, was transferred on attachment to Oudinot’s special infantry division, composed of grenadier and light infantry battalions.

But Boulart had made his mark and before the 1809 campaign he was posted to the Horse Artillery of the Guard as a Chef d’Escadron. He was soon promoted to Chef de Bataillon in a new regiment of Foot Artillery of the Guard, discarding rather reluctantly the blue dolman and pelisse of the Guard’s Horse Artillery.

When the French army entered Vienna in 1809, Boulart was commanding two batteries of the Foot Artillery of the Guard, equipped with a total of twelve pieces of ordnance. The Emperor inspected these two batteries at one of the daily parades at Schoenbrünn. As usual, he went into great detail, but found everything in order. One of the gunners, however, told the Emperor that one of the 12-pr. guns was ‘mad’—that is, its fire was a little uncertain.

At daybreak on 22nd May Boulart, who had his two batteries on the north side of the island of Lobau and close to the river, was ordered to send one of his batteries forward with the Chasseurs of the Guard. Leaving one battery close to the bridge, Boulart followed the chasseurs with the other towards Essling. He brought his battery into action but was soon overwhelmed by the Austrian fire, his battery commander losing an arm and he himself being slightly wounded. The position was untenable, and he moved the battery closer to the chasseurs, establishing it in a tile factory by the village of Gross-Aspern. But he had to contend with the fire of at least twelve pieces against his six. Short of ammunition, he sent back for more, but all the ground to his rear was swept by the heavy enemy fire. Finally, when half his men and a third of his horses were out of action, lack of ammunition forced him to cease fire and give way to a fresh battery.

Marshal Masséna was now 300 to 400 yards in rear with the Chasseur Division of the Guard, and Boulart reported to him and remained with him until the end of the action. Masséna told him that the Austrians had cut the bridge over the Danube and thus their communications. That night the army withdrew to the island of Lobau.

Boulart writes that, ‘On the 26th, as soon as the bridge was rebuilt, the Guard and my artillery crossed to the right bank, and moved to the village of Ebersdorf where Imperial Headquarters was. I had hardly been there an hour when the Emperor sent for me. I was taken into his office where he was standing by a table on which maps were spread out. “Have you brought back all your artillery?” he asked me. “Yes, Sire.” “Have you any ammunition left?” “Some grape shot but no round shot.” “And why have you not spat that out at the enemy’s face?” “Sire, because I was not within range, and the position of my battery was subordinated to that of the troops to which I was attached. Marshal Masséna, who was there, could see that I was not able to do more.” “How many men and horses have you lost?” “Sire (I gave him the figures).” “And your mad piece, did it fire well?” What a memory to recall such a minor detail! Nothing escaped him. “Yes, Sire, its fire has been better for I gave it my personal attention.” “And your other pieces, are they in good condition?” “Sire, there is one of which the vent is greatly widened and which has need of a vent lining.” “And why, Sir, has this lining not already been fitted?” He added in a high and angry tone, “In what regiment have you served?” This outburst, absolutely undeserved, disconcerted me a little. “Sire, I arrived on the Isle of Lobau where I had no resources with which to carry out this repair. There is only the arsenal at Vienna that might be able to do it, and already I have made arrangements to send the piece there.” “Yes; expedite its departure; tomorrow I will inspect your artillery and you will show me the repaired piece.” “Sire, your orders will be carried out.” I knew the thing impossible, but it was no good saying so. The Emperor knew nothing of impossibilities.

‘I was very worried when I left him, but I set about taking action immediately. I sent Captain Lefrancais to Vienna with the piece, telling him to expedite the repair if he could find at the arsenal a machine to install vent linings. But Captain Lefrancais would not be able to return in time for the Emperor’s inspection; and it was necessary, therefore, to procure a gun to replace temporarily the missing one. It seemed to me that it should suffice if the Emperor could see that my batteries were complete and ready to move. I hurried to see General Songis, to tell him of my trouble and seek his help. “I would willingly do so,” he said, “but in fact there are only Austrian 12-pr. guns in the general park, though these are of the same calibre as ours. If you wish I will put one at your disposal.” For lack of anything better I accepted; but the thought of the inspection the next day depressed me. The Emperor would of course notice the absence of my piece; and what would he say if he was still in his present bad humour? At least I would not fare any better, and at the worst I should get another “broadside”.

‘The next day at 11 am I went to His Majesty’s apartments; where I spent a long enough time in the antechamber with the Russian Colonel Czernischeff, a young and handsome man, beautifully turned out. At last I was summoned. He was not the same man as on the previous day; he had received excellent news of the Army of Italy and his face was cheerful and contented. I noticed this at once and was reassured. “Well, Commandant, your 12-pr., has it returned?” “Not yet, Sire. I am informed that I shall receive it during the day. Whilst waiting I have replaced it by a piece lent me by General Songis.” “Have you replenished your ammunition?” “Yes, Sire, I can now go into action.’ “Good. I will not inspect you.” And this was all said in a kindly tone with considerable charm.’

This account by Boulart tells us more about the personality of that remarkable man the Emperor Napoleon than do many books that have been written about him.

At the Battle of Wagram, which followed shortly after this incident, the French artillery fired 96,000 rounds. The day after the battle Boulart visited the ground which the Guard artillery had ploughed up with its projectiles and he did not find that the damage done was proportionate to the ammunition expended. Other parts of the field reinforced this impression. And yet never had such a mass of artillery been assembled, producing such a brisk, continuous and frightening noise; for those who heard the uproar from afar believed that the two armies were destroying themselves.

After Wagram, Boulart was promoted Major in the Guard, which gave him the rank of Colonel in the Line and the tide of ‘Colonel-Major’.

THE HEGEMONY OF FRANCE I

Adam Frans van der Meulen - Louis XIV Arriving in the Camp in front of Maastricht.

The Peace of Saint-Germain provides only one of many examples of what can reasonably be called the hegemony of France during the second half of the seventeenth century, ‘hegemony’ here being used in the dictionary sense of ‘leadership, predominance, preponderance; especially the leadership or predominant authority of one state of a confederacy or union over the others’. As we have seen, out of the French monarchy’s trials and tribulations of the 1640s and 1650s there developed an apparatus effective enough to make France’s overwhelming demographic and material advantage tell. No other country was blessed with human material resources so deep and so varied. The power that resulted was given majestic visual expression in the Salon of War at Versailles, whose decorative scheme was begun in 1678. The room is dominated by an enormous bas-relief by Antoine Coysevox, depicting ‘Louis XIV on horseback, trampling on his enemies and crowned by glory’, while a smaller bas-relief below shows the muse Clio dutifully recording his exploits for posterity. On the ceiling, the central fresco by Charles Le Brun depicts ‘France in arms, sitting on a cloud surrounded by victories’, and holding a shield bearing the image of the Sun King. This is surrounded by four further frescoes identifying the vanquished: an impotently menacing Spain, a collapsing Dutch Republic, a grovelling Germany and a subdued spirit of civil strife. As if that were not enough, next door in the Hall of Mirrors, seventeen of the twenty-seven ceiling paintings are devoted to victories in war and diplomacy. Well might Saint-Simon lament in 1695 that this sort of gloating triumphalism had played a significant part in uniting the rest of Europe against the hegemon: ‘have they not played a little part in irritating all of Europe and causing it once again to league against the person of the king and his kingdom?’

Louis XIV’s power, which had allowed him to reverse the verdict of five years of warfare between Sweden and Brandenburg, rested on several foundations. One was the settlement that brought the Thirty Years War to an end in 1648. The Peace of Westphalia gave France very little in terms of territory–ten towns in Alsace and the fortress of Breisach–but a great deal in terms of security. The formal recognition of Dutch independence by Spain greatly diminished, if it did not entirely dispel, the nightmare dating back to the late fifteenth century of encirclement by Habsburg territory. The agreement with the German princes forced on the Emperor Ferdinand III meant that his father’s dreams of turning the Holy Roman Empire into a monarchical state had receded half-way to oblivion. The soft centre of Europe was to remain soft and, now that both France and her Swedish satrap were guarantors of the Westphalian settlement, the way was open for future intervention in German affairs to make sure that it stayed that way. The French diplomat who remarked that the Peace of Westphalia was ‘one of the finest jewels in the French crown’ would have enjoyed reading Geoffrey Barraclough’s later verdict: ‘broken, divided, economically weak, and lacking any sense of national unity, Germany became virtually a French protectorate: even in the imperial diet at Regensburg the dominant voice was that of the French ambassador’.

As we shall see later, that contemptuous dismissal of the Holy Roman Empire is at the very least exaggerated. In the short term too, the French voice everywhere in Europe was stifled by the civil disturbances known as the Frondes, which began just a few months after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia and lasted for the best part of five years. One reason for their prolongation was their cross-fertilization with the continuing war between France and Spain, the only major international conflict not to have been resolved in 1648. Neatly encapsulating this interaction between foreign and domestic strife was the final major battle of the war, outside Dunkirk on 14 June 1658, when the French army was commanded by the vicomte de Turenne, younger son of the duc de Bouillon, and the Spanish army by the prince de Condé, Louis XIV’s cousin. Both men had served on both sides during the Frondes. Moreover, on the French side there was a substantial force of English soldiers, sent by Lord Protector Cromwell, and on the Spanish side a substantial force of English (and Irish) soldiers, commanded by the Duke of York, brother of the exiled Charles II. The ‘battle of the Dunes’ ended in a decisive victory for the Anglo-French forces and paved the way for the Peace of the Pyrenees, signed in November the following year. This took France’s southern frontier to the eponymous mountain range by the acquisition of Roussillon and Cerdagne, while the northern frontier was extended by the acquisition of Artois and some fortified towns in Flanders. The prospect of far greater gains in the future was also opened up by the marriage of Philip IV’s daughter Maria Theresa to Louis XIV. Although she formally gave up all claims to the Spanish throne, her renunciation was conditional on a substantial dowry being paid, a remote contingency in view of endemic Spanish insolvency. Not that anyone supposed that such a pledge would be allowed to interfere with the prosecution of French interests. Back in 1646 when such a match was first mooted, Cardinal Mazarin had stated bluntly, ‘once the Infanta marries His Majesty, we can hope for the succession to the Spanish thrones, whatever renunciations she has to make’.

Two years later, when Mazarin died, Louis took personal control of his country. What is perhaps most surprising about his personal rule is that he took so long to start throwing his weight about. In 1664 the Pensionary of Holland, Johan de Witt, composed a prescient memoir in which he observed that as France now had ‘a twenty-six-year-old king, vigorous of body and spirit, who knows his mind and who acts on his own authority, who possesses a kingdom populated by an extremely bellicose people and with very considerable wealth’, war was inevitable, for such a king would have to ‘have an extraordinary and almost miraculous moderation, if he stripped himself of the ambition which is so natural to princes…to extend his frontiers’. De Witt was the most important official of the most dynamic and prosperous republic in Europe, but his belief that monarchs had an inbuilt expansionist streak was well-founded. As John Lynn has argued, war was not a means to an end but an essential attribute of sovereignty, to be pursued by a king for its own sake. For only success in war could bestow the ‘gloire’ that formed the core of the royal and aristocratic value-system. As Cardinal de Retz put it: ‘that which makes men truly great and raises them above the rest of the world is the love of la belle gloire’.

When Mazarin told his protégé that ‘it is up to you to become the most glorious king that has ever been’, he did not have social welfare or economic prosperity in mind. Louis got his first opportunity to achieve martial glory when Philip IV of Spain died. On behalf of his wife, Louis claimed parts of the Spanish Netherlands (Brabant, the marquisate of Antwerp, Limburg, Malines, Upper Gelders, Namur) and a third of Franche-Comté under the local ‘law of devolution’, by which the daughters of a first marriage took precedence over the sons of a subsequent union. In fact, the right of devolution was a private not a public law, as the Spanish could easily demonstrate. Undeterred, in 1667 Louis prosecuted this claim by sending an army under Turenne into the Netherlands in May and another under Condé (now back in favour) into Franche-Comté the following February. As if to emphasize the royal virility exemplified by this exercise, he himself set off for war in a carriage containing, among others, his wife and two mistresses. Military success was total, but it provoked a less agreeable diplomatic response in the shape of a hostile triple alliance of the Dutch Republic, Sweden and England. At the Peace of Aachen, signed on 2 May 1668, Franche-Comté had to be handed back, but several towns in the north were gained: Bergues, Furnes, Armentières, Oudenaarde, Courtrai, Douai, Tournai, Binche, Ath, Charleroi and–most importantly–Lille.

This was a triumph sufficient to unleash a torrent of odes, medals, paintings and statues, but the manner in which his progress had been checked clearly stuck in Louis’ craw. In particular, he was outraged by the ‘ingratitude, bad faith and insupportable vanity’ of the Dutch, traditionally France’s ally but now taking the view that a flaccid Spain was a more attractive neighbour than a rampant France: Gallicus amicus sed non vicinus (France as a friend but not as a neighbour). As the ‘royal historiographer’ Racine put it, the Dutch Republic had been ‘blinded by prosperity, [and so] it failed to recognize the hand that so many times had strengthened and supported it. Leagued with the enemies of France, it preferred to give the law to Europe and prided itself on limiting the conquests of the King.’ To add insult to injury, French suggestions that the two countries might partition the Spanish Netherlands went unheeded. There were also commercial considerations at stake, for Colbert believed that whereas the Dutch had 15–16,000 ships and the English had 3–4,000, the French had just 600 and that, as a result, Dutch shipping annually drained 4,000,000 livres from France. Dutch retaliation for the protective tariffs imposed in 1667 by banning imports of wines and spirits from France was another bone of contention.

After the slippery Charles II of England had been detached from the Triple Alliance by the secret Treaty of Dover of 1670, the eastern frontier had been secured by the occupation of the Duchy of Lorraine in 1670, and the support of two strategically important German ecclesiastical states (Cologne and Münster) had been purchased, Louis declared war on the Dutch in April 1672. At first, the enormous French army of around 130,000, led by Turenne, Condé and the duc de Luxembourg under the overall command of the King in person, carried all before it, not surprisingly as it enjoyed a numerical advantage of four to one. In twenty-two days they captured forty towns and were within striking distance of Amsterdam, defended by a garrison of just 20,000. Then things went wrong. Indeed, with the advantage of hindsight, it might even be argued that this was the turning point of the reign. For Louis now committed the same cardinal sin that was to preordain the failure of Napoleon: he forgot that war should be nothing more than the continuation of policy by other means and allowed military success to dictate his war aims. With total victory apparently certain, he dictated terms to the Dutch that were ‘as brutal and uncompromisingly vindictive as any that European powers have inflicted on each other in the course of their history as nation states’ (Simon Schama). They amounted to territorial, financial, economic, religious and military subjection. As a reminder of their subservient status, a Dutch delegation was to attend the King of France each year, bearing a medallion giving visual expression to their repentance, subjection and gratitude for being allowed to retain even a vestige of their independence. Just to rub it in, the cathedral of Utrecht was reconsecrated as a Catholic place of worship and the first Mass for a hundred years was celebrated with suitable triumphalist pomp.

In this crisis the Dutch leadership did not distinguish itself, although victory at sea over a combined French and English fleet on 6 June showed that their enemies were not invincible. On land, the dykes were breached to create a defensive ‘water line’ running from Muiden before Amsterdam to Gorcum on the river Waal. Yet the mood in the councils remained defeatist and Louis XIV might well have secured a surrender if the common people of the towns had not risen to demand resistance and the appointment of William of Orange to lead it. On 2 and 3 July, William was proclaimed Stadtholder of Zealand and Holland respectively. Although the war went badly for some months to come, the corner had been turned. And not just for the Dutch Republic: for the first time, a major European state was in the hands of a ruler with the necessary intelligence, determination and resources to arrest the French juggernaut. This is one of the great might-have-beens of world history. If Jonathan Israel is correct in his view that the ‘water line’ could have been crossed easily for two weeks after it was flooded, because a dry summer had reduced water levels, a final French advance might well have brought the permanent subjection of the Dutch Republic, its navy, its commerce and its overseas empire.

THE HEGEMONY OF FRANCE II

Crossing the Rhine 1672 by Adam Frans van der Meulen.

In the event, William III was now able to exploit an increasingly favourable diplomatic situation, as the inordinate demands made Spain and the German princes wonder whether they might be next on Louis’ list if he achieved total victory over the Dutch. Towards the end of 1672 Frederick William of Brandenburg (William III’s uncle) and the Emperor Leopold I sent troops to the Rhine to encourage restraint. On 30 August 1673 Spain and the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy joined the Dutch and the exiled Duke of Lorraine to form a new coalition. Louis now had to disperse his war effort to the west and the south. By the end of the year, he had evacuated most of the Dutch Republic and was fighting mainly in the Spanish Netherlands, the Rhineland and Franche-Comté, not to mention the Mediterranean. In all theatres the French had the better of the argument, as was revealed by the three separate peace treaties of August 1678 to February 1679, known collectively as the Peace of Nyjmegen, the Peace of Saint-Germain of June 1679 and the Peace of Fontainebleau of November 1679. The Dutch did best; their return to the pre-war status quo, plus the withdrawal of the punitive French tariffs, represented a relative triumph. As we have seen, the Swedes were the luckiest, keeping most of their German possessions despite their comprehensive defeat at the hands of Brandenburg. For the same reason, the Brandenburgers were the most dissatisfied. Virtually the status quo ante bellum was restored in Germany, the French returning Philippsburg but gaining Freiburg in Breisgau. The Spanish did worst of all, losing Franche-Comté (and thus control of the ‘Spanish Road’ leading from Italy to the Netherlands), Artois and sixteen fortified towns in Flanders.

If Louis XIV had failed to humble and partition the Dutch Republic, he undoubtedly had succeeded in strengthening French security in the north and the east at the expense of the Spanish. This was not negligible. It should be remembered that Paris was only 90 miles (150 km) away from Spanish Cambrai when Louis began to roll the frontier back. There was always a defensive element in French strategy. To record the qualified success of Nyjmegen in this way is to imply that Louis had begun the war with a specific war aim. Yet even his friendliest biographers (François Bluche, for example) agree that the most potent motive for war with the Dutch was a simple thirst for gloire. Louis was quite candid when referring to his decision to go to war in 1672:

I shall not attempt to justify myself. Ambition and [the pursuit of] glory are always pardonable in a prince, and especially in a young prince so well treated by fortune as I was…A king need never be ashamed of seeking fame, for it is a good that must be ceaselessly and avidly desired, and which alone is better able to secure success of our aims than any other thing. Reputation is often more effective than the most powerful armies. All conquerors have gained more by reputation than by the sword.

That last epigram suggests that Louis realized that the manner in which his victories were represented was more important than the victories themselves. That is surely why so much time and money were lavished on the depiction of the Sun King as invincible warrior. Louis’ official ‘battle painter’, Adam Frans van der Meulen, accompanied him on campaign, to make the necessary sketches that would be later worked up into paintings or cartoons for Gobelin tapestries. A particularly good example was his depiction of Louis and his army crossing the Rhine at Tolhuys on 12 June 1672, in reality an unopposed fording exercise but hyperbolically celebrated by Bossuet as ‘the wonder of the century and of the life of Louis the Great’. We have already noted the offensively triumphalist iconography of Versailles, much of which derived from episodes during the Dutch War. It was not necessary to travel to the palace in person, for Louis’ propagandists ensured that engravings of the frescoes, paintings and all the other martial representations were broadcast far and wide. A good example was the capture of Maastricht in 1673 which was the occasion for one of the most memorable images of the king, the painting by Pierre Mignard known simply as Louis XIV at Maastricht, although it also calls out to be subtitled ‘hubris’. In all these images, Louis is depicted as young, strong, energetic, handsome, commanding, usually on a rearing charger he effortlessly controls. Among other media pressed into service to proclaim to the world the greatest triumph of the greatest king of the greatest nation were medals, ballets, triumphal arches, verses and plays. With casual disregard for the compromise nature of the settlement that had brought the war to an end, Corneille wrote: ‘No sooner have you spoken than peace follows, convincing the whole world of your omnipotence.’

Not surprisingly, this triumphalist effusion provoked a correspondingly bitter reaction from those on the receiving end. In the Dutch Republic, propagandists turned back to the stock of images and metaphors of the eighty-year war against the Spanish to assault this new and even more dangerous enemy. Louis XIV was depicted in the pamphlets as an Old Testament tyrant such as Nebuchadnezzar, the idolatrous King of Babylon who shrieked ‘Kill, kill for the hunt is good!’ as the sky caught fire and the earth belched smoke. Stories of Spanish atrocities–pillaging, burning, iconoclasm, blasphemy, torture, mutilation, rape (especially of the very young and the very old), murder–were retold with French villains to form a new ‘Black Legend’. However exaggerated many of these written accounts and visual illustrations may have been, the reality was ghastly enough to give them credibility and staying-power. In the same way that the demonization of the Spanish had allowed successive generations of Dutch to sustain the long war for independence, memories of the invasion and occupation of 1672–3 kept Francophobia on the boil for the next generation or so.

The same could be said of contemporary events in the Holy Roman Empire. Here too, the same sort of image of Louis XIV as the scourge of a wrathful God was eagerly propagated, especially after Turenne had deliberately ravaged the Palatinate when retreating in 1674, to send out a warning to the other German princes. That this was not freelance work on the part of individual soldiers but was done systematically on the orders of the commanding general was thought to represent a particularly offensive new addition to the horrors of war. The outraged Elector, Karl Ludwig, announced that he was making Louis XIV personally responsible for the wanton destruction of so many years of painstaking reconstruction after the horrors of the Thirty Years War. As in the Dutch Republic, France now replaced Spain as German enemy number one, presented as the epitome of tyranny, flourishing only because of the ruthless exploitation of its own people. Louis XIV was presented as the ‘Great Turk’ who allied with the infidel to subjugate god-fearing Christians in his demonic quest for a universal monarchy. All the atrocity stories broadcast by the Dutch were repeated here, probably for the same good reason. The following lively extract gives a good impression of the rhetoric employed by the pamphleteers:

The diabolic French murderers like Turkish bloodthirsty killers have tormented, tortured, martyred, maltreated, racked, stretched, afflicted, strangled, thumb-screwed, sawed, asphyxiated, roasted, fried, burned, executed, skewered, smashed, shattered, torn apart, disembowelled, broken on the wheel, quartered, wrenched apart, mutilated, hacked, shredded, sliced up, hanged, drowned, punched, shot, stabbed, and gouged the poor, wretched, innocent people of Upper and Lower Germany without discrimination.

The continuing and intensifying cult of Louis XIV as hammer of the Germans during the 1670s could only reinforce this stereotype. For example, after Turenne’s victory at Türkheim in Alsace in January 1675 forced a larger imperial army to retreat to the right bank, Louis XIV had a medal struck with the legend ‘Sexaginta milia Germanorum ultra Rhenum pulsa’(60,000 Germans were beaten back over the Rhine). The representational culture unleashed during this period, which was to achieve its climax at Versailles, certainly achieved its object of enhancing Louis’ gloire, but at the cost of giving German nationalism both a boost and a Francophobe direction. Even the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I could see that here was an asset to be enlisted. In 1673 he called on the German princes to rally ‘as loyal patriots’ to the defence of the Empire and ‘the liberty of the German nation’.

The peace established in 1678–9 was very much a true, indeed, to adapt Clausewitz, it might be said that for Louis peace was the continuation of war by other means. The means in question were ‘reunions’. This process was immensely complicated and need not detain us long. Essentially, Louis claimed that if it could be established that any of his new possessions brought with them fiefs, the rulers of the latter were summoned to do homage to the new sovereign. Failure to do so was penalized by ‘reunion’ to France. In this manner, between 1680 and 1684 a large amount of territory on the northern and eastern frontiers was annexed, including most of Luxembourg, Alsace, Montbéliard and the Duchy of Zweibrücken. The most sensational of these seizures was the occupation in 1681 of Strassburg, where the great cathedral was returned to the Catholic Church. Needless to say, Louis’ triumphal entry into his new possession was well publicized through the various media. The most elaborate engraving of the event was headed ‘The king in his council arbiter of peace and war’. Indeed, it was some indication of the dominant position he enjoyed in Europe in the aftermath of the peace treaties of 1678–9 that Louis was able to achieve all this without provoking a major war. There was a scuffle with the Spanish at Luxembourg in 1681–2, but the Austrians were too preoccupied with the Turkish invasion that led to the siege of Vienna in 1683. In August 1684 Leopold I accepted a truce of thirty years at Regensburg, by which Louis XIV was to keep Strassburg and territory ‘reunited’ up to and including 1681.