The Death of Emperor Matthias

The troubles stirred up in Bohemia came from the vain hope that the Hussites and other Protestants of the kingdom had of being able to shake off the yoke of the House of Austria.

They were tired of obeying Catholic kings; and seeing that Emperor Matthias, and Archdukes Maximilian and Albert, his two brothers, were without children and very sickly, they promised themselves that they would give themselves a king of whatever religion they wished after the death of these princes.

But when they saw Emperor Matthias, with the consent of his two brothers the princes, provide for his succession by having his first cousin Ferdinand of Austria, Archduke of Graz, elected to the crown of Bohemia in 1617, they rose up and protested against this election. It was, however, very legitimate.

Ferdinand was the first prince of the royal blood of Bohemia, the only heir of Emperor Matthias after the two archdukes who had passed their right to him, and like them, the grandson of the Empress Anne, wife of Emperor Ferdinand I, and heiress of the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary.

The Protestants of Bohemia, taking the name of “states general,” seized sovereign authority; refused to recognize the title of heiress in Empress Anne; claimed that the kingdom was purely elective and not at all hereditary; and that the action of Matthias and Ferdinand was an attack on their liberty and on the right they had to choose a king for themselves. It was in vain that Ferdinand showed them in his manifesto that all the privileges granted to the states of Bohemia for the election of a king carried the clause that, “when no person of the royal race and house of Bohemia, male or female, remained, the free election of the king would belong to the states general of the kingdom, and not otherwise.” They were glad to have found this pretext to take up arms against Matthias. They formed two army corps, the command of which they gave to Count Thurn or De La Tour, and to the bastard of Mansfeld. The Emperor saw himself obliged to oppose them with two armies, one led by Count Dampierre, and the other by Count De Bucquoy.

The whole year 1618 passed in expeditions with various successes on both sides.

But Emperor Matthias having died in March 1619.

Ferdinand took possession of the kingdom of Bohemia according to the conventions he had made with his predecessor of not entering into enjoyment until after his death.

His first thought was to seek the means of making people’s minds return by way of appeasement. And with this in mind, he proposed a suspension of arms to the directors of Bohemia, who refused it. He sent them the confirmation of all their privileges and omitted nothing that he judged proper to win them over. It was in vain. They resumed the war with more animosity than before.

They tried to involve the Electors Palatine and of Saxony in their interests; and they wrote to the Duke of Bavaria to beg him not to allow the passage through his lands of the help of 8,000 foot soldiers and 2,000 horsemen sent from the Low Countries by Archduke Albert, first for Emperor Matthias, then for Ferdinand.

It was on this occasion that it became known that the Duke of Bavaria would not be favorable to the Protestants of Bohemia. Not content with giving passage to the Flemish troops, he on his side thought of raising new ones to assist the House of Austria.

This is what obliged the Protestants of Bohemia, under the name of “states,” to unite with those of Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia by a general confederation, the articles of which, drawn up almost all against the Catholic religion to the number of seventy, were signed on the last day of July.

It had already been a few days since the electors of the empire had assembled in Frankfurt for the election of the King of the Romans. This is why the states and directors of Bohemia, immediately after having ratified their confederation, dispatched deputies to Frankfurt, to make it known that not recognizing Ferdinand as their king, he was not truly an elector, and should not attend the election; but that the rights of elector were devolved to the states of Bohemia who asked to be admitted to the election.

The entry to Frankfurt having been refused to these deputies, they retired to Hanau to make their protests, which were very useless. Ferdinand, their king, was elected King of the Romans on August 28th, as was noted above.

As soon as the news of this election was brought to Bohemia, the states of the kingdom, that is to say the Protestants, assembled to proceed to the exclusion of Ferdinand and to choose a new king for themselves. So that on August 26th, which was according to us the fifth of September, they elected for their king Frederick V, Elector Palatine, who had just recognized Ferdinand as the legitimate King of Bohemia and legitimate elector of the empire at the assembly of Frankfurt, where he had sent his ambassadors for the election of the King of the Romans. The states of Silesia ratified this election of Frederick and conferred on him the title of Duke of Silesia.

But he wanted to do nothing without taking the advice of the Protestant princes and states of Germany, who were called correspondents, for having united in the design of supporting the Protestants of Bohemia in their revolt. The Elector Palatine, who was the head of all these correspondents, asked them to assemble in Rothenburg on the 12th of September, to deliberate with them about it. They were all of the opinion that he should not refuse the crown of Bohemia. The Elector of Saxony, his friend, also seemed to give him his consent for a time. The Prince of Orange, his maternal uncle, exhorted him to it powerfully, in the hope of using him to become sovereign of Holland in his turn. His father-in-law, James, King of England, was perhaps the only one of the Protestant princes who was of a contrary opinion and who wanted to dissuade him from it on account of his great youth and his lack of experience for an enterprise of this importance.

The daughter of King James was not of the same mind, and the desire to be queen made her urge her husband to accept the crown. This is what he did in the month of October, on the last day of which he made his entry into Prague. He was solemnly crowned on November 4th, and consecrated, Calvinist as he was, by the administrator or grand pastor of the Hussites. The Electress Elizabeth of Great Britain was crowned three days later and anointed with blessed oil on the forehead by the same administrator.

Things were at this point when Mr. Descartes took up a post among the troops of the Duke of Bavaria.

The correspondents, that is, the electors, the princes, and the Protestant states of the empire, assembled in the same month of November in Nuremberg, both to voice their complaints against the Catholic electors, princes, and states, and to listen to those of the Catholics against them. They did not pay much attention to the reasons that the ambassador of Emperor Ferdinand II presented there in writing, to maintain the rights of his master. But they took more measures to satisfy the Duke of Bavaria, who had also sent a deputy to the assembly. After having confirmed the Protestant union in favor of the new king of Bohemia, they sent three deputies to the Duke of Bavaria to invite him to disarm and to disband his troops, and to exhort him to have the same thing done to the Catholic princes and states of the empire. Their proposals were signed on December 13th in Munich, and they demanded their execution in less than two months.

The duke made them understand the need he had to maintain troops for the security of his states.

And as for the peace and rest of the empire, he sent them back to the resolutions of the assembly of Catholic princes and states which was held in Würzburg, in opposition to that of the Protestant correspondents in Nuremberg.

During these state movements, Mr. Descartes enjoyed the tranquility that the indifference he had for all these foreign affairs gave him. It is to this time of rest that we could assign the general abdication he made of the prejudices of the school and the first projects he conceived of a new philosophy. To tell the truth, we do not see how it will be easy to deny this, if Mr. Descartes himself is taken as the judge of the fact.

By the way he explained it at the beginning of the second part of his method, it is almost not free for us to believe that the thing happened in another winter than the one that immediately followed the coronation of Emperor Ferdinand II. But in order not to interrupt the sequence of German affairs that took place in the places where he was, it is good to continue it until the Battle of Prague, which decided the fortune of the Elector Palatine.

Mr. Descartes, apart from his meditations, had nothing else to do for the rest of the year 1619 than to visit the country through which his company was being passed. The desire to give himself more occupation was a temptation for him to go to Bohemia, where the imperial and Bohemian armies were fighting continuously, taking and retaking their cities, and increasingly devastating the countryside.

But the certainty of seeing himself employed in Swabia without delay at the beginning of the next year kept him among the Bavarians.

The Duke of Württemberg was of the union of the correspondents, of the party of the Prince Palatine, King of Bohemia. This is what led the Duke of Bavaria to first march his troops toward Donauwörth and Dillingen, to secure the passages of the troops he was having raised toward the Rhine, and to keep in check those of the correspondents, until they saw the success of the embassy that the Emperor had sent to the King of France to ask for help against the Elector Palatine and the Bohemians.

The ambassador was Count of Fürstenberg. He arrived in Paris in December, shortly after Mr. De Luynes was received as duke and peer in the parliament. This favorite of Louis XIII, having advanced a lot during the king’s minority, had then made himself almost absolute in the state.

It depended entirely on him to make the German embassy succeed. This is why Count of Fürstenberg showed him great assiduity and had the Marquis of Mirabel, ambassador of Spain in Paris, join him to double the solicitations.

The interest of the state seemed to demand that nothing be done to support the House of Austria, a rival of that of France, nor to harm the Elector Palatine, who was one of our allies. But the Duke of Luynes, who was then only thinking of the elevation of his house, promised the ambassador of Spain to ruin the affairs of the Palatine, on the condition that De Cadenet, his brother, would marry Mademoiselle De Picquigny De Chaunes, one of the most illustrious heiresses of the century, who had been raised near the Infanta Isabella in Brussels.

He was promised the condition. And whatever instance Marshal De Bouillon could make to the king, to prevent satisfaction from being given to the emperor’s ambassador against the Palatine, his ally, the Duke of Luynes had an extraordinary embassy dispatched, which the Germans called celebrated, because it was composed of the Duke of Angoulême, Mr. De Béthune, Baron De Selles, and Mr. De L’Aubespine, abbot of Préaux.

Their commission contained an order to procure a good settlement between the corresponding princes who favored the Elector Palatine and the Duke of Bavaria, declared general of the union of the Catholics.

During this time, Descartes was in winter quarters along the Danube, where he found few people capable of socializing with him for conversation. As soon as he learned that ambassadors from France were to arrive in Ulm, an imperial city of Swabia on the Danube, he made arrangements to precede them, to give himself the pleasure of seeing people from his country again, some of whom he might know. The quality of a volunteer gave him the liberty to detach himself from the Bavarian army according to his will.

But I could not find out on what memoirs Mr. Lipstorpius wrote that Mr. Descartes had followed the army of the Duke of Bavaria on this trip; that this army was coming to attack the Swabians, that is to say, the people of Swabia; that it had invested the city of Ulm to form a siege; and that they had gone as far as the discharge of artillery, when they saw the ambassadors of France arrive there.

The city of Ulm had not declared against Emperor Ferdinand; and although it was included among the cities of the union of the correspondents, it had not otherwise given any subject of hostility to the armies of the Catholics.

For this reason, it was found to be convenient for the mediation of the king of France, whose ambassadors went there on the sixth of June of the year 1620.

They were followed two hours later by the Duke of Württemberg and by the Marquis of Ansbach, lieutenant general of the Protestant troops. The deputies of the Elector Palatine, those of the corresponding princes, and those of Bohemia arrived the next day. Those of the Duke of Bavaria, general of the union of the Catholics, came a few days later.

The Duke of Angoulême, after having received the visits of the princes and deputies, opened this celebrated assembly with a beautiful speech, in which he uncovered the true sources of the evil about which complaints were made on both sides, and he made known the intentions that the king, his master, had to bring a remedy to it, to the satisfaction of both parties.

Since the month of March, another assembly had been held in Mühlhausen in Thuringia. It was composed of electors and princes of the empire, both Catholic and Lutheran of the Augsburg Confession, all recognizing Emperor Ferdinand as King of Bohemia. The Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Saxony were there in person.

The Elector of Trier, the Duke of Bavaria, and the Landgrave of Hesse had their deputies there. After having deliberated for a long time on the means of delivering the empire from its evils, they had taken the side of writing in the name of their assembly to the Elector Palatine, to exhort him to desist from the crown of Bohemia.

They had likewise written to the states of Bohemia and incorporated provinces, to the Protestant corresponding princes, to the nobility, and to the imperial cities. All these letters were dated March 11th. The Elector Palatine replied to them on May 15th following, and the states of Bohemia a few days later.

But the corresponding princes had delayed replying until the assembly of Ulm, from where they wrote back in common to Mühlhausen, to assure the electors and princes that they entirely entered into the considerations of the public good and that they hoped a lot from the mediation of the ambassadors of France.

While the Duke of Angoulême continued the sessions of the assembly in Ulm, the Duke of Bavaria received seven to eight thousand Catholic troops who had come from the Rhine, and formed an army corps of 25,000 men with which he crossed the Danube at Donauwörth.

He came to camp at Winding, to better take his measures on the result of the assembly, of which he was still uncertain. At this news, the Marquis of Ansbach left Ulm, reassembled his troops, which were 15,000 men in number, and had them advance to observe the enemy. The Duke of Bavaria, on his side, wanted to gain ground and camped his army so close to that of the correspondents that they could speak to each other. We do not know if Mr. Descartes left the city of Ulm on this occasion to return to the camp of the Bavarians.

He likely remained in the city, where a great number of young lords and other people of quality of his age had come from France, whom curiosity had made them join the entourage of the ambassadors, which was four hundred horses.

The two armies were in great discipline without insulting each other and without undertaking anything against each other. While they were watching each other, the treaty was concluded in Ulm by means of the ambassadors of France after four weeks of assembly. The articles of the agreement were passed between the Duke of Bavaria, as general of the united Catholics, and the Marquis of Ansbach, as lieutenant general of the evangelical or Protestant union, who both signed them on the 3rd day of July 1620.

It was decided that they would not take up arms against each other between the princes and states of both unions; that they would not wrong each other in any way whatsoever; that they would not touch anything that belonged neither to the Elector Palatine nor to the Archduke of Austria; and that they would enjoy the liberty and rest that existed between the Catholics and the Protestants before the troubles.

That they would not take part in the particular quarrel of Bohemia, which concerned only the Elector Palatine and Emperor Ferdinand; and that they would let them settle the difference between them. They excluded from their treaty only the kingdom of Bohemia with the incorporated provinces, that is to say, Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia. An exception which was pernicious to the Protestant party and which re-established the affairs of the House of Austria in Germany.